E3 2011 Nintendo Set up

Nintendo Set up E3 2011

GamerMatchup.com

Date: 5/20/2011, Nintendo 3 2011

Well Nintendo, it’s been rumored, hinted at, and mentioned my Mr. Miyamoto himself, and frankly, it’s about time for your successor to the console that made ‘waggle’ a socially acceptable word. The new Nintendo console is going to be announced to the teeming masses in a couple short weeks. Instead of wildly speculating about this console like every other media outlet has been, I’m simply posing a wish list, as well as a few time honored lessons you really should have learned over the years.

Learned Lessons:

While lucrative, releasing a new edition of a console in a variety of colors every couple years when sales start dipping is wrong. You’ve done this with every console, both television based and hand held, since the Game Boy. Why not give your loyal fans a choice of colors to choose from up front, like the rainbow of pokemon titles that are currently out?

For the love of God, make your online play simpler. I have an advanced degree studying video games and trying to navigate the friend codes and make friends makes me feel like I’m continually shoving a square peg into a round hole.

I distinctly remember a Nintendo rep. saying that in 2005 or 2006 that he did not see the advantage of marketing an online gaming system. Now the Wii is the only console on the market that does not offer online play for the majority of people. Sure, it’s available for select games; but you need to figure out your system friend code as well as your individual game friend code, then trade both these items with anyone you hope to game with more than once, all without having the capacity to actually speak to one another. It’s one of the more confusing things I’ve come across and should be done away with altogether and reworked from the ground up. I don’t condone ‘paying homage to’ (which should be read stealing) the two more successful online systems, but at least take a few hints from either or both.

Stop alienating Third Party Developers; you need them. As evidenced with the Wii, the first party games and support were unmatched. Nintendo knows how to make Nintendo games for Nintendo systems. I love Mario and Link and Samus (even after her latest escapade), I really do, but these three cannot carry a system alone. Let Rare make you Donkey Kong and Killer Instinct games, give someone else Metroid so Team Ninja doesn’t continue making Samus a simpering whiny girl and reinvent her as the badass bounty hunter she is. Bring back some adult gamers who have spent way too long with the other two consoles, we’re eager to return.

Create more user friendly controllers. The trident N64 controller and dust-collecting Wii ‘classic controller’ are perfect examples of how NOT to do controllers. Even the Gamecube controller made more sense, and was the best to date Nintendo has had to offer gamers. The Wii-mote and nunchuck were not bad, I suspect they were the best possible that could be done in regards to capturing motion. Sony didn’t copy pay homage to this design for no reason.

Don’t make gamers buy so many peripherals to adequately play your games; this pisses us off. I understand that technology advances almost hourly, but give us a system good enough to stand on its own for a number of years, at least until your newest one comes out. There are things your competitors have done right with that; the 360 and PS3 (aside from getting hacked constantly) have stood up to these advances stalwartly for more years than the Wii and have just started to show their age. If you are going to release a more ‘retro’ controller to play certain titles on your system, support that controller when games need it. Don’t make me put in a game and flash a black screen with ‘Please connect your Classic Controller now’ only to plug it in again and have it not be recognized. This pisses us off too. Luckily you gave us backwards compatibility with the Gamecube, but that $50 isn’t going to find its way back into my pocket.

Wish List:  (I realize that a lot of these are going to sound repetitious, and that’s fine, because they are.)

Make the Wii2 or Project Café or Stream or whatever your next console is going to be called an HD console. This race has almost run its course, and you best get into it before Microsoft and Sony have won. It might even be advantageous to make this one 3D compatible as well as HD, as that’s where technology is flying towards. Much in the same vein, give us a DVD player. Better yet, give us a Blu-Ray player. While we appreciate your attempt to save us money by leaving it out of the Wii, we’re all addicted to media. If you try to make us go to more than once place for all our media needs, we’ll stick with the ones that offer everything without having to take more effort.

Give us a controller that makes sense. If you want to include your 6 inch touch screen that’s been rumored, that’s fine, but give us something similar to the layout of the GBA, not some atrocity with a misplaced analog stick or D-pad sticking out at an awkward angle. Tell your design guys to stop being idiots and take an honest look at your past controllers, or take their drugs away.

Don’t get rid of motion gaming. While it is something casual gamers make a lot more use of than hardcore gamers, you can have it both ways. Give us the hardcore games with your silly Dreamcast-esque pad for the hardcore games, and keep the Wii-mote around for hula-hooping and dancing. There is a market for more than one type of game on a console, that’s why Microsoft’s 360 is so successful; it has the mature titles (Gears of War 3, Call of Duty, etc) for those big kid gamers, and younger games (Kinectimals, Mini Ninjas, etc) for the actual kids.

Take your risks, but think them out before hand. You went balls out with the Wii and it paid off for a long time this generation. When you released the Virtual Boy, this was not the case. Debuting Reggie Fils-Aime a few years back as the face of Nintendo USA was brilliant. Trying to jump on the ‘make everything smaller’ bandwagon with the Gameboy Micro didn’t work out so well. Use focus groups or market research to hash out your ideas, movie studios use them for a reason.

Give us an online system that anyone can figure out, with actual chat capabilities. The system friend code was not a horrible idea, the individual game friend code was, as was not giving us the option to actually speak to those we game with. As much as I like creating four stock insults to use in place of taunting, its so much more satisfying when they can hear your voice. Whenever I used to try and play online with the Wii, I had the chat enabled on my 360 simultaneously. There should be no reason for this. As has been stated, forcing us to go multiple places for our media will make us shy away from your less than all inclusive system.

So, Nintendo, maybe you’ve already considered some or all of these things and maybe I’ll be dumbfounded at just how amazing your new console is. The flipside could also be true, it could be lacking coherent online play and have double the amount of friend codes needed to play. I hope the former is true, as the fan boy in me would really not enjoy seeing Nintendo go the way of Sega. Only time will tell how the console will stack up, and fortunately for me; that time is soon approaching.