Today I realized that a lot of people I've been talking to about the difference in the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii are elitist. That's right, I'm saying elitist and I'm damn proud to shout that from the mountaintops. Let's examine the reasoning....
In my conversations with these people, their statement is usually the same: "The Wii is two Gamecubes duct taped together". Whereas the PS3 is a triumph of modern engineering. The Xbox 360 is somewhere in between.
However I recall a situation not too unlike our current one. In 1977 the
Bally Astrocade and
Atari 2600 were released. The Astrocade had much more capabilities than the Atari. Better graphics, better sound. Even the
Intellivision, released two years later, couldn't compare. The only unit that had any competitive edge was the
Colecovision, and that would be released in 1972, five years later, nearly a full cycle afterwards. But man, I wanted one.
My parents got me the Bally, and it was good. My father had been a mathematician and computer programmer since the days of punch card machines, so he knew what he was talking about when he gave me the choice between an Atari and a Bally (recommending the Bally instead). It even had BASIC and four games built into the unit itself. It's games were nearly exactly like their arcade counterparts, something not seen later until the Colecovision and afterwards the Neo Geo (yes, Gradius for the Nintendo looked exactly the same but did not sound exactly the same).
However the Bally was doomed to failure due to a variety of reasons, practically all of which stemmed from corporate mismanagement. Go ahead and do the research, I'm pretty sure I'm on the level. Regardless, the Atari was the recognized champion of the first generation of home video game systems.
I enjoyed the Atari. But seriously, if you looked and listened to it, it was awful compared to the Bally. The rubber came off the joysticks all the time, later in its lifecycle it was flooded with poorly designed and / or buggy titles, and this contributed greatly to the
crash of 1983.
But none of that mattered at first. What mattered was that it was the system widely available and it was what was in people's homes. People dug it, and they bought it. The moral of this story is you should make games for systems that people actually own.
Now there IS a difference between then and now. Yes, the Wii is a lesser system for hardware, and it has sold more than the 360 and PS3. But most of the games sold for it are first party. For some reason there is a disconnect between third party developers and Nintendo. I had high hopes for
The Conduit as I have worked a bit with
High Voltage (they did "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" for us at Midway) and they're a good developer. But unfortunately the sales of it seem to be feeding into the "don't go near the Wii if you're not Big Red".
I'm sure Nintendo would like to turn this around, but it looks like the only way to do this is to release Final Fantasy and Metal Gear on the Wii and have them rock again.
Despite this issue, it doesn't change my point. Sure the PS3 is more of a powerhouse, but we're at a stage where most players don't care about 1080p. They care about a fun game with good mechanics. Graphics programmers scoff, but there's a reason why Mario is the biggest selling franchise in history. It's not the best looking game. It's fun.
I've noticed that I had more fun gaming with PlayStation 2, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 than I have with my PlayStation 3. Games were so much fun in those days. Most developers these days are focusing on realism, but realism is boring. We live in realism, and I just think gaming is to experience something that you can't experience currently today. The only games that I have on my PlayStation 3 that have been fun are Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction and LittleBigPlanet. Don't get me wrong, I've had fun with most of the other games as well, but it lasts for like what, a week or so? 2 weeks if it has multiplayer? Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2, Killzone 2, they all focus a lot on realism, and creation is something I see lacking. I don't want realism anymore, I just want fun.
Once again, great article!
Besides, regardless of what other people say, having HD graphics do matter when you own an HDTV, I'm sorry, but the Wii just doesn't look good on one.
Mario might be the best selling franchise all time, but that's with 5 generations of hardware, not very fair to compare is it?. I guess my taste in gaming has been related to hardware evolution, I've owned most consoles since the Atari 2600 and, I've been very happy with the forward evolution every generation since.
The "fun" games that appeal more to me are not on the Wii, but I do appreciate what Nintendo does to the market (attracting more new gamers), and certainly whenever I have kids, I will get them one for them (or its equivalent).
What I don't get about this article is that it mentions that what matters most is having fun (good so far), but then it tries to make a case that the Wii is the most fun, but also contradicts itself by mentioning that it only has 1st party games that meet that criteria... Shouldn't a "good game" platform have great support from all parties? (since that would make having it the most available games).
Look, at the end, deciding which is the "best game platform" is just a matter of personal choice, nothing technical involved.
An Dang - I may be misunderstanding it, but I think that was the author's point. There are numerous reasons why developers choose a platform for a game, and believe it or not, the hardware of the platform is often not the main reason. The main reason is very often a business agreement between the platform manufacturer and the developer (i.e. MS 'encouraging' developers to build for XBox 360 to drive sales)
No offense to the writer, but the point of this post is not very apparent. He claims that proponents of 360 and PS3 are elitest, and then rambles about how games should be made for inferior hardware because people own it.
What I got out of the article, whether it was the writer's point or not, was that a large part of the joy of gaming is the social aspect - playing with friends, talking about the game with friends etc. If you're the only person around with a Bally (or in my case, an Atari 400), the game could be great, but I'll probably enjoy playing on the Colecovision more because all of my friends also have that system.
With this in mind, it's important for developers to recognize that there are many many many many more Wii out there than PS3 or 360, and that should be a factor in their decision making when choosing a platform. Instead, developers seem to think along the lines of the hardware determining the fun value of the game. They assume that the limitations of the hardware in the Wii translates into limitations on the amount of fun the player will have, which is not always true.
TL;DR - Develop more games for the Wii, so I can play and share the experience with more of my friends.
Andy, you're right in that I wasn't as clear as I should have been.
To bring the statement of elitism to a focused response, I just think that developers should not respect the PS3 exclusively because it is a better piece of hardware, and scoff at the Wii because it is inferior hardware. A lot of factors are at work, such as: how good is the dev software that enables easy manipulation of the hardware? Are there any new features of the hardware never tried before (which I think the Wii has a bit of an advantage on, because of it's unique control scheme)? Etc..