That all sounds pretty bang on to me.

As a 'hobbyist gamer', I don't have any interest in the Wii and, to be honest, have never had much interest in Nintendo as a whole. I grew up with PC gaming, so the Xbox 360 has been a perfect fit but the variety of games on the PS2 also meant I owned one of those.

I would actually say that Sony have already started their exclusivity / diversity drive with games like Uncharted, Little Big Planet and the upcoming The Last Guardian. That last one could well be enough to make me pick up a PS3 and I suspect I'm not alone in that regard.

One thing that might also kick Nintendo off their laurels is the success of the iPhone. With so many 'casual' games available to a fairly big install base, they would be wise to not get too complacent.

Jim: thanks for your comment! Uncharted from my perspective doesn't really help with the diversity drive, since the franchise is heavily into its gunplay. This is a third person shooter with platform elements - that's not going to reach the platform game audience at all.

The Last Guardian... well, Ueda-san's games are always magnificent for the gamer hobbyists, but they have practically zero appeal in the wider audience. I don't see this helping Sony a great deal to be honest, which is not to say that I'm not personally looking forward to it.

And I also agree with you that Apple have given Nintendo a serious run for their money in the handheld space with the iphone - but the itunes marketplace for games is a complete mess now, and I think the higher quality control for Nintendo makes it a more attractive platform for most people. The iphone is flooded with poor quality apps now, and it's quite hard to find anything good.

Thanks for commenting!

Sirc: I didn't mention the Blu-Ray this time because the last time I wrote a piece like this I specifically singled out Blu-Ray as an advantage that Sony had that could work in their advantage. Since then, however, I'm not seeing any sign of this working to their benefit, and unlike the PS2 and DVD players there are Blu-Ray players cheaper than the PS3 which makes me doubt this is going to help them much.

I could be persuaded, but right now it looks like the uptake of hi-def TVs is not big enough for Blu-Ray to have a big drive and, frankly, I personally have no issues with DVDs on my wide screen TV and have no interest in Blu-Ray at all. I'm starting to wonder if this really is the advantage I previously suggested...

It fascinated me to hear you rag on Final Fantasy XII, Oblivion and Fable 2 as "awful games"... Final Fantasy XII has gone down very well among the RPG players I interviewed in the US recently and although I'm not much of a fan of the franchise myself, I have great respect for how they tailor these games to hit into a wider market than most RPGs without falling into the common trap of pushing away from mechanical design and into "action games".

Oblivion seems like a perfectly good open world (Western-style) RPG and I'd be interested to hear what you disliked about it. Are these style of games not to your taste, or were you a fan of earlier Elder Scrolls games and see the game veering away from what you wanted?

And Fable II, despite my initial misgivings, was a pretty darn good "EuroZelda" - although from what I know about your taste in videogames I can imagine this was *far* too lightweight to meet your play needs! :)

You do like to slam the popular games as being terrible simply because they don't meet your play needs (which is your right as an opiner) but the games you slam - FFXII, Oblivion, San Andreas, Fable 2 etc. - are all games that from a detached perspective do a good job of meeting a lot of different play needs. I believe they deserve their success.

It frequently sounds to me that, like many "hardcore" gamers, you feel like you are being 'left behind' by a videogames marketplace which rarely spends the time to meet your sort of challenge-oriented play needs outside of FPS games on higher difficulty settings - which, as far as I can tell, you're not that into.

As ever, I'd be interested in hearing you wax lyrical on these topics. :) And, as ever, it will be hard to stop you doing so. :p

And as for the Wii, yes, I haven't turned the Wii on in quite some time - not since I finished playing "Endless Ocean", in fact. (Not your sort of game, but so perfectly put together for someone like myself who, in another life, would have become a marine biologist! :> )

Best wishes!

Rik: the data for the online space isn't readily available, which makes it very hard to comment. Certainly, the online console space is dominated by the hobbyists, which makes it quite likely that the 360 will have the edge in this space right now. Without actual data from Sony and Microsoft, though, it's quite hard to judge.

I agree with you that the online PC marketplace is several orders of magnitude more profitable than the console online space right now - even if you ignore the World of Warcraft juggernaut and Steam, the casual market space online is doing great business but, once again, the actual data is hard to tabulate. The regular consoles sales are easier to track because of retail monitoring.

To be honest, I don't think any of the console makers have really worked out how to make downloadable content appeal to a wider market - or perhaps more pertinently, they haven't set up a system that's easy enough for a mass market consumer to use. I'm interested to see if the DSi can crack this problem.

Thanks for your comment!

Oh, there are cheaper blu ray players out now? Ha, I wasn't aware of that. Guess it's not such a big advantage anymore.

Unlike you, I used to be a big fan of the FF franchise. But after FFX everything they've put out has been utter crap. Especially FFXI. No other game has been so obviously tailored to make players suffer.

Then you have FFXII which is bad in every single aspect that matters. Turn based battles have worked well in the past. They could've taken the gameplay straight out of FFV and it would've been great. But where do they take the gameplay from? The worst FF of all time, FFXI. FFXII's gameplay is basically FFXI except without other people, making it even more boring. Nevermind that with gambits it basically plays itself.

But I don't want to turn this into an endless rant. Suffice it to say the gameplay is mediocre, the story is boring (laughably it won awards for not being confusing. Yeah, it's not confusing because it's so mundane), the characters are awful especially the protagonist, the setting is uninteresting. And don't get me started on that stupid 10 hour boss fight.

The fact that FFXII is so loved only makes me hate it even more.

Yeah, I've actually never liked open world games or the elder scrolls series but I still played Oblivion for 200 hours anyway because then I'd have an easier time ragging on it. The things I disliked about it are probably fundamental in its design and probably can't be fixed unless you make a completely different game. It's basically the same reason I didn't like Fallout 3:

The world is too big. Now, this by itself isn't a problem, but it has the unfortunate side effect that by making it so big, you're forced to bring the quality of everything down. There just aren't enough resources to make a game so big and also make everything compelling for the player. If you've played Oblivion you'll have noticed this: there are hundreds of dungeons but they are ALL. THE SAME. They're all lifeless, stale and generic. In fact, are they randomly generated? I can't remember.

It's the same with the overworld. Just like GTA or any other open world game, between points of interest it's just a lot of empty pointless space.

And it doesn't help that the leveling system is a facade. Enemies are always scaled to your level so there goes an important part of RPGs right out the window.

So what are you left with? A game that fails as an RPG, made up mostly of uninteresting side quests with bad rewards (not that the main quest is any better), has subpar combat that can't save it, characters that look like abortions, and no style because it uses the tired old western RPG medieval setting.

But seriously I don't want to go into much more detail because this post would get unbearably long and this isn't my blog, lol.

Anyway, I'm not sure I'm being "left behind". As you can see, none of my complaints above centered on the lack of challenge (though I will admit I didn't enjoy the fact that they were so easy, but that's a minor point compared to the big problems).

It just seems that games were so much better a few years ago. Don't get me wrong, there are still good games here and there, but I see so many new entries in established franchises failing to live up to their predecessors. The new FFs are all travesties compared to the old ones. Fallout 3 is worse than Fallout 1. Star Ocean 4 doesn't compare to 3. Street Fighter IV is worse than II. The new Banjo Kazooie is a mockery of the old ones. GTA IV is worse than San Andreas (though unlike all the previous example San Andreas wasn't really that good to begin with).

As for new IPs we have all these terrible things. These Assasin's Creeds, Mass Effects, Too Humans, Infamous, Prototypes. All of these games have such high production values, they feel like hollywood summer blockbusters. They immediately make you go "Yep, the mainstream is going to lap this up." but they lack everything that makes a good game. They feel like soulless cash-ins. I know the purpose of all games is to make money but these are just blatant.

I really hope someone responds to this! I hate getting to blogs late.

Chris, I think the 'blockbusters' are being aimed at the mass market and failing because of the high production costs you mentioned earlier; HD development seems to continue the graphics/hardware arms race of the 1990s (Sega has Blast Processing!!!) and traditionally successful developers seem to be getting in over their heads. Like Square's decision to make a final fantasy movie, they are overestimating their mainstream appeal.

Final fantasy sidenote: XII is my favourite in the series, because the gameplay itself is fun. It feels like playing co-operatively, except that my partners never do the greedy selfish things that online gamers are notorious for (and they are always in character! How boss). I don't see XII as trying to catch on to the mainstream; as I recall, the director of Final Fantasy Tactics was the original director and had a very different vision of the game from the 'Nomura house style.' It is likely they were trying to bring lessons from FFXI into modernizing the series, but got cold feet at the last second and injected anime tropes into Ivalice (the least J-poppish world that FF has had since FFVI!). I recall also that Square has warned that FFXIII's failure would be catastrophic for the company; it's never good to rest all your hopes in a single project. This, I think, demonstrates the financial strain on modern developers, that they are desperately turning very conservative, turning out products that are sure to succeed with the most predictable, traditional markets, and at the same time they want and need to reach larger markets. It must be very confusing for most companies.

I think this is why MS charges for Live. They want to extract as much money from hardcore gamers as possible, because those gamers have the most interest and addiction to complex gaming. It is a lot like selling drugs to a junkie! The market never disappears, though it may shrink. This is likely Microsoft and Sony's biggest problem, that they have invested too much in pleasing the insatiable hardcore gaming addicts, and now their products are far too expensive to become mainstream. Unless I am mistaken, the combined PS360 sales are less than the PS2 at this point in its lifetime. The hardcore market is bleeding dry and dying off, and the two H consoles are fighting over scraps.

Natal may be trying to 'one-up' Nintendo at its own game, but it reminds me of the Sega CD or 32X, a cumbersome peripheral which divides the Xbox's userbase, and divides its developers between those with Natal projects and those without. The Natal will not increase mainstream interest in the Xbox, particularly as it will raise the price of the total package even farther. It will never appeal to every 360 owner, so it will likely fail even within the market of 360 users. I can't see Microsoft outlasting the PS3; Xbox will need a replacement sooner rather than later, but PS3 has been designed to last ten years, and will only become cheaper and more timely as the years go by.

That brings me back to Nintendo! If we want to see the future of the Wii, we need only look to the DS. Nintendo has plainly applied the DS strategy to the console market, and the DS strategy itself is just an extension of the Game Boy strategy: cheap hardware plus innovative input plus accessible, pick-up-and-play games makes for a machine that has mass market appeal, even if it is obsolete technology. It also echoes the Famicom, in that it treats the device as more than a dedicated games machine; it has applications for people of all ages and walks of life. We'll see the Wii putter along at its own pace, gradually building a library of 'hardcore' games that slip under the radar with little fanfare. I expect that this recession is going to severely damage HD developers in the next few years, and they might be forced into cheaper development. Wii could be the future of gaming, because it is repeating the past. Downloadable games like Braid and Megaman 9 could also take off due to low production costs, and I think that Nintendo's highly selective Wiiware and DSiWare offerings are a step in the direction of a strong DLC library, especially with Cave Story and La Mulana to headline it!

The way I see it, Nintendo doesn't need to upgrade its console all at once, due to low public demand for a new one. They can release incremental updates like the GBA and DS had, and like the DS and GB, it can use backwards compatibility to make the transition smoother for developers and consumers alike. This whole generation reminds me in ways of the 8-bit generation: Nintendo is dominant, and its competitors scramble around in its dust, hoping to achieve success in the same markets it has exploited.

I hope this wasn't too rambling!

You gave me permission, and so I will ramble some more! Apologies in advance if I sound angry or pretentious (aren't we all...)

"What I don't understand is why publishers haven't hit upon the option to develop mass market versions of classic videogame styles for the Wii... there are new players out there who cannot handle the level of difficulty posed by gamer titles who end up with games on their Wii they can't actually play. This is not good for anyone!"

Short response: The industry can't deliver on fun games for the masses based on classic principles, because the industry in its current form is based around selling non-games to people who hate fun.

Long response: I think it is because video games have traditionally been a very conservative industry. Smaller firms than Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc. do not have enough money to take risks on anything that may not sell, so they stick with what they know will succeed with the hardened fanbase. This strategy has become extremely expensive because of the infinitely demanding tastes of the modern self-identified 'gamer' and that leaves these conservative developers trapped in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing costs and ever-diminishing returns. They're not going to stop feeding into that loop until it collapses around them, and most development houses are unlikely to survive such a collapse in the market. Without the success of 'industry leaders' like Final Fantasy, entire genres will have nothing to farm ideas from, nothing to copy and exploit without offering anything novel in return. The entire 'hardcore' gaming industry depends on the success of a very small number of titles, around which dozens of imitators can scrimp up the leader's leavings. If those blockbuster games fail to sell, then a colossal investment is lost, and major companies fail, and smaller companies have no popular ideas to borrow (rip off) and they fail, and the whole thing cascades outwards until all we are left with is...

Fun, lo-fi games.

But the 'gamer' public and the industry that caters to it wants to hold out as long as possible, and so they will continue to throw their money into games that 'gamers' like instead of things that are actually fun; what do gamers demand? All manner of things that are completely irrelevant to the core gameplay; 'epic' stories, prettier graphics, higher difficulty, more arbitrary challenges and objectives, less colours, less child-like delight. They would prefer pain to pleasure; Final Fantasy to Dragon Quest. For most self identified gamers, video games are something that one would never associate with childhood; an ordeal. And yet, what are games if not toys for children? We should not deceive ourselves!

To bring this about to the topic of The Future; Sony and Microsoft are following completely unsustainable business strategies that will leave them in a position with the most technically advanced machines and audiences. Eventually, that market will become inaccessible to outsiders, as the gamers within become increasingly insular and demanding. It will be not unlike the comic book industry, in which petulant man-children have set up camp and made the creators their slaves, churning out mindless, meaningless, unappealing pap! Eventually that market must collapse, as gamers begin to die off faster than the 'hardcore' market grows.

Meanwhile, Nintendo has set itself up in a very nice position in which it can only grow its audience. Their philosophy is much more recognizably capitalist than those who care what core gamers think: "If you have money, we will make something for you to buy." It's a sort of pure capitalism that asks people what they want, and then offers it to them; it doesn't create something, and then tell the public via marketing that they should consume it. It is not a coercive capitalism, but a friendly one that knows its place as the provider of pleasures and the humble servant of the customer. Nintendo's success depends on good word getting out, not marketing muscle. Nintendo's success depends on making the customer happy.

Sony and Microsoft and their attendant developers are aware that the hardcore gamer market is Full of Money. They will do whatever it takes, no matter the cost, to extract that money from that market. But they could make so much more money by investing the same capital in low-budget, genuinely fun games that are made by real people, *not marketing executives*.

Summation of rant: Sony and Microsoft will likely spend themselves into a hole of fanboys and fetid odours; many companies will follow them into the oblivion that is the shrivelling hardcore market. Nintendo will thrive amongst the unwashed masses of over-30 women and girls (ick! cry the hardcore gamers) precisely because they do not 'target' the consumer with marketing campaigns, more similar to military strikes than a business deal.

Mega-summary: Developers can't give the non-gaming public what they want, because most developers are paramilitary organizations out to conquer the narrow minds of a few thousand nerds.

Jum: more interesting and highly strident thoughts! :)

"The entire 'hardcore' gaming industry depends on the success of a very small number of titles, around which dozens of imitators can scrimp up the leader's leavings."

True enough, but what's confounds me (and in this regard see the September 2nd post when it goes up next Wednesday) is that the gaming industry ignores some highly successful genres and focuses solely upon those genres that game developers enjoy playing. More on this next week!

"Eventually, that market will become inaccessible to outsiders, as the gamers within become increasingly insular and demanding. It will be not unlike the comic book industry, in which petulant man-children have set up camp and made the creators their slaves, churning out mindless, meaningless, unappealing pap!"

This made me chuckle, since I am a refugee from comics fandom. It was the early 1990s, with its policy of endless cross-overs intended to make you buy many more comics than you wanted that made me say "enough" and I've not looked back since.

"Nintendo's success depends on good word getting out, not marketing muscle. Nintendo's success depends on making the customer happy."

I think you underestimate the role of marketing on getting the good word out. I appreciate the point you are making here, but Nintendo marketing in the last couple of years has been really quite clever - the decision to show less of the game and more reaction shots of people playing the games was utterly masterful. It probably helps that they hired a marketing exec who had previously worked in other industries (Cammie Dunaway used to work for US potato chip giant Frito-Lay).

"Sony and Microsoft and their attendant developers are aware that the hardcore gamer market is Full of Money."

Well this is the key, isn't it? Nintendo are raking in huge number of unit sales by hitting out to a wider mass market, but this market buys only a few game titles each year. The "hardcore" conversely buy many, many games... But of course, you get into trouble when you try and "boil down" the hardcore marketplace, because then you evaporate those diverse pleasures that the hardcore enjoy. The hardcore players are not of one mind, and pretending they are is creating a monoculture that will eventually hurt those companies solely targeting this space - if it hasn't already.

"Mega-summary: Developers can't give the non-gaming public what they want, because most developers are paramilitary organizations out to conquer the narrow minds of a few thousand nerds."

This tickled me. :)

"...the only games that are worth anything are those which acknowledge that they are games, and games must be Fun."

I take your point, but I think it's important to remember that there are many kinds of fun. For some "hardcore" players, sandpapering off your face in failure and then eventually winning is fun, while for other players repeating the same sequence of actions over and over again is fun. It is this diversity of play which the industry has had the greatest difficulty getting to grips with, I think.

"This is what real art is, it is self-improving and progressive."

Yet art need not be fun... although I myself am bored of art that is not. :)

Thanks for another ramble, Jum!

Jum: "Maybe the mainstream public doesn't have the patience to learn specialized game skills by persevering against the game system."

Yes, well the problem is that the gamers have a game literacy built up over years and years of playing. The new players have none of this, and the developers (who are also absurdly game literate) thus misjudge the learning curve issues for the mass market.

This is one of the major problems the industry faces for which no easy solution presents itself.

"Now, I will come back for that September post, I don't want to monopolize this space!"

Well chatter is quiet right now, so I don't think you're causing any harm. :) But you must have better things to do. :p

'See' you next week!

Rik: I suppose there might be some players who play more punishing titles out of peer pressure, or the desire to be taking part in play with others (which is, I suppose, just a different spin on the same idea).

I've not had a case study yet in which someone has admitted to this, but players certainly do agree to play some games that they aren't particular into in order to play with their friends. Usually they manage to find their own ways to have fun. :)

Thanks for commenting!