Sega, you totally know how to make a console

Yeah, I mean, what is this, last November? E3? Where was this guy when they were doing reviews with all the execs saying Wii = Good, or Wii = Bad, or whatever? I could have sworn Sega said that the Wii was made of God and Win, but then maybe that was the Japanese side of Sega.

Phantamines: ROFLMAO!

Does he forget that Playstation’s input device hasn’t really changed for over 10 years? Does he forget that controls for 1st person shooters have essentially been the same since time began, yet multiple licenses still exist?

The fact of the matter is, Wii control is far more intuitive and fun than pressing buttons. Once you’ve used Wii for 1st person control, you can’t go back to buttons without feeling like you are being restrained.

4cR is right, there is more than one reason why Wii is so popular. His fears are unfounded. As usual, it’s time for a DS reference - look how that is doing.

You know what’s stale? The 60,000 FPS bland, identical FPS games that come out for the 360. How many guys running around in big futuristic combat suits do we need? Or WWII shooters or urban racing games or open-world GTA rip-offs or movie licenses, for that matter? Games like that for 360 are the same thing as the endless thrown-together, kid-oriented licensed games that pop up on Nintendo systems.

What no one talks about with Wii is personality. Not to quote Pulp Fiction, but personality goes a long way. I love my 360 - I love the high-def gorgeousness, and there are some great games for XBLA. But booting it up and using it is like… well, it’s kind of like Windows (except it works better). There are ads for Axe body spray and the new Ashton Kutcher movie while I download games. It feels corporate. It feels like an American marketing team put it together, and I don’t doubt that they did. PS3’s interface, on the other hand, is utterly ice cold and mechanical. It feels so absurdly serious, like a black hole of fun. And then we have Wii.

What I think people - and by people I mean the 95% of the population who *aren’t* hardcore gamers - respond to with Wii is the playfulness of it. It feels fun and quirky. It feels, like video games used to, utterly removed from the real world. A universe all its own. You can tell, as soon as you see that weird interface of TV screens, that this is something different, and it’s designed only for fun. You don’t see an ad inviting you to download the new Avril Lavigne music video as soon as you turn your system on, and that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. You also aren’t dropped into the dark, frozen tundra of UI design that is PS3. You’re having fun right from the get-go. And then the things they offer that don’t even make sense - like the “Everybody Votes” channel - just makes the whole experience more unique.

What’s important about Wii is that it brings back the childhood joy of video games that a lot of people have lost track of over the last fifteen or twenty years as games got more realistic and more complicated. And this is before you even start playing a game. I agree that a really strong software library is going to be absolutely vital moving forward (and that means whipping these lazy 3rd parties into shape), but it’s rarely mentioned that Nintendo won such a huge victory with the *presentation* of Wii that it’s ahead of the pack before you even get to the software.

Oh, and to the industry people who can’t quit bringing up Wii’s graphical shortcomings: Remember, the key group of people this system is appealing to is people who are perfectly happy with the graphics of the NES. Those graphics make them happy, because they remind them of a time when video games were fun to them, and the graphics are what they are: Video game graphics. Playful and representational. The only people who want video games to look stunningly realistic are hardcore gamers, and yes, Wii’s graphical shortcomings will be a problem for that crowd in the years ahead (as if it isn’t already). But I think Nintendo’s shown that they’re not going to cater to that crowd anymore, and, well, it seems to be working.

Wow! Sega has a hatchet to grind with Nintendo, this brings me back.

Join the rest of the group not making Money…

BTW Anyone read Nintendo’s respons to the NPD number’s? It’s Peachy!
http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=4p4u3U93Fb9Lpj dwdV3F3r_S1DX0jtf_&page

Try again…http://tinyurl.com/2fhxyf

isn’t every First Person Shooter just a “derivative” of previous ones? isn’y every concole game since Pond a derivative of the the same control input? its not like things have changed a whole lot save the analog stick and the Wii.

not every Wii game has to has brand new radical controls. in fact it would suck if every game tried to do something new instead of taking what already works. but apparently thats not what this guy is looking for: a bazillion iterations of Wii Sports and Wario Ware. no way that would ever get old

What works? Good GFX, that sells, really!

Take God of War, Tomb Raider Legend and Prince of Persia SoT… anything new? No. They look identical to me. Really.

Wii has some power to create new genres and improve existing ones, but it needs more ‘worked’ titles not your stupid Rayman sequel or some crappy half-asses ‘Boogie’ or a shitload of Xbox ports. Btw Project Hammer looked great, now it’s cancelled to make room for ‘Brain Age’ crap. -_-

Cheers.

Who care about Sega anyway !, they didn’t relase a single good game for the last 10 years, they keep releasing average boring games, even their mascot “sonic” became one disaster after another, exept for the Wii eclusive wich is a “decent” game, I myself the lst game I enjoyed was on the Genesis !! so that’s about 15 years !!! ouch that hurts

I hope playstation and xbox lose their exclusive games. Then everyone will shut up and they’ll stop existing.

You know, what if nintendo in two years just does the same thing they’ve done with the DS? Bring a Lite version with better features and all. No one would really care after two years to buy something new, since the Wii cost so less. It’ll be omg wii! all over again.

I agree with DYM that the news of Project Hammer’s cancellation is worrying. I think the casual games are great, but they’re also shallow, and many of them aren’t fun as single-player experiences. I think it would be very rash of Nintendo to get over-excited by the casual gaming boom and abandon what made it the industry’s best software developer in the first place: Deep, involving games that you can really get into. Zelda and Paper Mario are a good start, but they also originated on Gamecube, before the big casual gaming boom. Mario Galaxy, SSBB, and Metroid Prime 3 are on the way, but they’re all established franchise entries put into motion before Nintendo realized it could make so much money off of Wii Play. If E3 doesn’t bring any announcements of new deep gameplay Nintendo IPs, and if Disaster and Project Hammer never resurface, then I’ll be worried. If Nintendo starts to abandons deep games altogether, it’s going to come back and bite them in the ass eventually.

@ DYM: has Project H.A.M.M.E.R. actually been canceled? i heard rumors but nothing official sounding. hopefully that Disaster game is still in the works. i was looking forward to both.

Stupid sega seems to be intent on f*ucking themselves over whenever they can. No wonder yuji naka left the company.

Scott Steinberg, Sega of America’s VP

Big keyword: America

Why fuck you america. No one gives a shit because you localize Japanese games, that are made by Japanese people, by SEGA OF JAPAN.

So fuck you, seriously, just localize the damn shit and stop bitching.

Next he’ll say all videogames are childish and a waste of time. Give this guy a promotion! (but make it in another industry please!)

Of course it comes down to the quality of games. It’s always been that way. The only reason the hardware is there is to support the software. Just like a t.v. is there to support different t.v. stations. If there’s not anything on that you like, click, the t.v. goes off. About the Wii, though, I have 100% no concerns. I could explain why I have no concerns, but I’ve done it so many times, and now, I’m at a point where I just don’t feel there is a need to explain it. I have the Wii. After playing Zelda and Wii Sports, all my “concerns” were gone. Anyways, peace.

scott steinberg should be fired. thats all.

“How can they design products that aren’t too derivative of what’s already out there?”

this is ridiculous. the standard “d-pad + a few buttons” controller design was the standard for 15+ years, with the biggest innovation being the analog stick. miraculously, game designers still managed to make new, fresh titles. e_e

“How much value can developers and creative folks get out of this wrist motion two years from now?”
Well, thumb motion has lasted almost 30 years. Why would wrist motion be so much shorter-lived?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to catch a ride on the logic train before it leaves.

so how is it that sega can have an opinion about anyone in the game industry? then again, they would know all about, um, wait a sec, oh yeah: fucking everything up. nintendo is going to do what they will, all we can do is buy the stuff.

The DS wont last. It’s only built upon the flicking of a pen. It’ll never take off, or make any money.

Sega is to Nintendo what Milhouse is to Bart. And that’s a stretch! That guy should just keep quiet of he’s gonna get “The Kutaragi Treatment” and be replaced, since he doesn’t like Nintendo, kind of like Sega’s main market for years…

Sega of America always seem to have their foot firmly shoved in their mouths.
I still cant get over the fact they disallowed streets of rage 4 for the dreamcast beacuse they had never heard of the franchise.

He’s got valid points there… I wonder if Nintendo can sustain this kind of growth for the next 2 years.

The last thing Nintendo needs is industry people saying, in public, they have doubts about whether it’ll last. As doubt spreads studios may reconsider some of the games they had on the drawing board, maybe move them to XBLA or the DS or scrap them all together.

How Ninty can counteract this is, at E3, showcasing a kickass lineup of a wide variety of games that appeal to various demographics. The quick party games might be buttering their bread now, but they need to keep the studios who aren’t producing those types of games from doubting the Wii.

Bring me Sega bass fishing!

There always is some level of concern as to whether Nintendo can sustain the popularity of “mini-game”-ish design.

However, to say that such ideas won’t go anywhere really shows an inteptitude and stupidity in many developers who have pretty much built their games upon ideas that haven’t changed that much since the N64 came out or when Doom originally was developed.

If Nintendo and other companies can both integrate the current scheme into traditional games well (Twilight Princess is an excellent example of things that can be done, and upcoming titles like Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 continue that) and create new and longstanding titles (games like Brain Age and Wii Sports, things that have tons of replay value and are continuously enjoyable), then the company will continue to do well. The advantage Nintendo has is that they’ve sacrificed and invested so much down this road that the benefits they now see are easily paying off, while Microsoft and Sony must attempt feeble attempts only to see few gains if any.

The popularity itself is already more than just a mere fluke or one-trick-pony. Nintendo’s constantly selling out Wiis and is destroying the competition with their DS, both of which are “underpowered” and lack sophistication, and down show any signs of slowing down.

As Rob said earlier, the Wii is far less about impressing and far more about being fun. You know, the main quality of a game? Hardcore gamers will forget about this quality, instead attributing the quality of a game by its addictive qualities (i.e. how long can you play Oblivion to get everything, no matter how fruitless, idiotic, and skilless such tasks are?).

We are also at the point where the graphics presented by the PS3 and 360, while impressive, aren’t THAT much better than even the Wii. The processing power also isn’t so much better or crisper than PS2 games to make improvements upon game framerates. So really, what you’re paying for, aside from possibly some internet capabilities and a blu-ray player/HD-DVD player, is a box that plays nicer looking games. But these aesthetics now come at a very considerable cost.

But here’s the kicker: even if a company wants to invest in graphics and (with high probability) lose a lot of money unless they make a blockbuster such as Halo, why are the top grossing games also the relatively cheapest to produce? If, as Steinberg implies, graphics in a game are making a huge difference, why is it that Guitar Hero 2 for the 360 is selling so well?

I don’t know how much credit I would give Sega in general. They pushed hard for a really nice looking Sonic for the 360 and PS3, and that ended up sucking royally. They also had a DS Sonic game which is actually incredibly fun. So why can’t they just learn from their own successes and failures?

Here’s what happening: Nintendo will release shorter and easier games and I’ll eventually have to sell my DS Lite to buy a PSP(just kidding, Lite, you know I love you >_

Yeah dumb comment but hey he’s vp of sega marketing and we know how good sega marketing is right?? Right???

Funny because the nintendo controller is actually more versatile than anyother controller on the market - so to think that it’s actually hinderance means double or triple to xbox360 and/or ps3… obvious this guy has no idea about games, this is also obvious from their bungling marketing jobs on such great titles like Crush PSP that no one’s heard of…