Justin, over at Groping The Elephant, a thoughtful blog that is part of the recently re-named and amorphously affiliated group the ludodecahedron, starts by calling out N’gai Croal, and ends up with a call to arms:
Publishers need to stop thinking of the Wii as just another platform, or a lesser competitor to the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, and start treating it as the unique entity it is. Stop releasing ports of other titles, often made by less experienced teams, on a much reduced budget. Follow the example Nintendo set with the Wii itself: change the paradigm.
This in itself is a new thought. One I haven’t seen on the web before. I’d love to have comments below with links that prove me wrong. The Wii, I keep saying, is great, fantastic, and horribly misunderstood and underrated. I was at a party the other night, in fact, and a guy who owns a PS3, Xbox 360 and a Wii was really tearing down the Wii as a gaming machine. His main argument was that “the graphics are so horrible, it’s not good for gaming.” He did concede, after some prodding, that it was ok for party games.
This proves Justin’s point. The Wii is NOT ABOUT TYPICAL VIDEOGAMING paradigms. He takes his point further. His call to arms:
Make smaller boutique games, sell them together, collections of half a dozen intelligent creative innovative titles sold for the price of a full game. Flood the market with this new breed of titles supported with the marketing budgets needed to get noticed. The audience for Wii software is so extensive that even if these games only appeal to one percent of them they will still be incredibly successful; provided that audience know the games are there.
Wow, this sounds eerily familiar. iTunes App Store anyone? iPod Touch and iPhone gaming? The familiar distribution model is also changing, and the Wii is poised to be the next big part of that. Why not make games, like the award-winning World of Goo, that are purely downloadable? The graphics on that are stunning, because they make use fo the platform to a high degree. Still downloadable, still affordable, and selling like hotcakes.
Wii think the Wii is here to stay. Wii hope that Nintendo can start hearing these types of voices on the ‘net, and take their little magic machine to new heights.
Thanks to Justin, who allowed us to post both paragraphs above.
via Wii First. « Groping The Elephant.
UPDATE: more thoughts on the matter, from VG Nerd, are right here.
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