I didn't disagree at all, I only explained what my metrics for calling them "gimmicks" instead of "features" were. In that case, I claimed how I find that something that is not as well optimized/established as another system, I consider a gimmick.
Shower Thoughts About Nintendo's Paradigm Shift
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Of course I didn't mean any disrespect. I am aware of the traditional aspects of the society, but it is also true that while just saying "low-tech" may be an overstatement the fact of the matter is that the technology they use in official matters is very old-school.
For my opinion Nintendo have make some time mistake.. Before Wii , Nintendo have the powerfull console , but for strange reason can make a new idea with old hw . I try to adjust time line
Gcmote instead wiimote, wiiu instead Wii ( wiiu its a littlebit more powerful of ps360). Same situation for nin games, for sure lot of today 3ds games its born for Wii etc... Idk if I have explain my opinions...
Gcmote instead wiimote, wiiu instead Wii ( wiiu its a littlebit more powerful of ps360). Same situation for nin games, for sure lot of today 3ds games its born for Wii etc... Idk if I have explain my opinions...
But if it does appeal to the buyers it pays off handsomely. Their previous two gimmicks-slash-revolutionary-concepts (depending on who you ask) were hugely successful.
To be fair, it didn't seem like that much of a gamble in the first place. A second, touch sensitive screen has proved popular on the DS, and there were games that used it to good effect. It didn't seem like some new and experimental invention, it was already tried and tested. And outside the screen the console had a standard dual analog control scheme available, so that should have appeased the part of the public that had demanded it on the Wii, and what is more it was something to fall back on, they didn't force the developer and players to use the screen. So there was nothing really new or risky about the concept itself.
What brought the WiiU down wasn't any gimmick, it was the fact it was underpowered and had next to zero 3rd party support.
I get nintendo thought of combining the gimmick and the buttons for the WiiU, since that was a big complaint from the core audience that the Wiimote was underwhelming on that front. However, I think this served as a double-edged weapon. I heard several intances of casual consumers, or their families, who would previously enjoy using the wiimote for its simplicity, but could not really find the appeal of the gamepad, infact they were turned off by it, the same way they would be turned off by a standard controller. Here I'm talking about people who literally have never played a videogame before, of course. Who were those that made the Wii huge in the first place.
As for the risky part of the controller, you forget the pricepoint, which is always important. The WiiU ended up costing nearly as much as a PS4 despite not being nearly powerful enough to have its games. That's gotta be largely attributed to the gamepad cost.
Another factor is that motion controls were actually new in 2006, whereas everyone and their mother has a real tablet or a touch smartphone which has a inifnitely higher price/performance ratio and features than the wiiu gamepad. It just cannot have the same effect on people. Yet another point is that the WiiU's specific setup could allow for some UNIQUE 3-versus-one local multiplayer games (where one player controls something that cannot be seen by the other 3), like a dungeonmaster type of game. Where are those games? Why isn't nintendo making them? What's really the point of having the tablet if all it's gonna have is basic touch controls applied to a standard game? You can play plenty local strategy games, card games, roleplaying games, dungeonmaster games, social games, using existing tablet apps.
At the end of the day, nintendo has released an underisable product for either "stereotype" of consumers. Those few of us who own a WiiU are almost exclusively those who want to exclusively play core nintendo games. We would have done the same with or without the gamepad. It's not like people bought a WiiU because they were attracted by the controller first, then maybe discovered the games later, like it happened on the Wii.
And this is an example of investing on risky features which ended up alienating both sides. Anything you add that is not needed, is still detrimental because the cost has to come from somewhere, either making a trade-off with something you wanted, or increasing the price to add something you didn't need in the first place.
The 3DS has a very similar problem of trading abysmal internal resolution for 3D, which is way worse a trade-off than the WiiU tablet if you ask me, however handhelds+smartphones are not nearly as homogenized, so multiplatforms are not as important as they are for home systems, so it didn't matter in the end.
The thing is manufacturing a system is not as simple as making a game. You can make 15 games per generation, so you can allow yourself to be more risky with them. Making a console is a huge cost, which generally is designed to be recouped in 2-5 years of its lifetime. If you get it wrong, you're pretty much forced to keep going with that one for the entire generation because you've invested way too much on it, the best choice is almost always to keep selling it and hope you turn even at the end of the generation, in case it's not doing well.
So, slapping in a random thing for the sake of having to try to be different is not advisable, for an 8-years-lasting machine, in my opinion. I think nintendo didn't have a rational plan for the WiiU. Motion controls were new, 3D on a videogame is new - wether they would work out or not, at least there is a purpose behind them - bringing the novelty to attract different people. Nothing the WiiU tablet could ever hope to do because the thing is neither new nor technically competitive to other tablets.
People keep bringing up 3rd party support, but has Nintendo really had much after the snes? I believe they lost most of it during the n64 era when they stubbornly stuck with a cartridge based system, although the manufacturing costs of cartridges did prevent a lot of cheap crap from invading their system.
Not true.
Nothing requires 1080p 60 FPS, either, but that doesn't mean it can't enhance the experience.
Off-TV play is not the only feature of the tablet; it's actually quite a minor feature.
Touch controls and buttons can be used for very different things. In Okami, a button is not gonna control the celestial brush, but touch controls make perfect sense.
Except that the GBA did bring functionality that was otherwise impossible. In 4-swords adventure, it allowed players to go off into separate areas and be able to continue playing on their own screen. In Pacman Vs., it allowed for asymmetric gameplay (as we have seen a lot more of with the Wii U with Nintendoland) where three players control ghosts with a limited view of the map on the TV while another plays as Pacman on the GBA with a full view of the map as if they were playing the arcade game. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory added the ability to monitor your sticky cams from the GBA while you continued playing on the 'cube. These all brought added value you would not get without the connectivity.
Skyward Sword's motion controls proved to be not a gimmick. The 1:1 sword play was excellent, and motion controls for aiming and shooting a bow and arrow was precise and immersive. I'll gladly state that them forcing motion controls into Twilight Princess was gimmicky as the game was built around button-based controls and then they tacked on the motion controls with the release of the Wii, but Skyward Sword was built from the ground up around the motion controls and pulled it off brilliantly.
As Veho said, it's only a gimmick if you personally don't like it. Apparently you don't like any of what Nintendo's done (though I am curious as to how much you've actually used these things you label as gimmicks)
so you buy a pad heavy game and are outraged about it using mainly the pad? and that theres not much to do for the second player in kirbys rainbow course?
buy them mario kart or super mario 3d world then
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With all that happened with the Sony online hack, Cell processor, and Microsoft YLOD, What would be the fate of Nintendo if they ever got out of this hole? For one company, they got out of the hole quick, while the other took some time to get the money back. If Nintendo were to ever get out this hole, It would take a few years (Possibly longer than Sony) just because Nintendo isn't mainstream with their ideas. For once, they didn't promote the "Hey, we got everything you need this year" Idea like the other two, which makes it hard as hell to fix. For the second reason, we know Nintendo isn't leaving their fans back, and I know they don't want to make mature games. It's clash after clash with Nintendo, yeah sure make all this money, but stay in the past, and we'll see what happens. I don't even think is it to late for Nintendo is the question, It's more like is Nintendo Benjamin Button? Nintendo stay going backwards.
1:1 swordplay? That's only what Link's animations showed you, actual hitboxes registered only in 3 angles (vertical, horizontal, 45°) because the Wii plus cannot infact handle "1:1 swordplay", not even close. The motion controls are so hilariously gimmicky to the point where fighting enemies become a puzzle game in itself where you have to use one of the three to damage them, and any other type of swing you make, will get approximated and registered into one of the aforementioned 3.
Also, I needed to do the quick re-calibration every single time I needed to use a pointer-based item after a sword fight (bow, etc), as the pointer would spazz into impossible directions, possibly getting messed up due to the previous motion mechanics. Which was in NO WAY immersive for me.
SS sword swinging does not infact need motion controls at all, you could have 3 swing buttons replacing the sword motion controls and the game would function exactly the same.
if by "3 angles", you mean "9 angles": 0 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 135 degrees, 180 degrees, 225 degrees, 270 degrees, 315 degrees, and forward thrust. I don't know what kind of calibration issues you experienced after a fight, but the worst I ever had was that I just had to press a button to re-center the pointer.
You also conveniently left out all the games that made use of the gameboy connectivity and gamepad that I mentioned would have been impossible otherwise.
I left out everything except the SS bit. Yes, the angles go in either direction, but this can (and already has, for decades) be assigned to a directional modifier. So if you press the hypothetical diagonal swing button, you either press left or right to determine the direction. Which, by the way, I doubt even matters in SS; I think everything in the game registers either swing entrypoint direction, so it sees 45° the exact same as 225° (talking about the real collisions here, not the fraudulent link animations). If, in some RARE cases, this matters and I forgot about it, you could use the directional input to combo the swing direction as mentioned anyway.
And yes, I had to use the re-calibration button+pointing the wiimote in the correct "reset" direction, except I had to use it every time I used items after any sword swing. Which was damn frequently, so it ended up doing more harm than good. If I were given the option to manually aim, I'd have taken it. The non-sword related everything in SS was forced down your throat as far as motion controls went. The game reportedly had wild calibration issues for different users; having the nifty auto-calibration feature is not good enough when you have to do that thing every 10 seconds anyway.
As for the other games you mentioned:
- four sword didn't ALLOW you to go into different zones thanks to the gba connectivity. The developers arbitrarily imposed the limitation that the main screen would not be dynamically split. They made it a "mandatory feature" by their own choice.
- I played Chaos Theory on PC, so I don't know exactly how the cam implementation worked, all I'm reading is reports that the port of the game is overall worse (for reasons other than the gba connectivity), and the information on the GBA is frustrating to read, making it pointless. I don't believe I missed the best version of the game, but I never tried it myself.
- The pac-man example is valid, even though I don't know about the game itself, your description looks like it actually has a reason to use the feature. How many games have competitive asimmetry like that on the GC, though? Just that one? That being said, this is still different than the WiiU case; my main complaint on the WiiU front is that the gamepad was included as the default controller, not that these features exist. The GBA connectivity is an external purchase, like it should be. You rarely would use it, and so it makes sense to not include it into the GC package. Imagine if the GameCube included a GBA+cable because a few games used the feature in a smart way (adding to the price accordingly). And imagine if that bundle was the only option to buy the gamecube. Would you say it'd have been more or less beneficial to nintendo? I say the latter.
- I've played Okami on the PS2 only. Every single person I heard from who played both versions, said that the Wii controls is just another configuration for the game, it doesn't add neither detract anything. They are just there because the Wii did not have a proper controller (by default), so the port HAD to be different.
As for the WiiU gamepad:
It has the second display, which has been deemed "generally" detrimental by the general public, because watching two screens at once that are far apart is frustrating to people (as opposed to the jointed DS/3DS screens), or, like in recent examples, it takes you away from the more beautiful 1080p display on the TV (kirby).
It has touch controls, which I only view as a flavor gimmick that gets implemented just because they are there; I am convinced every game that gets designed today can do away with the touch controls and do something else for the same effect. The only exceptions would be games that completely revolve around them, like say, trauma center. Where are those games? All I've played on the system is optional menu-clicking or minor assist mechanics (rayman) that aren't core to the experience in the first place. I haven't played one WiiU game whose touch controls were actually required. Kirby is universally considered a game that would have been better off on the 3DS, otherwise that would have counted.
It has Amiibo-related tech inside. Well, that one is probably the most useless feature of them all so far; it will never do anything of value to the games themselves, except being figurine-buying bait. Anything that comes from a figurine, could come from the base game itself in the first place, it's just an excuse to make people buy the figurines. Don't care, this is objectively a gimmick.
Anything the WiiU gamepad can do that I am missing? Other than the low-quality yellowish screen, the fact that you cannot recharge it by plugging it on the console for some ungodly reason, and the 3 hours battery life (the deadly combo, these last two), all it does is sucking additional power from the main system (which itself is slightly underpowered), and this is why I think will never be properly exploited with most titles. Also, again, it pumped up the price of the system for optional/secondary features.
Anything can enhance the experience, but whereas 3D is entirely optional and does not directly affect how games are designed, system specs do, and it's always a direct improvement having every game running at 60fps against 30. Any game, even a turn based RPG. Any game directly benefits from better stability. You don't "optionally" turn off a higher fps count or higher internal resolution, it's something you'd always want if you had access to it. People do turn off 3D, therefore, it's less useful and effecient to improve the quality of games. The problem is that everything costs money to implement, and so it's just more efficient to have better specs over a visual filter. That doesn't mean the 3D is USELESS, just that it's nowhere as useful as what the 3DS could have had instead.
Also, the 3DS specs (mostly the resolution) forced a lot of its titles to adopt "chibi" visuals. This is evident with the port/remake of atelier, for example. (It's not a matter of them being better or worse aesthetics, it's about being pressured to use a specific style because the system is too underpowered to render anything else as effectively, which ultimately brings less to the table in terms of variety)
I believe it's actually true; anything out up until now could be changed to fit another existing control scheme and maintain the core experience intact. The fact that developers worked on limited control schemes doesn't retroactively make a game "require" the related feature in terms of enhancing gameplay - it just means the devs had no other choice but only include that one control scheme. The first time this would not be the case is proably VR, we'll see how that one develops.
It depended on the enemy you were fighting. The Stalfos would defend entry points, so when it was defending at the top and the right, a vertical swing from bottom to top or a horizontal swing from left to right would hit, but a vertical swing top to bottom or horizontal swing right to left would be blocked. Every angle was unique, but that is not to say there weren't many hitboxes that cared not about the entry point.
I have heard that some people experienced worse calibration issues than others. I'm curious what controller you were using. Was it a Wiimote+, a Wiimote with Motion+, or was it 3rd party? I used the official Skyward Sword controller and, as I mentioned, it worked pretty flawlessly for me.
Yes, I suppose split-screen could have been done.
I believe the PC and XBOX versions were a little bit different from the Gamecube/PS2 versions, although they were mostly the same. I will say the frame-rate for the sticky cam on the GBA was pretty low, but it was still a really neat feature that I'm glad I had available to me as it could really help making 100% runs on levels to see what's on the cam while you slink around. I imagine it could've been incredible with the Wii U's gamepad.
The GBA connectivity was very primitive compared to the gamepad and there was much less possible for it. Consider it to be an early test of concepts later brought to full realization with the gamepad. Combined with the fact that developers had no guarantee that Gamecube owners were also GBA owners and GC<->GBA connectivity cable owners, there's not going to be much development for it. It was important that the Wii U include the gamepad because that was an integral part of their vision for the system, and it is a guarantee to developers that every Wii U owner has the gamepad and they can develop their games safe in that knowledge. As a result, the Wii U has more of these games with the concept of asymmetric gameplay, as well as games making use of a secondary screen.
I won't lie, I had my own disagreements with the Wii's controls for Okami. The problem I had was that they shoe-horned in waggle controls for combat much in the same way it was done for Twilight Princess. But when it comes to the Celestial Brush, I can't imagine how anyone would prefer a joystick over IR or touchscreen controls.
I have not played the new Kirby, but I can certainly see where the complaint comes from. I can see building a game around touch controls for the Wii U not being the best idea, but I think they can add nicely as a secondary thing if something like Okami were to come along, or to create waypoints on a map, select an item without a pause menu, and various other secondary tasks. It could also be useful in more of a touchpad kind of way with swiping motions where you are not required to focus on the screen itself.
Yeah, amiibos are a bit of a gimmick, but I can't lie, I like 'em. I'm a bit of a whore for some collectibles.
It also has built-in motion and position tracking. Combined with the screen on the controller, it allows you to look around in 3D space. Star Fox will be making use of this feature having the TV display a 3rd person camera while the gamepad will be a cockpit view that allows you to look around.
Yes, games do benefit from stability. Why do they not benefit from having true stereoscopic depth so you can place in-game objects in a 3D space as you would in the real world?
I don't see how chibi visuals are forced by the hardware. Monster Hunter 4 seemed to manage just fine without going Chibi (although I now kinda want to see what that would look like)
There is no way that Skyward Sword would maintain it's core experience without the motion controls. They may be able to cobble something together to make it playable, but the experience greatly altered and lose its primary appeal. Wii bowling with a regular controller? I think not. Nintendoland without the gamepad? Not happening.
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As I said in another thread. Nintendo apparently saw the lack of success of the N64 and GameCube as a failure, so with the Wii they decided to take a different direction (no I'm not referring to the motion controls, I seem to be part of a minority who wish for more/better Wii Remote implimentation).
The Wii, which came out around a time when Project 64 and YouTube were hitting the mainstream, was a lot more successful but as a Wii owner myself, I was disappointed that the games were substantially worse than the GameCube games I watched on YouTube and N64 games I played on emulator.
Now the Wii U is continuing the Wii's style of games and it is not selling as well. While people are demanding digital N64 and GC releases and even complaining about the digital Wii releases.
I was an early adopter of the Wii U as pre release info said Nintendo would be trying to recapture it's core audience, sadly they are still only targeting the same audience they targeted with the Wii. Myself and other Wii U owners find ourselves using the Wii U almost exclusively to bitch about the current state of gaming on Miiverse.
It is apparent that I'm not the only one who bought a Wii after seeing how terrific it's predecessors were and then being disappointed with Nintendo's change of direction on the Wii.
Meanwhile, instead of listening to fan demand, Iwata and Miyamoto are playing the blame game.
If today's social networks existed in the late 90s no doubt the N64 and GameCube would be a lot more successful as people would be more aware of them before the end of their life cycle.
Additionally, a lot of 3rd parties who neglect the Wii U do so because traditionally, Nintendo owners were few and only aware of the first party games. However, nowadays with Miiverse, every time a game comes out on a Nintendo system it gets a new Miiverse community and everyone becomes aware of it and new communities often stay on the front page of the communities list for at least a month. By ignoring this fact 3rd parties are missing a great opportunity to sell a game on a console where everyone is instantly aware of new releases and for a while.
Oh and don't get me started on how much thought goes into Oceania localization (hint: an imported US console works better in Oceania than an Australian console)
The Wii, which came out around a time when Project 64 and YouTube were hitting the mainstream, was a lot more successful but as a Wii owner myself, I was disappointed that the games were substantially worse than the GameCube games I watched on YouTube and N64 games I played on emulator.
Now the Wii U is continuing the Wii's style of games and it is not selling as well. While people are demanding digital N64 and GC releases and even complaining about the digital Wii releases.
I was an early adopter of the Wii U as pre release info said Nintendo would be trying to recapture it's core audience, sadly they are still only targeting the same audience they targeted with the Wii. Myself and other Wii U owners find ourselves using the Wii U almost exclusively to bitch about the current state of gaming on Miiverse.
It is apparent that I'm not the only one who bought a Wii after seeing how terrific it's predecessors were and then being disappointed with Nintendo's change of direction on the Wii.
Meanwhile, instead of listening to fan demand, Iwata and Miyamoto are playing the blame game.
If today's social networks existed in the late 90s no doubt the N64 and GameCube would be a lot more successful as people would be more aware of them before the end of their life cycle.
Additionally, a lot of 3rd parties who neglect the Wii U do so because traditionally, Nintendo owners were few and only aware of the first party games. However, nowadays with Miiverse, every time a game comes out on a Nintendo system it gets a new Miiverse community and everyone becomes aware of it and new communities often stay on the front page of the communities list for at least a month. By ignoring this fact 3rd parties are missing a great opportunity to sell a game on a console where everyone is instantly aware of new releases and for a while.
Oh and don't get me started on how much thought goes into Oceania localization (hint: an imported US console works better in Oceania than an Australian console)
Don't get me wrong, I love Nintendo and will buy every console they put out. Hoping that the next one is as badass as the Super Nintendo. However, I think I would rather just have them open up their entire catalog and give me one hell of an emulation machine. Save everyone some time ; ) Oh, and let your purchases carry over to new systems without having to pay an additional charge.
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I had the old Wiimote coming with the system, purchased around 2007; I then bought the official Wii Motion Plus addon when SS came out.
But this is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you make developers statistically more prone to design their games around a feature; on the other hand, you know the vast majority of third party devs won't still use them well, while the price goes up for everybody. I think the best compromise is still to have it optional, so only developers who GENUINELY had an amazing vision would implement it; perhaps make a bundle to include the accessory, like capcom did with MHtri back on the Wii.
Ironically enough this looks like the most profitable part of the controller for nintendo, and I bet the majority doesn't even purchase them to use with the controller. Perhaps that is why it worked well in the first place.
Oh, right, starfox. Perhaps the game will contribute to changing my view on the usefulness of the WiiU gimmicks.
You mean like the puzzle that was sometimes used in 3D Land's special rooms, where activating the 3D would "reveal" that a platform of blocks is actually blocks placed at different heights? That's everything I've experienced on 3DS that "affected" game design, and even then, that situation itself was mostly visual because you could just check yourself by moving around without penalty. It was more of a 5 seconds "woah cool" moment, it didn't really impact gameplay at all. People said ALBW used smart 3D, but I never turned it on and breezed through the game without a single issue, so I believe that one also kept it visual. Perhaps 3D allows for amazing games, but it's not games we're seeing. Which is my general complaint with the gimmicks. You need developers exploiting them to the fullest for them to be impactful.
Also, 3D effectively doubles the amount of rendering. That is A HUGE tradeoff for just stereoscopic depth, no matter what system it's on. So unless you have a multitude of games revolving around it, I'll take rendering double the amount over it.
MH on 3DS looks considerably worse than, say, fantasy life, despite the latter being dramatically less demanding on the graphical side of things. Chibi is an aesthetic that is more efficient when you have tiny space to work with, the same way giant-headed cartoonish characters was the preferred way to stylize things in the NES/SNES era. It worked better at delivering a stylized concept because there was no room for actual details. Visuals, too, are generally always influenced by hardware. People don't give hardware specs the credit they deserve - they actively determine many elements besides pure graphical prowess.
True about Wii sports and nintendoland, but I'd like to have dozens and dozens of titles like those, on a system that makes space for those features. Having a couple games that showcase them is not enough to justify designing your system around them, IMO.
As for SS, I don't agree at all. There are games with directional swings and hitboxes (severance, rune, dark messiah), in those you can even freely move while swinging, controlling both your positioning and your aim. You can easily dedicate 3-4 swing buttons for all the required "puzzle-like" enemies, and controlling every other pointing item with the standard analog. I don't think the core experience of SS is motion controlled swordfighting, because as I mentioned it was heavily approximated in the first place. Sure, it was cool being given the illusion to control your swings manually, up until you realized the game dilutes them into 4(times two, for the directions) valid swings total.
I think that, for what SS tried to deliver, you really need first-person view if you want to make a precise motion-controlled swordsman game. And then you also need to not approximate the swings at all. If you miss by one degree, you should miss by one degree (or have a different result than what you would have had otherwise). Otherwise what's the point.
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