Why do you keep bashing Wii Music (and agreeably it was a bad game) when a couple of months before it’s release you had nothing but high praise for it in the article?
At the end of the article you even wrote “History will judge Wii Music favorably even if the historians don’t.”
Do you still feel that way?
I have to laugh when people have to resort to digging up posts that are years old. There was a trend then that any Expanded Audience game, from Brain Age, Wii Sports, to Wii Fit was causing the ‘hardcore gamer’ to go absolutely bonkers. I find this curious since there were three game consoles. The hardcore completely owned two consoles and on the third one, the Wii, they had ‘some’ games they liked but other parts of the library would be for gamers not like them. It was funny how 85% of all console games for the hardcore were not enough. No, it had to be 100%! Brain Age and Wii Sports were going to destroy gaming! Run!
I would defend and champion these games because no one else was. I also enjoyed playing them.
However, Wii Music ended up being a different story entirely. When I finally played the game (I rented it, thank God), I was shocked to realize there was absolutely no content in it. Nintendo changed strategy to a User Generated Content strategy. Wii Music was followed up by ‘create your own content’ software on the DS and Wii. This User Generated Content move was the worst move Nintendo made since the Virtual Boy. Not only did it kill the Wii Mania, it also didn’t help the DS. The new Wii audience lost trust in Nintendo after that.
You can tell how bad it was that Nintendo pulled the game and ceased the User Generated Content move. You do not allow amauterish content onto your console. A novelist doesn’t let amateurs write passages in his book, a composer doesn’t let a guy off the street write lines in his music, a painter doesn’t let someone who cannot draw paint a part of the painting, and a video game maker doesn’t let amateurs make the levels or gameplay of a game. This, Nintendo understood, and this move was quickly canned.
Since hindsight is 20/20, Nintendo hated the Wii and the strategy they were doing (even though it was mega successful). This is why they were so eager to do something completely different like… User Generated Content. Actually, I suspect one draw to UGC was because Sony was doing it too. I’m becoming convinced that Nintendo wishes it was Sony at times. Look how much Nintendo copies Sony. User Generated Content. Augmented Reality games. Trying to wed a game console to Hollywood. I wish Nintendo would just be Nintendo.
Anyway, to answer your email, I advocated Wii Music because I thought it was a music game. A music game could be very interesting. It was certainly different than the cookie-cutter space marine game.
Wii Music was not a music game. Wii Music was a User Generated Content game. Imagine my surprise! I assumed that ‘music’ being in the title that the game revolve around music. Instead, UGC was the heart and soul of that game (which is why it was so bad).
What was interesting is that the Industry was reluctant to attack Wii Music at the time because that meant attacking UGC. At the time in 2008, the Industry was having orgasms over UGC. Remember the hype surrounding LittleBigPlanet? What about Spore? UGC didn’t just tarnish Miyamoto, it also tarnished Will Wright. My post then was an assumption the game was something other than what it actually was.
This entire website was based on the assumption that Nintendo had realized the N64/Gamecube direction was a mistake and desired to get back to the NES/ Creating New Gamers (Old School) Era. After all, Nintendo pointed out that the modern game controller, which Nintendo invented, was insane and had to go. Hence the Wii controller. The Wii-mote being NES shaped, the VC, the Wii Sports golf courses being NES Golf based, a new 2d Mario on the DS, Miyamoto actually saying they were looking at the NES Era, all of these led me to believe Nintendo wanted to get back at what gaming is.
And I wrongly assumed that the DS and Wii massive sales success would cement that direction. I mean, what business changes strategy after such insane success?
So if you are attempting to dig out an old post or something and say, “Look at what Malstrom said then! What a fool is he!” I do admit, I was a fool. I assumed Nintendo liked the DS and Wii. I assumed they would continue that strategy in the 8th Generation. I assumed that after 2d Mario showed its massive sales power that Nintendo would prioritize it and keep making it.
I assumed all these things. At the time, these assumptions seemed based on common sense fact. Who would have thought Nintendo, after the massive success of DS and Wii, decide to totally change their strategy? I underestimated Nintendo’s 3d Obsession.
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