They should do like Marvel did with their "Max" imprint.
Have mature games under an explicitly stated banner. Make it clear its for adults only.
Have mature games under an explicitly stated banner. Make it clear its for adults only.
They used to do that on the spines of Gamecube games (little coloured triangle at the bottom had different colours depending on the age brackets), but now that the ESRB's ratings are prominently displayed on the game boxes there's really no point.They should do like Marvel did with their "Max" imprint. Have mature games under an explicitly stated banner. Make it clear its for adults only.
Uhm... that's just making things more complicated for the developers, don't you think? If anything, they should release a basic bundle for casual gamers and a more advanced one for the more hardcore crowd, kind of how the Xbox 360 Pro/Elite versus Xbox 360 Core/Arcade worked. Wii U Basic and Wii U Premium were made with a similar thought in mind, except the system has pitiful amount of storage either way so it was pretty much pointless. Now, it the Wii U Basic had 32GB built-in storage and the Wii U Premium had that plus a hard drive bay (NOT USB HDD compatibility), we'd have a whole different situation on our hands.
I think that if they released one system gimped and made explicitly for kids and another one that's far more capable, the smart shopper would always go for the better, more all-encompassing version - that's the problem those low-cost versions of consoles always face.While I do agree that they tried that with the WiiU, it's one machine trying to cater to all, but it's not working (clearly, as sales have shown). And to keep it simple for developers, just treat them as two completely different systems that don't play eachother's games. Simple as that. Nintendo would just need two separate dev teams, or just rely on hiring 3rd party support for the "gamer" machine, and keep the Nintendo devs for the "family" machine.
In other words, they've never made an M game themselves, only published some games on terms unfavourable for the actual developers. I'm sure Eternal Darkness 2 and Geist 2 are on their way to the Wii U (not).
With a coat of paint and some story-telling, Zelda could easily be a more mature audience driven game (IMO). I would also love to seem some of their 30 some dead IPs that died with the SNES come back as adult games.I think they are. The Metroid Prime series is pretty good and relatively mature-oriented, they could create more series like that. The problem with Nintendo is that it's giving away the aura of a magical toy maker, a company that makes products for kids. They'd have to invest big time and "waste" a generation supporting third parties and mature audiences before this image would change and I don't think they want to go that route.
Microsoft should fund a console that Sony creates the specs for and Nintendo produces. That would be the best use of all their abilities. Microsoft with the money, Sony, with the design and Nintendo with the production since their stuff never breaks. Microsoft should also handle the online since PlayStation Network is down way too much and Nintendo doesn't really care about online much.
That would be the greatest thing that could happen in games right now.
Yeah, but there would be competition. It would be competition amongst themselves for consumer dollars. Console vs. PC, console vs. mobile, console vs. movies, etc.
Yeah, there would be some lazy companies but most would see the opportunity before them. Suddenly, games that sell 2-3 million on Xbox and 2-3 million on PlayStation could play with each other.
I'm willing to bet that most game companies would make better games because the competition would be so big that they would have to, or they'd get left behind.
The "no competition" thing is nothing but a boogeyman people throw out there because they look at it the wrong way. Look at TV shows, you don't need a special TV to watch certain shows. You don't need a special DVD or Blu-Ray player to watch certain movies. Look at sports. There's no competition for the NFL, NBA, etc and they do well.
It's true that some companies would fall by the wayside, but it would be their own fault.
When you open the floodgates like this, and it becomes a free-for-all, the consumer wins. The oligopoly you speak of is a result of 1 company being in charge. In this scenario, at least 3 companies are in charge. You could even add bigger companies like Activision, EA, Ubisoft, and anyone else to this "board of directors", if you will. They would be like the owners in the sports leagues I mentioned before. The way to make this work is to focus the competition among the publishers.
Will this ever happen? No. Should it? Heck yeah.
I don't think you people understand. If you think Nintendo's "kiddy image" is dragging them down, you're wrong. Nintendo doesn't make "mature" games (which I guess means more blood, sex, and violence?). That's not the company they are. That's like saying, "Hey, what if Chef Boyardee started making televisions?". Nintendo is dragged down by the lack of mature interest, okay, fine, but that doesn't mean Nintendo abandons what they've done so well for the past 30 years and cater to the 20+ year old men who bitch about Zelda not having enough guns and blood.
It would only work like that if any company could make a console that those games to be played on. That's not how it would work, though, as I'm sure those three companies will patent anything they can. I'm not saying the oligopoly would be the game publishers, instead it would be the creators of the platform. They could make the console as expensive as they wanted as well as the licensing fees for putting games on the platform, as the only competition for the platform would be PC. Now if Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony just became publishers and games were made just for an open platform like PC, it would probably be closer to what you were talking about.
Well, it wouldn't have to be an open platform, just one with many heads. Essentially each of the companies would be a member of the board of directors. That's why I mentioned Ubisoft, Activision, EA, etc. also being on this board. The easiest way to think about is like the NFL (or any other sports league). There's 32 owners in the NFL (I know that technically the Packers are a special case, but bear with me) each with their own vested interests, but they work together for the greater good of the league itself. They're a monopoly, although I guess college football has it's own fans, but there's no shortage of competition within the league itself. Ubisoft isn't going to start making crap games because there's only 1 platform. They would start losing money that way, because the companies would be competing with each other. It doesn't have to be an open platform (although that would be better for us gamers), it just has to be unified.
It would take tremendous foresight for any of these companies to be willing to get on board with this idea, but the benefits are almost innumerable. This applies both to the publishers and developers themselves, as well as consumers. A unified system would sell like crazy because you'd be able to play God of War, Uncharted, Halo, Gears of War, Mario, and Zelda all on one platform. It would open up these untapped audiences for these franchises as well.
Like I said, though, this will never happen so I guess I shouldn't waste my time thinking about it.