E3 2008: Is Nintendo Spurning Hardcore Gamers?
So the controversy du jour seems to be that because Nintendo didn't launch a new Mario or Zelda game (they merely confirmed stuff's in the works) at this year's E3 2008, we're supposed to be freaked out or something. I guess if all you care about are Mario and Zelda, perhaps justifiably. The "hardest" it got for the company that made a chubby mustachioed plumber an international icon was a glorified social networking game (Animal Crossing: City Folk) and a version of Grand Theft Auto for the DS. And even there, somehow I'm not seeing the DS version including the option to hit on hookers with your stylus.
I think the more poignant question isn't whether Nintendo's spurning hardcore gamers, but whether you can really blame them if they are. If the Wii's demographic status at the outset was debatable, it's certainly not anymore. Hardcore gamers get crumbs, mainstream gamers get half an entree, and casual gamers get the rest of the buffet all to themselves.
What's so terrible about that? With this newly tapped, ostensibly burgeoning casual market driving game revenues into the stratosphere, who said Nintendo had an obligation not to take advantage of it? Development cycles have to conform to market demand. I mean, is it somehow 20th Century Fox's fault that millions flocked to see a gonzo alien invasion movie like Independence Day, thus helping to ensure that the ratio of blockbusters to serious artsy sci-fi flicks would remain something like 100 to 1?
Blame consumers, in other words, not Nintendo.
Nintendo's always had something of a casual mystique. There's nothing new about that. Whatever their relative challenge, games involving Zelda or Super Mario or Donkey Kong are nothing like Crysis or Gears of War or Metal Gear Solid 4. "Hardcore" isn't just about Really Tough Gameplay, it involves far less structurally tangible stuff like content and genre as well, which is one of these obvious but often overlooked points. A game like Viva Media's The Immortals of Terra couldn't be easier gameplay-wise, but it's about as "hardcore" in terms of its mechanics and content as PC-based sci-fi operas go. Put another way, "hardcore" in the sense most people use that word today reflects aesthetic taste as much as functional complexity.
Nintendo's conference left me personally underwhelmed, but then I'm generally a hardcore/mainstreamer who only occasionally dabbles in casual fare. Nothing wrong with that, just like there's nothing wrong with Nintendo catering predominantly to the casual crowd.
PC World's Marketplace
PC World's Free Whitepapers
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
Part of the problem is that E3 has been pretty lackluster all around - there's not much meat anywhere. And part of it is that Nintendo did nothing to shed itself of the image that it's now about peripherals, not games. The only big surprise at all has been FFXIII on Xbox.
It's all just kind of disappointing.
They have been spurning hardcore gamers since the N64 i remember back when the drought hit between Goldeneye and PerfectDark.... **sigh to bad Perfect Dark dumped "Perfect Head" due to the Columbine shootings. Luckily i was playing Playstation and PC and my older consoles but yeah they been weening us gamers off since the Sega Saturn....
There has been a lot of talk regarding the extreme lack of decent titles for the Wii. The system has been out long enough now that it should have a few Wii/generation defining games. The best game I own is Re4 Redux and that just seems sad.
I'm a hardcore gamer; such as the Halo Series, Call Of Duty, Project Gotham Racing, Madden, and so on. But what im trying to say is Nintendo needs to grow up a bit. It needs to feed gamers more pedal-to-the-metal racing, explosive shooting, and intense sports games. It needs to respect the gamers that want more than little bubble like figures tossing a bowling ball (WII Sports), or stepping up and down on a little mat (WII Fit). Seriously.