Topic: Play History! YES!

[Mario]

http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/?v=news&p=5354

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The Play History is another new feature offered by the Wii, and refers to the console's ability to keep track of, obviously, what games have been played and for how long. Originally, Iwata himself pitched the "Outlandish suggestion" of offering parents the option of setting the console to automatically turn off after a set amount of time, but technically, the idea was not feasible.

Instead, the Play History was birthed, and the data collected is unable to be deleted and can be viewed by parents. More excitingly, "It's just really fun for users to be able to see the record of how long they played," said Iwata. "In the future, we could make it possible to plot on a graph how much you've played. Also, with users' cooperation, we could compile data on which game was the most played that year."

This is a neat feature I was hoping they'd include for ages! And GRAPHS! YES PLEASE! Wii is gonna have so much neat stuff to play around with.

Nothing will impress your friends more than evidence that Excite Truck is your most played game!

[Kairon]

Wii is awesome!

... except that I'll lose my hardcore gamer cred when they see how much I play Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[couchmonkey]

Yes, that's good.  I've thought this feature should be included in all games for a while now, so this is great.

[Spak-Spang]

I do like this feature.  Now when a teenage killer goes and shoots up people, the police can see what games caused him to go on that Rampage.

[Kairon]

The Pikmin Murders... tonight on Channel 11!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Caliban]

That's a nice feature.

[JonLeung]

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Originally posted by: Spak-Spang
I do like this feature.  Now when a teenage killer goes and shoots up people, the police can see what games caused him to go on that Rampage.

Let's hope that doesn't happen, but I suppose that would be one way to track his interests and possible influences.  Also, it'd cover Nintendo's butt, especially if it's true that they're courting the possibility of more so-called "mature" games for the Wii.

Yup, this Play History does everybody some good.

(So long as it's not so blatant.  I'm not going to want to take my Wii to some so-called "hardcore" gamers' house and have my Wii shout back at me, as it powers on, "WELCOME, JON.  WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY SOME MORE "POKéMON: FTW" TODAY?  YOU SURE DID WELL YESTERDAY WHEN YOU PLAYED IT FOR TEN HOURS STRAIGHT, BRINGING YOUR TOTAL TIME FOR THAT GAME UP TO A WHOPPING THREE HUNDRED HOURS - VERY CLOSE TO THE WORLD RECORD, I MIGHT ADD.  OR WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY SOME MORE "HARVEST MOON: RAISING CUTE SHEEP (FOR GIRLS)" OR "ANIMAL CROSSING: UBER UNIVERSE"? ...PLEASE INSERT DISC NOW.")

[King of Twitch]

Just what I want, the whole world knowing how much time Zelda spends on my wii

[MaryJane]

is this that last wii channel they haven't shown yet?

this is a great idea, now i'll be able to see just how much of my life is spent playing video games!

I wish my tivo had the same feature.

OOO

what if they use this feature for pairing up opponents like on the DS?

someone who has played Madden for 500hrs+ should be better than someone who has only played for 20hrs, and so on. maybe not though...

[couchmonkey]

Edit: Joke too late!
I wonder if this is another channel?  I wonder how long that 512 MB memory is going to last if they keep adding them?  

[JonLeung]

It's just text - two bytes are good enough to indentify up to 65536 different Wii games (and there won't be that many) and another byte each for days, hours, minutes and seconds.  If time is all they count, then it's six bytes per game?  Not bad.  You'd have to play 171 games for it to even take up 1 kB.

Though it would exclude offline Wiis, it might be a good idea to store this kind of info online.  Good for Nintendo's sake, if they can access it, Big Brother-esque as that may be.  They could see what games people are spending time on. If they release a game that's estimated at 50 hours and people spend 1000 hours on it, they can assume it's incredibly replayable.  If they find that, no matter how long a game actually is, if no one in the world ever spends more than twenty minutes on it and then never plays it again, then it must be a crappy game.

[KnowsNothing]

YES!  I have ALWAYS wanted this feature.  I love how in RPGs it tells you the total play time, but I was pissed that no other game did that.  Now it's part of the console =D

[BigJim]

Didn't Iwata also mention in the past a feature that enabled parents to block games by ratings? Wonder if that feature goes along with this.

[Ian Sane]

I think the feature is cool just in a "wow neato" sort of way.  I just hope they don't use this for game specific ads or anything like that.  It's a fun feature provided it isn't abused.

"Though it would exclude offline Wiis, it might be a good idea to store this kind of info online. Good for Nintendo's sake, if they can access it, Big Brother-esque as that may be. They could see what games people are spending time on. If they release a game that's estimated at 50 hours and people spend 1000 hours on it, they can assume it's incredibly replayable. If they find that, no matter how long a game actually is, if no one in the world ever spends more than twenty minutes on it and then never plays it again, then it must be a crappy game."

That's a pretty good idea.  Sales don't really paint the full picture.  A game sells well because people are interested in it, not because they actually like it.  Luigi's Mansion sold really well since it was the flagship title of the Cube launch.  A common complaint was that the game was too short.  But how would Nintendo know that?  The game sold well so in their mind it was a hit.  It also gives Nintendo a better idea of what the userbase really is.  Some people buy a console for one or two games and never buy anything else.  Some people get bored of a console and stop playing it.  But since a userbase is measured by the amount of units sold there's no indication of who is really a potential customer.  I haven't played my Cube much in the last two years because not much I'm interested in has been released.  Nintendo could see that I haven't played it much lately, look at the types of a game I have played in the past and then learn from that that the types of games I'm interested in have not been released lately.  If that's a trend among a large group of people then Nintendo can determine who is getting left out.  They can also figure out who is satisfied if certain groups are constantly playing the same games for long hours.  Perhaps they don't need as much support for the time being.

[TrueNerd]

That's kinda cool. I love it when I have new opportunities to participate in a metaphorical pissing contest.

No really, this is cool. I look forward to seeing what games my fellow Wii-ers are playing the most.  

[ShyGuy]

Why don't they just call it "Measure the length of your Wii" and get it over with. Freudian MUCH.

[Hostile Creation]

Eh, cool feature but not something I'm really excited about.  Lots of games already do this (Metroid, SSBM, Zelda, if I'm not mistaken), anyway.
Still, it is a good feature, and should be cool.  I'm just more about playing the games, and I have relatively little interest in how long I play one game compared to another.  I can figure that out in my head, if I want to.

(I'm going to leave a game on whenever I'm not playing just so it looks like I do it constantly)

[stevey]

I like the idea, but it need more to it for nintendo to use it. Play time aren't always good to see if people like a game, let say I beat zelda in 5 hours and played all the SQ. To nintendo is would seen as I go stuck some where or hated it in 5 hours, while if let say bill played zelda for 500 hours it would tell nintendo he really like it and replayed it a ton, while he could of very well have been stuck on the first level puzzle fully hated the game the whole time.

It would be cool if nintendo took the star system form nsmb and mkds and used iton the wii. Give out star for doing stuff in game like and star for beating any game and more stars for getting 100% scan, beating all the side quest, kill a thousand cucco, and/or losing to reggie in ssbb along with game times. Maybe use the star as wii poinr for free game to hard core gamers...

[WuTangTurtle]

I agree with the concerns you raise Stevey.  For instance my Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced game logs me in at 80hrs and im only about halfway through the game.  My problem is that i play the game when i cook, sometimes as I surf the net, and also when im going to sleep (I've numeriously fallen asleep with the game left on).  The same kind of things happen when i play Advance Wars.

[willie1234]

this idea is TERRIBLE!
according to joystiq -
"Will be used by Nintendo (with user consent) to pool data into useful statistical categories; i.e. "most played game of the year""

why do companies feel it's ok to compile a database on everything I do?  phone call logs, internet traffic etc. now we have BigNintendo logging every minute of which game I play? WTF?

this is a big deal for me...possibly a showstopper.

[KnowsNothing]

Who the hell cares.

[IceCold]

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Originally posted by: willie1234
this idea is TERRIBLE!
according to joystiq -
"Will be used by Nintendo (with user consent) to pool data into useful statistical categories; i.e. "most played game of the year""

why do companies feel it's ok to compile a database on everything I do?  phone call logs, internet traffic etc. now we have BigNintendo logging every minute of which game I play? WTF?

this is a big deal for me...possibly a showstopper.

I'm glad you took the time to read a 21 word sentence properly. There are three key words there.. With. User. Consent..

KN's response is good enough, though  

EDIT: About the feature, I really like the concept - I'm a stats whore so I'll be looking at it a lot. I wonder if they show the amount of time you spend on this channel as well

[UltimatePartyBear]

I could understand a privacy concern if there were games like Barbie, Strawberry Shortcake, and My Little Pony in Menage a Trois Adventures.  Otherwise, I don't think there's any game embarrassing enough to make it something to worry about, or at least not one that will ever come out in this country.  If I'm wrong, I suppose if you wanted to opt in for only mainstream games but still wanted to play pornographic games without anyone finding out, you could get a second Wii and never take it online.  Maybe someone will even sell a nice black leather case you can store it in so the dust bunnies won't clog it when you hide it under the bed.

[wandering]

I am liking this feature. Especially since Nintendo doesn't put play time on a lot of their big games (see: Zelda.)

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It would be cool if nintendo took the star system form nsmb and mkds and used iton the wii.

This is actually a cool idea. I hope there's some kind of achievement system on the Wii, it would be really easy to implement and hardcore gamers would love Nintendo for it.

Quote
according to joystiq -
"Will be used by Nintendo (with user consent) to pool data into useful statistical categories; i.e. "most played game of the year""

I won't be giving my consent. I hope Nintendo understands the concept of 'no means no' better than a certain boxer they used to promote one of their games.

[TMW]

Quote
Originally posted by: ShyGuy
Why don't they just call it "Measure the length of your Wii" and get it over with. Freudian MUCH.

Hey now.  Its not the length of your playtime...it's how you spend it.