the art in making it…no not the 90 minute cinematics (MGS4 anyone?)

but I mean, how to connect the player to the virtual world, through hardware AND software

and till now only nintendo truly does that

just take a look at games like mario kart Wii, wii sports, Mario Galaxy

they all feel alive and fun while you play them.

while these so-called AAA games are just ripoffs of their old versions (GTA4) wich bring not a single new thing to the gamers

and as gamer I have to agree

I do NOT pay for hardware

I do NOT pay for software

I pay for EXPERIENCES

I bought the Wii because I saw promise in the new controller, not for the accelerometers,

but because I could only imagine what kind of games would come out besides the two I wanted back then

looking at the other consoles gave me no reason at all to want them….sure they have all these awesome looking games

but where’s the fun? 600 dollars for a ps3 is really cheap IF you use all features..

I want DAMNED games! and fun social games..
like MK Wii and SSBB

not some gay MGS4 wich will take me 50 years to finish…thanks to cinematics

sorry..
/rant

I really liked EA President’s label of them as ‘The Cult’. It fits extremely well.

I’ve noticed that 10s are, somehow, being given out much more frequently than before. Part of this is obviously insane budget next-generation games using such money to ensure such reviews (such as the GTA IV reviews). I do think part of it is the hardcore reaction to the paradigm shift. The more cinematic a game is, the more lavish they will praise it. The more ‘new gen’ a game is, the more they will scorn it. Each and every Wii killer hit was despised by the hardcore. The more hardcore despise a game, the more likely it will succeed.

You bring up an interesting point about Kotaku. If I was running a gaming blog/site, I would interpret the Wii explosion as an opportunity to expand my business. After all, new gamers means new opportunities to serve them. But their reaction is, instead, to attack and belittle these new gamers. They are hardcore first, journalists second.

@Ginny

Kotaku’s Crecente is in Japan. All the points the ‘analyst’ gave are so identical to upstreaming that it reads like a direct response to ‘Birdman’. The jargon of ‘gateway drugs’ is a dead-giveaway.

Every now and then, I play “Google Malstrom” to see people’s reactions and what has spread. “Birdman” keeps spreading and spreading. I also keep getting new emails from people reading it for the first time. You know something has rattled someone when an analyst has to respond to the point specifically. It is like a hit piece on the article (without mentioning the article as not to spread it any further).

I never dreamed this would happen. What I find most interesting about Kotaku’s post was that they were unable to get Pachter and other well-known analysts to denounce upstreaming.

Great comment! I can feel your frustration. While I wasn’t around during the N64 and Gamecube eras, it is amazing how some people are attempting to twist facts around those systems. N64 did fairly well, especially in America. The Gamecube and the Xbox sold around the same number of systems with the difference of Gamecube being profitable and selling more evenly worldwide (meaning Nintendo could clearly bounce back from that position). However, ‘The Cult’ said Gamecube was ‘the great failure’ while Xbox was ‘the huge success’. It makes no sense. Currently, the continued cries that Wii and DS will collapse because they are ‘fads’ are also ridiculous and becoming tiresome.

There is a story I want you to read: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/next-gen-business-models-are-embarrassing-says-brennan

In the story, the ‘copycat mentality’ is shown as well that publishers look at Next Generation as ‘big ego trips’ despite the costs. Many developers are ‘hardcore’ and look at the Wii not unlike our hardore fans on the Internet do. They simply want to make games for themselves.

Publisher reluctance on the Wii is likely defined to three ways:

1) ‘Hardcore bias’. Making ‘next gen’ games is an ego trip to them.

2) To be fair, many third parties missed the boat entirely on the Wii and had their development studios geared up to make Xbox and PS3 games. Even for good Wii games, it takes at least a couple of years of development. This E3 we should be seeing the new projects.

3) Some companies are afraid of disruption. Epic will never put any games on the Wii because they are interested in selling Unreal Engine 3 which Wii cannot run.

Throughout the livelihood of the NES, third parties dragged their feet and some went so far to attack Nintendo in the courts. They did everything they could to hold out. One of these companies was Electronic Arts.

I think much of the NES history will repeat. However, this time, company heads are a little more mature than they used to be. They know they need to be ‘console agnostic’. They all want money so they will come to the Wii just as they came to the DS.

What I think we won’t see change is the press and analysts. The hardcore will begin to love the Wii, as they did the DS, once more hardcore games come out for it. The game journalists and other more elitist hardcore despise the Wii more than anything else. They believe gaming is an ‘artform’ and that Wii is going ‘backwards’. When they say ‘non-games’, they really mean ‘non-art’. This is why they call ‘Brain Age’, clearly a game, as a ‘non-game’ because it doesn’t strive to be artistic while they call MGS 4, which is full of passive cutscenes to be ‘hardcore game’ because it strives to be ‘artistic’. These elitists are more art snobs than gamers.

I think they all jumped on the ‘Casual Market’ myth because that segmented the market in their mind. The last thing they want to do is review or cover the expanded audience. ‘Casual Market’ is a way for them to segment people.

It isn’t that the hardcore do not understand upstreaming. They do. It is that it scares them to death. Upstreaming would mean that there is no segmentation in gaming, that DS and Wii are not ‘fads’, and that the entire market will be permanently changed. Hardcore are emotion driven, not fact driven. Upstreaming so challenges their bubble that, in the desire to feel good once again, will do anything, use anecdotal evidence, to getting analysts to say things they want to hear in order to ‘feel’ that all this change is just an ‘anomaly’.

I’ve learned in life that many people prefer to deny reality, if it makes them feel good, than accept the truth no matter how unpleasant to the present. Of course, by denying reality it is just kicking the pain can down the road. Eventually, reality will be faced. The longer they deny it, the more painful it will be.

Analysts have a motivation to not mention and deny disruption every chance they get. The anti-thesis of analysis (using tools to look to the past) is theory (using tools to look to the future). Christensen hammers analysts in his book because their reliance on the past means they are completely incapable of dealing with disruptive innovations. How can you analyze a market that does not yet exist?

With analysts, as with everyone, there is a variety of people. Some humble, some arrogant, some smart, some stupid. The smart ones incorporate Harvard Business School tools in their analysis. One, Urlocker, actually quit being an analyst and became an evangelist for disruption theory after witnessing the Blackberry ascent.

@Juja

You’re correct that FF5 and FF6 DS haven’t been announced yet. I goofed there. But it is pretty likely they will come.

“You don’t actually get to play Meta Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, per say, but we gave it a 10 anyway.”

Note to game blogs that “revolutionized reviews” by not using number scores: The number score wasn’t the problem.

And, how funny that MGS4, and its arrogant creator Hideo Kojima (search for his quotes on the game industry, PLEASE), are going to be the bookend for the overshooting era in gaming. He’s stuck in the CD-ROM era–70-minute cutscenes are the answer?! That such a grandiose, bloated, self-absorbed game will be the final chapter before everyone starts playing video games (washing the hardcore away…), is a fitting end, methinks.

PS– MGS4 also had no discernable effect on hardware sales, just like GTA4. Kotaku’s audience isn’t growing, which must chap their ass to no end.

Once fanboys resort to “If’s” and “whyfors,” the debate is ended on account of ridiculousness. Why? Well, I can play too! “If the Nintendo 64 cost $40 and came with FFVII in every box, it would have sold 3 billion units and Sony would be banished to Mars.” They can’t even predict the real world right, so they’re gonna try their hand at parallel universes like it’s relevant.

I don’t get why upstreaming is so hard for them to understand. Seriously. It’s even innately programmed into our biologies. We start with a liquid diet from our mother’s breast (or bottle) and them “upstream” to solid foods like bread and meat. It. Is. That. Easy. What boggles my mind is how they expect people who bought the PSP or PS3 for media storage or UMD or Blu-Ray to suddenly develop an interest in games out of nowhere. So it’s impossible for people who bought Wii Play or Wii Fit to move onto more complex and demanding games, yet people who watch Blu-Ray and UMD will become such upstreaming all-stars as to watch a movie, cross-stream onto another medium, jump past the casual games, and buy FFXIII? What bullshit.

What this industry needs to do is BACK THE MARKET LEADER. It is the standard M.O., or at least it was until Wii showed up. This bitter Nintendo fan clearly remembers the days of GC and N64, where games were not even considered for the platform simply because it wasn’t the market leader. But since the Wii came out, it’s been “DURF SLURP SLORP HOW DO YA MAEK VIDYA GAYEMS?!!” from the big publishers. I’d laugh if the smaller third parties that are SHAMING THEM didn’t have to go through them to get their games published.

And upstreaming can be easily proven. Mario Kart DS is currently the best selling version of Mario Kart in the history of the series. Why is that? Higher userbase you say? And why is that? Come on, I know you know the word. Non-gamers and casuals, right? And they bought Mario Kart DS. Upstreaming. Unless you want to argue that there were a few million latent Nintendo fans who were ashamed of Mario Kart until a new console came out that was popular enough for them to not be ashamed or something.

Even tertiary titles like Mario Strikers: Charged have benefited from upstreaming. Sales are up mostly across the board for everything Nintendo’s done. It is evident, it is happening, and those in front of it will become the big cheeses in the future while the bigs stumble around like chickens with their heads cut off.