The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 had achieved a kind of parity. None of this for Nintendo, however. They had looked at the state of the industry, including what had happened to their once most dangerous competitors Sega, and had decided there wasn't room in the arena of the games market for three behemoths. On top of this, they saw the arms race for graphical fidelity as costly, and ultimately of less importance to consumers than the need for interesting experiences. And so, not for the first time in their history, they took a crazy gamble.
Their next console was called the Wii. The what? The Wii. You sure? Yes, Nintendo said. It's like "we", like playing together. But the odd spelling makes it independent of any nationality or language. The two lowercase "i"s look like little people stood beside each other. It's nice. Get used to it.
And everyone went "riiiight".
The Wii was laughably underpowered next to the PS3 and 360. In fact it would turn out to be little more than a reskinned Gamecube. It had no movie playback, few multimedia features. And, most radically, it did away with traditional control methods, asking players to instead point "Wiimotes" that looked like baby's first TV remotes at their screens, shaking and swinging and gesturing to perform actions. To play tennis you swung the Wiimote like a racket. To shoot you aimed at the TV and pulled the trigger on the bottom. To fly an aeroplane you held the remote flat and waggled for pitch, roll and yaw.
It is difficult to state how outlandish this all seemed to the gaming press, and to entrenched gamers, at the time. Ramping up processing power with each console cycle was just what you did. Consumers all now owned 1080p HD displays, surely, and they wanted a games console that could make the most of them. And joypads had been essentially the same for aeons - perhaps waggling a remote would work for little minigames, but you couldn't control any serious game accurately with such a device. It was a gimmick.
Go your own way
It turned out Nintendo didn't care. They were not aiming for the gaming demographic. Their key audience was: everybody else. They took what was, it must be said, very rudimentary motion technology, and an outdated games console, and packaged it together under a clear brand, and made it approachable and friendly and fun.
They advertised to kids who wanted new and novel toys. To families who would crowd around Nan as she tried her hand at virtual bowling on Christmas Day. To housewives who wanted to get in shape with Wii Fit and its accompanying balance board. To dads who could rock out to Guitar Hero.
In a way that sounds horribly cynical, and there was an element of manipulating new markets. But from the top of the company down Nintendo also genuinely seemed to believe in the concept of using technology, rather than being used by it, to help people live more meaningful lives. They focused on play and connection. On intertwining gaming with the everyday. On games not as a means to zone out, but to become more present. Nintendo argued that videogames were for everyone. The system just had to be non-threatening enough. The technological jargon had to be peeled away. And the price had to be right.
Nail. Head. Hit. With design language cues taken from Apple, and an affordable price point, Nintendo shifted Wiis in their millions. 101.63 million, to be precise, comfortably the best-selling console of the generation.
Yes, the thing was somewhat throwaway, by its very nature. Units were played for holidays, shown off to guests for a few weeks, then left to gather dust. Plastic peripherals were dumped in boxes under beds. Third-parties spewed out a deluge of execrable minigame collections, with tacky motion controls, to be gobbled up by the less discerning mainstream masses (say what you will about gamers and their penchant for dude-shooters, but they're a savvy bunch, and competition has ensured that dude-shooting quality has gone right up. No such luck in the Wii party-game market).
And, yes, speaking as a card-holding gamer, the Wii's more traditional fare, such as Mario Galaxy (sublime), two Zelda titles (the formula beginning to grow long in the tooth, not staying current as was stablemate Mario), Metroid, Mario Kart and Smash Bros. games, the ultra-Japanese, manga-inspired No More Heroes, and cult-classic RPG Xenoblade Chronicles - these games were few and far between, overwhelmed by twee tat like Petz Sports: Dog Playground, and it was tough to look at the blurry textures and blocky worlds, to look down at the silly plastic sticks in your hands, the tangle of wires connecting everything up behind your TV, the mess of "friends codes" needed to play online, and then to look across at Sony and Microsoft, so slick and sensible and futuristic over there, and not sigh heavily.
But then maybe that's all the point. The Wii was not made for me, although it had a few games to keep me quiet. It was made for people who don't know what framerates are, who don't notice a lack of anti-aliasing, or care about native resolution. It was made for people who were just people, and who, Nintendo felt, still deserved to play games. It was an experiment, an experience, an inclusive, riotous laugh, and there is not one thing wrong with that.
- - -
Hmm, and I think that's already enough brain-spewing for today. Maybe I'll go over the Wii's successor, and the current Sony and Microsoft consoles, and the state of the industry, tomorrow, and then talk about why I think the Switch is such a canny, well-positioned console when I get one.
I was planning to do a sort of diary of my time completing my half-finished games before I traded them in for a Switch, but this history of home consoles thing has run on far too long. I have been playing through those games though, promise. And in fact, I'm off to do some more of that now before bed.
Toodles.
No comments:
Post a Comment