First, Hi, I posted in some ancient time once, but i mostly read this site because of the great forums mostly. Now I'm used of the arguments Rick uses on other forums, but here...it feels like sacrilige...if i only believed in such thing.
Second, there is a premise with the Wii no one should forget in an attempt of analyzing it: it's a disruptive product. Now i'm not going to go malstrom on all of you, but I am using the Disruptive theory as perspective in my thesis about the history of videogames...and I live in Belgium for those wondering (it's next to the big german nation which brought birth to KDR). Now being a disruptive product, this has a couple of implications.
1) Analysts and journalists will become useless because of the new markets being tapped, the new values and processes being used and so forth. Everything is tipsyturvy so using any kind of traditional or classical way of analyzing the market must be trown overboard. The comments of the n-Space president around the Winter game supports this. Third parties still being unable to figure out the Wii in general supports this, Nintendo being the only one succesfull supports this.
2) The keyword concept is: chain value-system. The chain value-system of the gaming industry is being forcilly changed by Nintendo by the most powerful force that humanity has created : market forces, the second one being demographics, but that's another story. The problem is, the gaming industry is a content-driven industry and Nintendo isn't the only content-provider, there are a lot of content providers here. So to drive a console as a product, you need content, you need conent providers. because Nintendo is the one that launched this new chain value-system, it is the most adapted to the new values and processes to products (games, content) in accordance to this system. Here comes the problem: third parties aren't!
Now you could say: that put's the blame on third parties for the 100% and you would be right. Third parties are companies, companies need to make profit to keep existing. Since the old system is being replaced, these companies must prepare for the new one, they haven't so now they're in big **** with some exceptions (Ubisoft, Atlus, Marvelous ect.). That's the pure market-driven perspective.
You could also say, that puts the blame on Nintendo and third parties. Nintendo is forcing a new system on the market, maybe it should have warned us...no wait...it did! Now to be fair, being warned of a tidal wave that will flood everything while you're behind a mountain range so you won't see it coming and well, you're behind a bloody mountain range, it can't flood over those mountains right? That's the more nuanced "yeah, but" market-driven perspective...let's give Nintendo some indirect blame, but the grand majority lies with third parties in the end.
And then you have the conservative old fart perspective about "the good old days" which...has never won in the course of history. But it does have a social purpose of buffering in the people's grievances about change so they don't go into a bloody riot if these grievances can be vented into a politcial-social place of significance (parlements are a prime example of this).
Weaknesses in Nintendo's strategy are however
1) Nintendo has practically always counted on other developers to make more "mature" content be it by second or third parties. However Nintendo seems to forget that third parties are mindless sheep (thank you marketing and financial departments) and follow the first and second parties and Nintendo's second party collection is a bit slim this generation. Combine this with third parties absolute lack of adapting to the new value-chain and some pseudo-hardcore gamers (pseudo-hardcore gamers are gamers that see themselves as hardcore but dismiss a type or several types of gaming therefore abondoning the one crucial feature of a hard-core gamer: loving gaming in all its forms) arbitrary defining some games as now casual (banjo-kazooie is suddenly a casual game...what?) which distorts the perception of the social acceptance pre-requisites of belonging to the status-group of "real" gamers.
I will say that averages are indeed useless without additional info like quarter averages and others, but this also makes attach-rates useless (as they are a average). However, the NPD article actually also confirms that third parties are not adapting (or refusing to adapt) to the Wii value-system. Nintendo is the best adapted so they will make the best content on the Wii receiving the best sales. If third parties adapt well enough, they will taste the same succes.
But then I also like to introduce the concept of the game-platform-compatability grid which third parties also suck at in general. This concept declares that a game in development has certain factors involved in its development (budget, man-power, concept, function, technology) which creates a natural compatabilityfor certain platforms in accordance to their charateristics (specs, market share, marketstrategy, , marketperception, oppurtunities ect.) it should be released on. In other words, a game should be released on the platform(s), taken into accounts the factors of game and platforms, it makes the most sense to increase market potential.
No More Heroes should have launched on the Wii and/or DS using this grid. Marvelous does not have the budget for HD-projects and Suda51 puts too much freaky stuff into it. Even if the money was there to make NMH into a HD-game it will have bombed on the the HD-consoles because of the punk character (Killer 7, Viewtifull Joe, Toe Jam and Early, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Beyond Good & Evil have all proven that the Sony and MS audiences do not buy quirky punk games). On the Wii it had a chance to be actually made and be profitable.
What I don't like is the lack of flak to the other side. But offcourse that requires thinking in scenario's nobody likes to think in. I'll give a nice example. Now the EU is getting quite a bit of flak because Turkey (a mostly islamic country, and a rather big one too) is going trough the procedure of becoming an EU-member (aka Turkey incoporating every bit of EU-law there is with no questions allowed to be asked...they call this the negociations phase...bit euphimistic though). Now the public opinion in a lot EU-countries is against this (including my own and Germany's), but the country with a actual beef against Turkey is Greek-Cyprus. Now, EU-law consist of 36 chapters ad these chapters are integrated into a future EU-member one at a time during these negociations. Every EU-member has a veto to stop the membership procedure before opening and closing each of these chapters...so every country has 77 possiblities to veto this procedure. Not one EU-country has used this veto so far and Turkey has advanced quite a few chapters already. Why?
1) the EU has no administrative and legislative reason to refuse Turkey, Turkey abides to all the norms and requirements (hell, the EU even invented a couple just for Turkey, Turkey adapted itself).
2) refusing Turkey opens up a very nasty scenario, one where the radical moslim-groups inside turkey take power, so instead of a reasonable stable islamic democracy on its border, the EU suddenly has a radical islamic country on its border with a full-fledged army and acces to several high-tech weapon patents (60% of the EU's weapon pantents are being produced in Turkey, including the british conventional bomb with the same power as the Hiroshima-nuke).
So yeah, giving Nintendo flak is nice, but also...it could have gone the way of the crapper if Nintendo didn't do what it did.
Topic: Rick’s Rant - Episode 5: Powers Strikes Back (Read 28992 times)
