29th April 2008, 11:11 PM
Well I always thought of the HD thing as just another aspect of graphics anyway and accepted some time ago that the Wii was intentionally not being designed to be the top graphics dog (that's the polite way to say it's two Gamecubes duck-taped together, and yes I called it "duck tape", saw an interesting history of it on the History Channel a few weeks ago).
The main problem with the "it takes years to accomplish" thing is other companies have 1-upped Nintendo in a fairly quick amount of time. Years yes, but the Wii has been planned and released in a pretty quick amount of time.
Also, if the idea is to "test the waters" then their experiment has a fatal flaw. You can't test someone's desire to buy lemon pie by checking sales of crust. Unfortunatly marketting departments aren't as smart as they like to think they are...
You can't "market your way to the top" by the way (well, at least you can't stay there for long), and Nintendo is starting to realize that. You want surprising numbers? Check Wii game sales compaired to Wii sales. It seems like everyone was convinced by Ellen and Oprah to buy the thing and are just sitting around playing Wii Sports. By "everyone" I mean the casual audience that is clearly eating the thing up. If the sales I keep seeing reported on the news sites say anything, it's that Nintendo needs to convince casual gamers to actually start buying games for that impulse buy of their's. I'm not sure Wii Fit is going to do the job, but then again their target audience are the sorts that buy "treadmills" because they don't seem to realize that a hallway is just as good (and besides that, if they couldn't bother to work out for free what makes them think that getting a machine that does something something around the house can do just as well will get them moving?).
Anyway, I don't disagree that it'll take a while for them to develop the system, but I've seen no indication that they have even made any plans to do so. Look at Sony. They've already put together a much better system than what Nintendo has in place, and while it can't match up to MS's system, at this rate it'll get there pretty quick.
I'd also point out that they aren't really gathering any data that MS doesn't also have the ability to get. MS knows exactly how many people are playing every single game, what they have done in the game, how long they have played it, and (this is key) with all of them connected to a single tag they have data on what each user likes to play. Oh yes, they ALSO have full regional data. It's called an IP address and at this point those things can be traced to cities (also Live requires you fill out country info, and it's in the user's best interest to be honest because region determines what they see in the marketplace). Further, MS has been tracking this data since the initial implementation of Live on the original XBox, which (sad to say) was still better than Nintendo's current implementation of their online service. Oh yes, I'll add that when the friend codes are "system locked" it hinders playing with your online data on someone else's machine, which means Nintendo loses that data. So if it's an issue of data tracking, MS wins there too.
There is one thing I'll give to Nintendo, and it is a big one. Their online matchmaking is free of charge. MS charges. Sure it's only 50 a year, which isn't that much, but it is hardly nothing, especially if we're talking about a kid who saves up their allowance to buy their games and have to earn their chance to play online (that said, the current batch of kids I overhear on Live seem to be spoiled brats, seriously I mean I figure we're talking a minority and I'm not about to say "kids these days" but honestly THIS bunch are... well that's a side tangent and honestly I'm expecting to see these kids once again when Nintendo catches up). Sony's is free, Valve's online service is free. Generally speaking, the only exception is with MMOs with a much much larger infrastructure cost.
Anyway, there's the issue of increasing the number of people playing games online. That would probably be a little more important if they had a fee like MS does. As it stands, if MS has a 20% installed user rate to subscriber (maybe, but that's still 10 million subscribers, according to Wikipedia) that's not too bad. I really don't see how having a bad online experience right now is supposed to actually raise that percentage later. People are taking the experience right now for what it is. Nintendo first needs to get over that. I'm also not sure how they could just, I dunno, force people to play more online? I mean the online feature is going to be right on the main menu. If they are interested they'll play. If not, they won't. That's just the way it is. The fact of the matter is online play in games is very lucrative right now. It doesn't matter what Nintendo seems to think, everyone else realizes it's important to have that support. Do less people play online than offline? Well, yeah. What do you expect?
The main problem with the "it takes years to accomplish" thing is other companies have 1-upped Nintendo in a fairly quick amount of time. Years yes, but the Wii has been planned and released in a pretty quick amount of time.
Also, if the idea is to "test the waters" then their experiment has a fatal flaw. You can't test someone's desire to buy lemon pie by checking sales of crust. Unfortunatly marketting departments aren't as smart as they like to think they are...
You can't "market your way to the top" by the way (well, at least you can't stay there for long), and Nintendo is starting to realize that. You want surprising numbers? Check Wii game sales compaired to Wii sales. It seems like everyone was convinced by Ellen and Oprah to buy the thing and are just sitting around playing Wii Sports. By "everyone" I mean the casual audience that is clearly eating the thing up. If the sales I keep seeing reported on the news sites say anything, it's that Nintendo needs to convince casual gamers to actually start buying games for that impulse buy of their's. I'm not sure Wii Fit is going to do the job, but then again their target audience are the sorts that buy "treadmills" because they don't seem to realize that a hallway is just as good (and besides that, if they couldn't bother to work out for free what makes them think that getting a machine that does something something around the house can do just as well will get them moving?).
Anyway, I don't disagree that it'll take a while for them to develop the system, but I've seen no indication that they have even made any plans to do so. Look at Sony. They've already put together a much better system than what Nintendo has in place, and while it can't match up to MS's system, at this rate it'll get there pretty quick.
I'd also point out that they aren't really gathering any data that MS doesn't also have the ability to get. MS knows exactly how many people are playing every single game, what they have done in the game, how long they have played it, and (this is key) with all of them connected to a single tag they have data on what each user likes to play. Oh yes, they ALSO have full regional data. It's called an IP address and at this point those things can be traced to cities (also Live requires you fill out country info, and it's in the user's best interest to be honest because region determines what they see in the marketplace). Further, MS has been tracking this data since the initial implementation of Live on the original XBox, which (sad to say) was still better than Nintendo's current implementation of their online service. Oh yes, I'll add that when the friend codes are "system locked" it hinders playing with your online data on someone else's machine, which means Nintendo loses that data. So if it's an issue of data tracking, MS wins there too.
There is one thing I'll give to Nintendo, and it is a big one. Their online matchmaking is free of charge. MS charges. Sure it's only 50 a year, which isn't that much, but it is hardly nothing, especially if we're talking about a kid who saves up their allowance to buy their games and have to earn their chance to play online (that said, the current batch of kids I overhear on Live seem to be spoiled brats, seriously I mean I figure we're talking a minority and I'm not about to say "kids these days" but honestly THIS bunch are... well that's a side tangent and honestly I'm expecting to see these kids once again when Nintendo catches up). Sony's is free, Valve's online service is free. Generally speaking, the only exception is with MMOs with a much much larger infrastructure cost.
Anyway, there's the issue of increasing the number of people playing games online. That would probably be a little more important if they had a fee like MS does. As it stands, if MS has a 20% installed user rate to subscriber (maybe, but that's still 10 million subscribers, according to Wikipedia) that's not too bad. I really don't see how having a bad online experience right now is supposed to actually raise that percentage later. People are taking the experience right now for what it is. Nintendo first needs to get over that. I'm also not sure how they could just, I dunno, force people to play more online? I mean the online feature is going to be right on the main menu. If they are interested they'll play. If not, they won't. That's just the way it is. The fact of the matter is online play in games is very lucrative right now. It doesn't matter what Nintendo seems to think, everyone else realizes it's important to have that support. Do less people play online than offline? Well, yeah. What do you expect?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)