Friday, April 15, 2011

Nintendo Has Officially Gone Insane

If gossip and news reports are to be believed, Nintendo will unveil the successor to the Wii at this year's E3 in June.  The so-called "hardcore gamer" crowd is clucking like hens at the prospect of Nintendo repenting for the sin of the Blue Ocean Strategy, and returning to the hardcore fold where they belong.  It appears Nintendo may do just that.

Motion-control video games and "casual" titles like Wii Sports and Wii Play and Wii Fit have been staggeringly successful with the greater population, particularly the masses who have been too intimidated to play video games, or the former gamers who quit.  The only ones who want nothing to do with that.....the prima donnas who actually make the games.  They want to make low-rent movies and churn out endless reruns of the same four franchises.  Yuck.

"Hardcore Gamers" are nothing more than fat, old Generation Xers, overgrown men of the Peter Pan Generation who should have far higher priorities for the rest of their lives.  And their numbers are declining.  Microsoft and Sony have taken a financial beating these past five years, and it appears that a whole host of bad habits is sending the video game business careening towards a cliff.  Maybe I'm just being a bit grouchy for comedy's sake, heh heh.

But, seriously, though, I don't see where Nintendo is going with this.  If "Project Cafe" is to be believed, then they've lost their damned minds.  The controller sounds bizarre, surreal, and nothing like the simple clarity of the Wiimote.  Indeed, it sounds more like a mutant offspring of an Xbox 360 and the uDraw tablet.  It's not going to be a Wiimote.  And all those nasty, irritating "casual" games like Wii Sports and Just Dance are out.  Only grandparents and babies and losers want games like that.

Reality and sales numbers be damned.  Nintendo now caters only to a hardcore clique that will never buy the hardware and never buy the games.  But be damned sure they'll cluck like mad chickens.

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