On Gaming or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace The Revolution. pt.2

(This is the second part of a 2 part series on gamers, the game industry, and the Nintendo Wii. If you haven't yet read the first half, you can do so right here.)

In the last installment on this topic, we discussed the new "gamer" and the potential problems for the games industry in targeting that demographic. Now let's discuss what Nintendo is doing to rectify the situation.
With the release of their newest console, the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo was taking a big chance. Their system wasn't designed to appeal to the core gaming market, risking the favor and attention of the people shown to spend money on the video game industry. Core technology-wise, the processor used in the Wii isn't much of a step up from the previous generation of game systems - it's fairly comparable with the Gamecube, Playstation 2, or regular Xbox. As such, the potential game capability is lower than that of it's current competition - more importantly the Wii simply can't handle the quality level of graphics that the other two can, and ever-increasingly "better" graphics have become one of the more important aspects in successful game sales. Even the actual games were decidedly not focused on the frat-gamer - the pseudo-shooter Red Steel was the only gamer game with even a little bit of hype around it back during the Wii launch period.
But none of those things could hold the Wii back - despite all the potential negatives, there was just too much to get excited about in the little white box. The key aspect of the Wii is obviously the new motion sensor control style. Gaming isn't just about hitting buttons anymore. You don't play Wii Baseball by hitting the 'swing' button at the right time - you get out there and swing the bat like you were really out there standing over home plate. You bowl by going through the motions you would at any bowling alley, you deliver that backhand just like you've seen Serena Williams do it to return the ball in Wii Tennis, and you stand ready in your gold posture to score that hole in one in your simulated gold game. As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, the entire Wii Sports game (which comes with the console and includes Wii Tennis, Baseball, Golf, Bowling, Boxing, and a variety of really fun training games) can be played only touched two actual buttons on the Wii Remote - a striking departure from the standard of Xbox/Xbox360/Ps2/Ps3 games typically requiring the use of at least 8 buttons as well as analogue sticks and/or directional pads. The Wii Remote has more buttons, but the idea is that it isn't about figuring about button configurations but rather just getting out there and playing. And while the sensor isn't perfect (problems vary a lot - mostly depending on the distance from and size of your television and the amount of infrared light in the room), it's pretty damn good - the remote can really detect amazingly subtle movements with fairly great accuracy. Here's the great thing about this - no longer do you have to have some familiarity with gaming to competently pick up a game and enjoy it. Can you swing a baseball bat? You can play Wii Sports! Can you hold a marble in your hand and tilt to move it around your hand? You can master Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz! Can you use your finger to point at the TV screen? You can play Red Steel or Farcry or any other shooting game on the Wii! It's really that simple. The Wii is the system made for people who don't play video games. You've probably heard these stories thrown around a lot as Wii-buzz, but there are elderly grandparents who have barely touched a computer, much less a video game, out there buying Wii systems because they had so much fun playing them with their grandchildren! The Wii isn't just new user-friendly for it's controls either - the Wii is the system most likely to appeal to new gamers because it comes in at the low price tag of $249.99 currently compared to the Xbox 360 at $349.99 for the cheap version of it's real system (you can buy a cheaper version called the Xbox 360 Core edition, but it's basically an incomplete system) and the massive price tag of $449.99 for the cheapest version of the PlayStation 3! That doesn't even take into account Nintendo's decision to keep first-party published games under $50 whereas Xbox360/PS3 first party games are averaging close to the $60 mark these days. So the choice becomes pretty clear to the potential new gamer looking for a new hobby to pass the time - either invest a lot of cash into a system that looks complicated, or spend a more manageable wad of cash on a system that seems easy to learn and has a lot of positive buzz from fellow non-gamers out there who gave it a shot. This is why Nintendo is winning the console war. Rather than go with the strategy of fighting with their rivals over the X number of people who spend money on the gaming market, they made a machine for the much larger number of people who weren't gamers already - knowing full well that the gaming scene by it's very nature would display interest in the machine no matter what they did. So the Wii sells to the gamers that support Nintendo and it's system, it sells to the new breed of casual gamers, and it still sell to a large chunk of the "hardcore" gaming community because a large chunk of that populous are multi-system owners who will consistently buy all of or at least most of the major gaming systems on the market. Nintendo does a nice little happy dance on it's way to the bank.
As fantastic as it is to draw new people to gaming (theoretically more gamers means more money into the game industry which means a stronger, better industry), that's not even the part that makes me excited about the Wii. It's that we get to experience a new sort of gaming for the first time in a long time. Games like Trauma Center, where you use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk attachment (both come with the sytesm) like surgical tools to save the lives of your patients, wouldn't exist if not for the innovations made by the Wii. Heck, even sports gaming, perhaps the absolute least innovated genre in video games, has the potential to feel fresh and new on the Wii - supposedly the Wii version of Madden's long-running and always-exactly-the-same-damn-game football series actually plays like it's something totally original! Even shooting games can really be reborn on the Wii. While I think shooting games are fun, I've long thought that they're basically just an endless chain of clones of each other. Up until now they're been basically interchangeable at least in their gameplay dynamics. But now with the Wii, we're not just facing out enemies and pushing the buttons - we're actually aiming the remote and firing at every nook and cranny on the screen like we were really there in the moment! So the Wii isn't just bringing new gamers - it's bringing a new way to game. And as a long-time gamer, I really think that's just what the industry needed.
Long live Nintendo!