Topic: Miyamoto reafirms Wii Music is still coming along

[Kairon]

Yes that one.

Thank you Maxi! I now no longer have to visit Pro66/Daisy's video site to listen to my trumpet rendition of Zelda!

[BeautifulShy]

No problem Kai.

[Mop it up]

Kairon, I'm pretty sure we exchanged numbers around Secret Santa time, so we should have each other. You could send me some of your videos if you wanted, I wouldn't mind. I've played this game maybe twice, so I could use an excuse to get into it. Who knows, maybe I'll even send you a poorly-timed video and show you just how poor things can get when someone with no musical talent is the composer!

[Chozo Ghost]

Does Miyamoto still reaffirm that Wii Music is coming along?

[ThomasO]

Hey Kai, mind if I send you some of my music later?

[Kairon]

Sure ThomasO! Let's exchange Wii System Codes so we can do that.

[Kytim89]

I was going to buy wii music for $20 at some local second hand retail store called"Book and Music Exchange" and I was seconds from buying the game when the store clerk talked me out of it by saying that the game was a poor game. So I put the game back and almost got Trauma Center for the wii, but instead I decided to save my money for Red Steel 2.

[Mop it up]

That's probably for the better. If you let other people determine your game purchases then you probably wouldn't like Wii Music.

[Kytim89]

I thought wow, a Nintendo wii game for twenty dollars.

[Chozo Ghost]

This game would probably have done much better if Nintendo had bundled some music peripherals with it. Just like those things that come with Guitar Hero or Rockband.

[BeautifulShy]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rzF_eaXy45c

I found this a few mins ago. It is Drum mode the song is one of the water levels from Donkey Kong Country.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Just a warning, I will add one more Music Video after reviewing the replays Kairon sent me.

[Dirk Temporo]

People still care about this game???

[ThomasO]

Bump, but not as epic as Kairon's.


I posted two of my performances in Wii Music on Youtube after getting a video converter for my comp:


My Grandfather's Clock, ver. 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqXg1LGagsM
Frére Jacques: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZGEZrUhjMY


Hope you guys like them.

[Chozo Ghost]

The reason this game flopped is a combination of the fact that all the songs are either Nintendo songs or public domains songs, and also because you use the Wiimote as the musical instrument. Were you able to use a guitar or anything else, and if the music included popular modern rock music then the game might have done better.

It doesn't happen often, but this here is an example of 3rd parties doing a genre of gaming better than Nintendo themselves.

[Mop it up]

This game sold 2.65 million copies. If that's a flop, so is all but eight of the games released on the PS3.

Wii Music was not intended for the crowd that plays Guitar Hero and related games, and that's something most people in the gaming media did not understand. It was intended for people with no musical knowledge to be able to pick up the Wii Remote and make music, just by moving. It does this well. The problem is, this gives it limited appeal, since even someone with very basic musical knowledge (such as myself) will find it to be shallow and wear thin fast.

[Ian Sane]

What was frustrating about Wii Music is that of the initial concepts for the Wii that were revealed this sounded like one of the most promising.  We all let our minds wander not just to a Guitar Hero style rhythm game but also a music creator as well, like a more advanced Mario Paint.  The potential was huge and we got excited.  The problem was Nintendo wasn't aiming this at core gamers or musicians.  This was for casuals.  It had a limited scope and was aimed at a very specific audience of which we, who had designed our own very cool Wii Music in our minds, were not part of.

Wii Music also suffered from very unfortunate release timing.  At E3 it received the most attention and core gamers were PISSED.  You would figure this was a PR goof on Nintendo's part.  Gamers pay attention to E3, casuals don't.  So it doesn't make sense to give a casual game so much attention.  But that Christmas Nintendo had NOTHING ELSE.  THAT was the problem.  We expected some big game for Christmas and this was IT.  And it wasn't for us in the first place.  So from a gamer perspecitve Nintendo, and thus the Wii itself, really had nothing for Christmas at all and that did not go over well.  Nintendo also had Animal Crossing but that was pretty much NPC Animal Crossing, not enough of a new game to appease gamers who already had the Cube or DS version.  Was that Nintendo not really "getting" their audience?  I think it might be just that they knew they had nothing for that Christmas so they pushed hard whatever they did have.

Wii Party doesn't interest me at all and it recently came out.  Nintendo is probably hoping it's a big Christmas seller with the casual market like they hoped for Wii Music.  It is of no concern to me because I have DKC this Christmas.  Core gamers have something to look forward to so Wii Party's release is largely irrelevant.  Wii Music needed its DKC.  That year the Wii needed its DKC.

Wii Music reminds me a lot of Luigi's Mansion.  That is not a bad game but it is a pretty short shallow game.  It's a good rental.  The problem was it was the flagship launch game on the Gamecube and in that role it was inadequate.  So the game got a lot of flack.  It isn't so much the game that was the problem it was a weak Gamecube launch lineup.  Wii Music wasn't the problem, the lack of a big Christmas title was.  Wii Music became the symbol of a disappointing E3 and a disappointing Christmas season for the Wii.  And then you combine that with the fantasy game we all invented in our heads and how Nintendo intentionally did not make Wii Music that game and it was just a perfect storm of backlash.

[Mop it up]

It's a shame everyone seems to overlook Wario Land Shake It!, which released close enough to holiday 2008 to be a part of it. That game was amazing.

[Stratos]

Yeah, Wario Land was that season's DKC I would argue.

[TJ Spyke]

This game sold 2.65 million copies. If that's a flop, so is all but eight of the games released on the PS3.

Maybe Choze meant compared to other games in the "Wii ..." series, all of which sold better (except Wii Chess, but that was only released as a retail game in Europe, as a WiiWare game in Japan, and not at all in North America yet). As you pointed out though, in overall terms it can not be considered a flop unless you want to consider 99% of all PlayStation 3 games to be flops.

[Chozo Ghost]

I meant it was a critical flop.

The game may have sold millions of copies, but it was a first party Nintendo game created by the legendary Miyamoto himself. There was no excuse for it to have been as mediocre as it was. But like I said, the Wiimote makes a terrible musical instrument, and Nintendo had no problems creating and bundling plastic shell peripherals for other games (the Zapper, Wii Wheel, etc.) so Wii Music should have had something like that bundled in with it. The game should also have been more like Mario Paint's music thing, where you have more options to play around with and you would be allowed to compose your own music. That's what Wii Music should have been, and with Miyamoto directly involved we all expected the best but it didn't happen.

[Stratos]

It was a flop in Nintendo's eyes. They put a ton of marketing behind the game that Christmas and it still only pushed that many units.

[Mop it up]

I'd like to see an article where Nintendo claims the game was a flop. As far as I know, they never expected it to sell anywhere near the amount of Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Miyamoto was quoted as saying the game wouldn't be an immediate hit, Nintendo recognized it'd be a hard game to sell, and Cammie Dunaway said they expected it to be an evergreen title that would go on to sell on par with the Brain Age game on the Wii (which sold 2.26 million). I think the game performed how they expected, and people just say it was a flop or failure because that's what they want it to be.

As for the game being mediocre, I think people just say that it's mediocre because it isn't what they wanted. The few critics who gave the game high marks seemed to understand the game's appeal. It's understandable to be disappointed in the game though, because its limited scope means it didn't live up to its potential, but Miyamoto never intended it to be that game.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

It's not like Wii Sports was about being career athletes. An extraordinary KILLER APP where you play as You or Mii.

[Guitar Smasher]

I'd like to see an article where Nintendo claims the game was a flop. As far as I know, they never expected it to sell anywhere near the amount of Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Miyamoto was quoted as saying the game wouldn't be an immediate hit, Nintendo recognized it'd be a hard game to sell, and Cammie Dunaway said they expected it to be an evergreen title that would go on to sell on par with the Brain Age game on the Wii (which sold 2.26 million). I think the game performed how they expected, and people just say it was a flop or failure because that's what they want it to be.

I don't know what Nintendo's true expectations for the game were, but for sure it was a missed opportunity.  It was the holiday title that fit the 'nontraditional game' category that was supposed to follow the trend of million-selling evergreen phenomena.  If Nintendo only thought of it as a modest title, then it should have been replaced by a bigger title, and saved for use as filler during a slow period.