The game company I once loved has forsaken its core fan base to embrace themasses. It has forgotten those that still bought and encouraged others to buyits console and games even while Sony and Microsoft were gobbling up largechunks of market share. We stayed because we knew that one day Nintendo wouldreclaim its crown as King of the gaming industry. Nintendo has reclaimed thatcrown but things are not as we, the Nintendo fans of yore, had hoped.
Spinning back to the Summer of 2006. Nintendo crushes the competition at E3 withtheir new motion sensing controller. Videos quickly spread across the Internetof gamers waiting in long lines just to get a chance to try it. The fan basebecomes reignited with hope and excitement and in turn begins to beat the louddrums of fandom, generating massive hype around the Wii.
When we found out the hardware specifications of the Wii would pale incomparison to that of the Xbox360 and the PS3, we said that graphics alone donot make a game good. We reminded people of the joy they had while playing the2D games of the 1990s.
When we found out that the Wii could not output a HD video signal, we parrotedthe company line that only 10% of households had HD compatible televisions.
When we found out Nintendo would not allow us to easily communicate and gamewith our online friends, requiring instead that we exchange 16 digit numberswith each one of our friends to send them messages, we reminded everyone thatNintendo cares deeply about the safety of children.
When we found out that the "Wii Numbers" we had previously exchanged with ourfriends would not even allow us to play online games with them, and that eachonline game would have its own 12+ digit number that will have to be exchangedwith friends, we again reminded everyone that Nintendo cares deeply about thesafety of children.
When we found out that titles offering online play would not allow communicationwith other players whether it be text or voice, we again reminded everyone thatNintendo cares deeply about the safety of children.
When we found out that the online play in Super Smash Brothers Brawl was barelyusable due to bugs and lag, we reminded everyone how popular Nintendo was andthat the servers are probably under heavy load.
When we found out the Wii only had 512mb of internal memory in comparison to20gb+ on the other consoles we reminded everyone that there was an SD expansionslot that would allow us to increase the available memory for downloaded gamesand save files.
When we found out that the wii does not support SDHC cards (allowing for sdcards above 4gb), we reminded everyone that they can purchase multiple sd cards.
When we found out that save files and downloaded games could only be read fromthe 512mb internal memory making SD cards useless for this purpose, we remindedeveryone that they could still view photos from their SD cards.
When we found out that while the Wii could read DVD games, it could not play DVDmovies, we reminded everyone that they probably already had a DVD player andthus did not need DVD playback on the Wii.
When hordes of terrible games started to appear for the Wii, we remindedeveryone that every game console has bad games and that Nintendo at least wasstill producing quality games.
When we watched Nintendo's E3 2008 showcase, that involved games without score,without a concept of winning, without even a goal to accomplish. ShigeruMiyamoto proclaiming that children's toys are more interesting than video games.A middle aged woman talking about and showing photos from her skii vacation. Andthe utter shock and eerie quiet emitting from every core gamer, every Nintendofan in the room. What do we say? What can we say? We can remind people that E3really isn't a big deal, like it used to be. We can say that while no games wereshown that the core audience would be interested in, they did announce a newpikman.... We can say.....We can say......... I can't do this anymore. I'm donewith Nintendo. I'm done
Nintendo has pushed a Linux using, open source loving, Nintendo fan boy to buy a Microsoft console. And while I grip that elite edition, black, wireless,controller in my hands and play Halo 3 over Xbox Live with my little brother, acoworker and his friend I smile because I am remembering what its like to play on agame console that's made by people who care about its users.
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