An Open Letter to Nintendo

[Kim]

Lord Setheris,

Go buy a DS. There are lots of non-sequel games that rock all that is win.

Love,
NonCon

PS: Apparently, you have a DS. Go play with it some more. It misses you.

[Jagos]

Originally Posted by Seil

Hey now - SIXAXIS works just fine. It's just the way they choose to implement it. Some games don't need it, but they put it there anyway, some games it works well with. The Wii has a lot of games that have dandy control schemes, but are total and utter crap.

There's a happy medium for both motion sensor sensorings.

Heavenly Sword was decent without it. With it, there was just a lot more frustration when fighting as the little girl going "Twang, twang"

[Mirai Gen]

Part of me agrees with you, but the other part of me remembers watching Angry Video Game Nerd's rant about NES accessories and realizing that most of them were taken from the 1980s, re-wrapped in white plastic, and sold back to us a second time.

[Jagos]

Let's also remember that Konami had a rep for this for years, which isn't a bad thing since Track and Field is still a fun game that precedes DDR by a LOOONG time. I'm still trying to find out why all sequels are bad when it does lead to newer innovations.

[Fortune Zero]

Yeah, Nintendo's not really rolling into this category worse than the other systems are. "Original" and "non-gimmicky" are both pretty subjective, mainly, and some Wii games (hello there No More Heroes) are quite a bit more original than alot of the system specialties on other systems (hello there Heavenly Sword). It all depends on what you're looking at and what you consider original.

Plus, people bitch when totally new things are done.

Remember how people bitched about Wind Waker being too different?

And then bitched about how Twilight Princess wasn't different enough...?

It's a sign of the times more than anything. I got into a conversation with my manager about that earlier today. Games are just... shitty now. In general. Games are shorter and less entertaining than they used to be. Game companies don't have to try as hard, not even the ones that have the money to do so. Wii would definitely win if there was some sort of shovelware contest--I won't argue against that--but it's weird to hear how games like Mario Galaxy and De Blob are unoriginal or gimmicky versus--I don't know--Dead Rising, Fallout 3, Fable II, Halo 3, Gears of War 2, etc., etc., etc. Not saying those games are bad, but when did the other systems start passing this magical "original and non-gimmicky" peace pipe I keep hearing about?

Everybody's got good games and everybody's got bad games. 95% of games in general aren't original, or try to pass off something specific and mildly unnecessary as innovation. I can't honestly say that the Wii's best games are less original than the 360 or PS3's best games, and I certainly can't say that the Wii has fewer quality hits than the PS3 does. 360's a different story as far as the number of quality games is concerned, but you can't really fault Nintendo for that--the 360 is damn good at what it does.

[Kim]

It was much easier to be original when you could make a game about an Italian plumber who gets bigger by eating mushrooms, spits fire by eating flowers, can fly if he eats a brown leaf, stomps on goombas and little turtles, and is trying to save a princess from some sort of turtle dragon. If it wasn't an established franchise today, and someone tried to make it, there's no way in hell it would fly.

[Fortune Zero]

Not to mention a blue hedgehog. Blue! Absolutely preposterous.

[Seil]

I took Kai's "Twing Twang" bits as really fun story intervals, and I had great fun aiming arrows in people's skulls.

I won't deny that maybe SIXAXIS is Sony's response to the motion sensors of the Wii, however, I will argues that they're different - most Wii games rely on motion sensing, while many PS3 games that use SA give you the option not to use SA. They both work in different contexts.

That being said, I guess it's not for everyone.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

I haven't used Sixaxis in 6 months and 15 games. It is not important in any way to the ps3. It is completely irrelevant in all arguments against ps3 and for the Wii, so stop whining about it.

No ps3 user cares if it's crap, because we didn't want it anyway, but now it's there, unused and we don't care, whereas the Wiis big selling point is it's motion control, which most of the time is for crap games.

Completely different markets, completely different implementation, completely different feelings towards each implementation.

[Nikose Tyris]

Dear Lord Setheris,

We're so happy to hear you're still supporting us in our projects and endeavours. It's hard to capture the magic locked into those first days of Mario, but beleive us, we are trying our best. We're quite proud of our recent success on both Super Mario Galaxy, Tales of Symphonia II, Super Smash Bros: Brawl, and numerous other games. We thank you for your steady support of our gaming platforms and handheld systems.

We never really saw it as a battle; the Playstation and Xbox both had their own niche in the gaming community to fill, and while the decreased market share did impact us, we still hold strong as the most common system- we also target a much wider audience then either the Playstation or the Xbox, in that we have games for all ages as our primary releases. We try not to rest on the laurels of the Nintendo 64 or the Nintendo Gamecube- we are truly always trying to revolutionize our systems, to bring you the most satisfaction possible.

While we are aware that there is an increase in classic game re-releases, and in sequels, we are attempting to revive the classic titles that you loved, and bring them up to date in a newer platform- many people missed out on the fun of Chrono Trigger, or the original metroid games, and we want to make available these wonderful classics for everyone. we have numerous projects that utilize the Wii's control system, but we are focusing on Online Multiplayer more. While the specialized Wii Controls are one of the features that make our system unique, we try to always include other control options, such as the classic controller.

We are doing our best to counteract the 'loss of the magic' as you so aptly put it, by bringing back classics and doing our best to 're-ignite' that old fire. Unfortunately, many games are in the hands of the developers, and not directly with us. We are merely the gaming platform that games such as Chrono Trigger are released. In fact, we do very few in-house games- same as with Sony and Microsoft. We are working on several titles for late '09, and we're projecting a fall release for said titles. Hopefully these coins of games won't be at all brick-like.

On behalf of Nintendo, and all our game developers, we encourage you to continue buying our products, and supporting gaming- but if you wish to encourage new games to be developed, you could write letters to other development teams, such as Capcom, Namco, Grin Entertainment, or another game development sponsor, and list your concerns or what you'd like to see in an upcoming game- we are all always happy to listen.

Faithfully,

Nintendo.