Yeah, so it's like Guitar Hero, only without any challenge! Every Child Gets A Trophy! I can air-guitar without a Wii. Hell, I can air-guitar in the bathroom mirror without even having any music. So the basic idea here is that people need to be told that they're winners and they're doing a good job without requiring that they put in any effort. I miss the late-80s version of Miyamoto.

Anonymous, you and, from what I see from comments on other sites, other gamers are missing something: Wii Music is not really a game. It's jam software. It's something to do with a group. The way people play together is going to define how the music sounds, how fun it is, how entertaining the motions of the avatars are as the players move their bodies, and how worthy it is to record a music video and share it with others.

It may take a few months for people to "get" it. I was pretty impressed with the possibilities. As a freeform jam tool with a wide variety of music and instruments, it's going to attract a large number of people who are intimidated by note guides and rock/metal music.

Why would I want to watch someone else's Miis dancing around?

Nobody's going to use this game for more than a week.

I agree that WiiMusic is an interesting choice for 'Jam Software', similar to Nintendo's Jam Sessions but honestly I think this is the beginning of a bad trend for Nintendo. I think they're so busy concentrating on 'casual' that they're unintentionally leaving their die-hards and others behind.

Really, from what I've seen a casual market consisting of older people and very young people will buy the system and maybe a few games, but the problem is casual markets like Nintendo is aiming for aren't consistent. This means they'll buy a system and play a little, store it, maybe pull it out later and play a small bit, store it, repeat. They run the same routine every year of 'We are hitting both the hardcore and casual markets' and for the second year in a row haven't delivered to the hardcore audience (SSMB last year was possibly the closest).

I was disappointed by Wii Fit last year and even that was a better showing than this.

Boy, you really missed the point. Wii Music enables people who are not musicians to express themselves creatively through musical perfomance. Other music games penalize you for creative expression, the raison d'etre for any musical instrument.

Except you're not going to be able to express anything creatively because you're randomly swinging your hands around. You aren't purposely creating any specific melody, you're just moving around and the game is creating it. If you want to create music purposefully, you actually need musical talent and/or training. That's why people put effort into art, because creating anything that's really your own (and isn't crap) requires practice.

WiiMusic is a great idea but I somewhat agree with Anonymous. The game seems a bit too easy and does hit just the casual market (which is not bad - Wii's had a lot of success with just the casual market). What -would- be awesome for "hitting both markets" would be a more difficult setting where playing the music was actually more like playing the music. Much harder to control, much more accuracy needed.

Music exists independent of talent with a specific instrument. What's important is the ability of any one person or group of persons to express themselves through any tool, be it an instrument or a game controller.

Does Wii Music do so? It sure does seem like it. The player clearly has control over note playing, length of note playing, and with practice, control over which notes are played, based on timing of button presses or player movements.

Is not "swinging your arms around" a way to express experimentation with music? Then, as you learn how the song goes for a particular instrument or instruments, and you learn the nuances of control, you can gain control over the song and its performance. Yes... as you practice, the music gets better.

So even though you can make good music by just "swinging your arms around", you can probably make really good music with practice, and music can be expressed in either way. So even though Anonymous is right, he or she also misunderstands the power and fabric of music.

I think the biggest problem with the video gamer mentality is that it cannot easily accept forms of interactive entertainment that do not have clear goals of winning, succeeding, or losing. I think that's why games with no clear goals create such an uproar among the video game community. What's the point of playing something where there is no winner? Where there is no measure of success? Where there is no proof of superiority over other competitors? I would reply: to simply have fun.

Just because a piece of software on a console does not have winners, losers, a specific guide or a goal for people to follow does not mean it can't be fun. People have fun doodling. People have fun tossing a ball around. People have fun running. Why can't people have fun messing around with music?

If I seem overly invested in the subject, it's because I've been waiting for something like Wii Music on modern systems. I absolutely loved making compositions with EA's Instant Music on my old Apple IIGS waaaaay back when. Instant Music was my first experience of software that was fun without being a traditional game, and it gave me a stronger appreciation of music that I previously had. Wii Music seems like a great way to recreate that kind of fun, and with friends, too.

You are not required to buy it in order to activate your Wii console, Anonymous #1, so you can skip it ;-)

At the MUD game I play, there is currently a big difference between old players and new players, where old players are several times the size of new players, making these lasts unable to compete against them. Instead of leveling everything down, the MUD is trying to level everything up, giving new players possibilities to grow faster than the old players, while at the same time giving enough challenge to old players to stay there. I think Nintendo is doing something similar: leveling everything up. What it appears to be "simple" for a gamer may actually be pretty important for a new one.

Unfortunately, Nintendo is delivering AAA hardcore gamers at a rather slow pace. While interesting and similar to Elektroplankton (or whatever its name was), they give you the tools for you to build music (at least, I hope you can create your own tunes). But it won't attract hardcore players. This is one of the things I don't understand: everyone thinks Little Big Planet will be a blockbuster success. Conceptually, it is the same as Wii Music: you create your own levels and play them...

Carlos, Interactive entertainment without challenge is inherently boring, once it runs through its initial "novelty" phase. Non-interactive entertainment, like movies or books or music, can become old or "overplayed" if there isn't enough depth to keep viewers engaged on a deeper level. Video games can contain music, movies, and...well, text, although not usually five-hundred-page novels...so video games can last longer as novelties. But ultimately, games are all about interaction, and making games which present no challenge of any sort produces inherently boring artwork. Creating stuff is fun (Spore!), but if there's nothing to DO with the cool stuff you've created, what's the point? So if it takes no effort to create great music, then you're not really creating it, the game is. If it takes lots of effort, then we're back to a "core" game, and that makes sense. But that also means that you'll create horrible-sounding dissonant garbage like what they played on stage at E3 today if you're not good at the game, and the joy of creating bad stuff wears off at light speed.

My name is Carl, not Carlos. :-)

Games which present no challenge of any sort can be fun when players create their own challenges.

"No effort" is incorrect. Since the game is using a certain way to determine the 'correct' note depending on the timing, then players can learn how to make the game play certain notes through experience. Therefore, with some effort, players can reproduce their own performances.

Consider this as an analogy: a correctly-tuned piano creates 88 specific notes. However, the addition of chords and pedals allows people to make incredibly diverse pieces of music. So, how is that truly different from software that uses a combination of set notes, plus a variance based on timing and note sustenance? If I know from experience that I can hit a C note in a certain song if I press the A button 10.2 seconds into the song, then I can reproduce that. Thus, I have created my own challenge: to learn how to best use the software to create my own interpretation of the music. Even better, since Wii Music allows a group to collaborate on such things, we can create a shared creative experience.

That said, it's pretty obvious why the Nintendo band might have sounded to Anonymous as "horrible-sounding dissonant garbage". They need to practice together more and learn how to make that song sound better. Does that not classify as a challenge?

I speak from experience. The first time I played Band Brothers on the DS with friends, the music sounded pretty bad. However, we got our timing down and the music sounded a lot better. Most importantly, we had fun learning how to play the music together.

Everyone's got a different taste in games, and music as well. However, it irks me to find that such a potential is seen in this piece of basic, unreleased software, which is one step away from a game, and two steps more away from Guitar Hero, let alone an actual instrument. In fact, hitting pots and pans in the kitchen with a spoon would offer much more interactivity, sound quality, multiplayer support and variation in sound. The only disadvantage is that you can't do that without electronic gadgets and a glowing screen in front of you to justify your activity.

I agree with Carl Chavez about the need to create your own music and not just follow famous songs. The thing I noticed when Miyamoto and friends were playing the Super Mario song was that it seemed like they were just moving they bodies and pressing buttons like they had a "playback". It doesn't appear to be a response to every button: let's say if you press A this sound comes out and if you press B this sound comes out.

Wiimusic could be something big if they make it a little bit not-for-casual-gamers and take it as an innovative way of making music. But in that case, the "reward", "the motivation to play","the thing you win", will be good music and artistic creation, so we come back to the need of having goals in videogames.