Oh, “Game Industry”, I love this. You are making yourself so transparent to everyone now. It is amazing seeing perfect score following perfect score and the user score be like 5. hahahaha

The reviews on the PC version are hilarious on Amazon. Average of one stars! hahahaha

What I also find interesting is how analysts and “brilliant commentators” are panting over themselves in ragged breathing over Modern Warfare 2 pre-orders and launch. I haven’t seen our friends, the analysts, this excited since… Grand Theft Auto 4. Now, you know that Mario Kart Wii outsold Grand Theft Auto 4. But none of these guys ever mentioned Mario Kart Wii. It is like Nintendo games do not exist in their constellation of analysis.

A 2d Mario game is set to release very soon on the Wii. The track record for this type of game far surpasses any game ever made with the exception of, perhaps, Wii Sports. You would think “Game Industry” analysts and ‘brilliant commentators’ would talk about it. Yet, the game doesn’t exist for them! Incredible! All they see is Modern Warfare 2!

Is there any further proof to illustrate that the people who hold the business levers of this industry are not gamers? Is there any further proof to illustrate that these businessmen are, in fact, foreigners to gaming and its ways? (What I mean by this is that they are coming from other industries and, in zombie fashion, just applying The Typical Formula to games. Now, that Typical Formula is breaking down.)

I share the anger of the PC gamers over Modern Warfare 2. Infinity Ward chose the “Industry” over gamers, and this is their just reward.

Says the viral messenger.

Be on the look out for it. Activision/Infinity Ward has had a huge reputation hit with the loss of dedicated servers. Some of the “IWnet is amazing!” people are moronic console warriors (nothing new there), but many will not be. They want the dedicated server fire to be put out as soon as possible. It is impacting sales.

This should be a lesson to anyone who is in the business of gaming. You can either stand with the gamers or stand with the industry. The gamers will win every time.

Looking back, I am suspecting one of the big reasons why the Wii came through the launch gates rocketing beyond anyone’s expectation was precisely its Anti-Industry position. On one hand, you had the Xbox 360 which was expensive and the hardware was breaking down everywhere. On the other hand, you had the brand new PS3 which cost $500-600 which the entire “Game Industry” was backing.

The Wii’s rocketing forward has to be in part due to its anti-Industry trajectory. The anti-Industry trajectory creates its own advocates. This would explain why the “Game Industry” hates the Wii so much yet the consumers love it so much (and the inverse is true for the HD Twins).

Why are game journalists so hated? For the same reason. They keep siding with the “Game Industry”. You never hear the game journalist talk about the consumer or even gaming in general. They talk about about the “industry”. “How will this affect the industry?” Bah.

No one is buying Infinity Ward’s spin that the removal of dedicated servers was for the consumers’ benefit. When consumers are screaming at you, it is best not to argue with them any further.

So those in the “Game Industry”, are you going to take the side of gamers or the side of the industry? The two are now going in different directions. One has a future. The other does not.

I will let a PC gamer have the last say on Infinity Ward.

Look! The Beta of Starcraft 2 is not coming out this year! And look! I bet the game will get delayed further!

Starcraft 2 is not a game. Starcraft 2 is a platform. Blizzard is not making a game called “Starcraft 2″. They are attempting to make a platform.

The game, Starcraft 2, is pretty much done. You’ve seen the Battle Reports. However, the platform itself is not.

Blizzard has said they want people to sell and make mods and maps. The security on that has to be tip top shape or no one is going to bother. Turning Battle.Net into this grandiose Cloud platform is what is delaying Starcraft 2.

As my new rule goes, whenever something in the news is about The Cloud or anything referencing The Cloud, I must link to this video to illustrate the absurdity of this “cloudy” thinking.

Consumers want to buy games, not be ensnared by tentacles from a platform.

Super Mario World was released in Japan in November, 1990. This is precisely 19 years ago.

19 years ago…

George Bush was President of the United States. (First Bush, not the second.)

Germany was divided in two parts…

The Berlin Wall stood…

The Soviet Union existed…

The Iraq War began (First Iraq War, not the second)

Windows 3.0 was released…

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched…

Cell Phones looked like this…

Laptops looked like this…

Pearl Jam performs their first concert…

Back to the Future III was released in theaters…

Robocop 2 was released in theaters…

Dances with Wolves was released in theaters…

Total Recall was released in theaters…

The Cosby Show was still running new episodes…

New episodes of Macguyver were airing…

New episodes of Whose the Boss? were airing…

New episodes of Doogie Howser were airing…

Jurassic Park, the book, was published…

Milli Vanilli were discovered to be lip syncing to the album that won them a Grammy Award…

Edward Scissorhands was released in theaters…

Die Hard 2 was released in theaters…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the first one) was released in theaters…

…and the first Web Page was made.

Thanks to the invention of the Web Page since the last time a real Mario game graced the home console, I would like to use it to ask Shigeru Miyamoto just two questions.

Why did it take 19 years to release a new Super Mario Brothers game for the home console?

And will it take another 19 years to see the next Super Mario Brothers game?

If the answer to the second question is “Yes”, I don’t think I’ll be alive to ask it again.

He is talking about people like me when he does that.

I wish someone would ask him if I have to wait another twenty years for a new 2d Mario game to come out once NSMB Wii comes out. I may not be alive then.

Super Bomberman

Once upon a time, games had good music. They had soul. Today, they don’t even try.

Interesting commercials. Too bad it doesn’t communicate any of the content of the game.

People are wondering whether NSMB Wii will attract new customers of those NES/SNES gamers that dropped off. The answer is that it will. I am one of them. After not buying consoles for almost a couple of decades, after seeing NSMB DS showed at E3, I went out and got a DS (actually imported a red Japanese DS with the nice black bottom. They’re quite rare now).

NSMB Wii will most definitely summon those gamers back. In fact, they likely know the game exists already. Fans of 2d Mario have always had an eye on Nintendo awaiting the day when a true Mario game would return (not that 3d star-puzzle garbage). (True story: When Super Mario Galaxy was released, many people I knew thought it would be the sequel to Super Mario World, i.e. Super Mario Brothers 5. Once they found out it was a 3d Mario game, they said, “What? Not 2d Mario? Count me out of that.” and went back playing their PC/SNES/NES/Atari systems.) I don’t think anyone realizes just how much hunger there is out there for a game like this. NSMB DS gives an indication with its 20 million sold. (NSMB Wii won’t do anywhere near that due to being more expensive and selling one game per household as opposed to a game per DS. Couples would buy two NSMB DS while now they would only buy one NSMB Wii.)

Also, consider we are speeding sorrowfully into a depression. The macro environment is nowhere what it was a few years ago.

For twenty years, people have told me that console games MUST be in 3d and MUST use all the bells and whistles. Now, we have a major Christmas tent pole release of a 2d game (that isn’t doing something wacky like User Generated Content ala Little Big Planet). This Industry mentality that all games on the home console MUST use its graphical capacity to fullest degree is about the be shattered (if not already by the Wii).

The NSMB Wii commercial, combined with the ad about Wii’s new price at the end, reminds me of this one almost two decades ago.

No bundle will ever surpass this… ever. You’ve heard of the Nintendo Action Set. The Nintendo Control Set. The Nintendo Expert Set. Well, this is the Nintendo Nirvana Set. ALL console 2d Mario made was bundled! There is so much 2d Mario here that it likely broke a state law somewhere.

Once upon a time, Nintendo knew it was 2d platforming that sold consoles. 2d platforming made NOA not go bankrupt (thanks to Donkey Kong saving it from the “hardcore” Radar Scope). 2d platforming launched the NES and SNES to the stratosphere (thanks to Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario World). Another company’s 2d platformer, Sonic the Hedgehog, was rocketing the Sega Genesis up. Nintendo responded with porting all previous 2d Mario (All-Stars) and was saved by another 2d platformer (Donkey Kong Country).

Since that time, Nintendo’s systems have only fallen in sales and the sales of Nintendo consoles became lopsided with more in a single territory (i.e. only America seems to like 3d Mario as the N64 and Gamecube installed base shows). The DS was rocketed by yet another 2d platformer, NSMB DS. With 20 million sold, those consumers cannot all be “Mario fans”. Somehow, it tapped into the Blue Ocean. But didn’t 2d Mario always tap into the Blue Ocean?

2d Mario is not a killer-app. 2d Mario is the king of killer-apps. The only equal it has would be Wii Sports.

And people wonder why Nintendo made a new 2d Mario. The real question is why did Nintendo wait so long to make a true Mario game again?

M Minus Five Days

“Business” game journalists are not any better than “game journalists” apparently. Take a look at this story.

Despite this shifting of Nintendo’s position on high definition however, Reggie Fils-Aime expressed a conflicting message during a recent interview with GTTV.

“Michael [Pachter] continues to be the only one that believes [Wii HD] is going to happen,” the NoA president told presenter Geoff Keighley.

“I don’t know how forcefully we can say that there is no Wii HD.”

Nintendo’s position has been, since before the Wii launched, that the platform cycle that began after the Gamecube was not appropriate for HD. There wasn’t enough TVs for it. Costs of it were still very high (which is why HD consoles costed so much). You will find Iwata being consistent on this point.

What Reggie is responding to is a Wii HD. That is, the Wii platform that is HD hardware. It isn’t going to happen. Ever. It would split the userbase. HD will come out for the next platform. Nintendo has no interest in splitting up the userbase of the Wii.

In the talk with investors, Nintendo execs are not referring to the Wii. They are, of course, referring to the next platform.

Iwata announced the console after the Wii would be HD. This first occurred not soon after Iwata announced that the “Revolution” would not be in HD.

Does anyone not do any research anymore in the “Game Industry”? Has everyone lost ‘reading comprehension’ lately?

This industry deserves its decline.

Once upon a time, Nintendo did make new content.

M Minus Six Days

Once upon a time, Nintendo made new worlds. It was known as the World of Nintendo which was Nintendo’s peak. This is why kids said they were not playing video games, they were playing “Nintendo”.

This video from the 80s proves it:

Yes, that is Bill O’Reilly there at the beginning and end.

Note how the video keeps saying the Nintendo players entered another world. Note the flash of “joysticks and gizmos”. Note the display of NES games where EVERY GAME WAS BRAND NEW (or a sequel to an NES game). There was once a time where games had new content instead of recycling content from previous incarnations.

Who is Mario? Why, he is us. Mario was the original Mii. It’s a shame Nintendo destroyed him with voice acting and making him a ‘citizen’ of Mushroom Land instead of the average day plumber who slips into a pipe and enters a fantasy world like Alice did a hundred years ago.