Dear Nintendo:
Thank you for your many years of service and being a great console company. Although I don't quite remember when you hit America with the Nintendo Entertainment System, but it was a great piece of work and a true savior to the American video game industry created and destroyed by Atari. The game Super Mario Bros. is one of the true classics of an entire industry and beloved to all. You brought joy and happiness to homes nearly every Christmas.
Even when you could not own the market exclusively with the NES, you continued to hold with the Super NES against the Genesis. Even though it could not play NES games, it more than made up for it in a vastly improved control scheme and dozens of fantastic games. I'm still playing Chrono Trigger, one of the great games by "Squaresoft". You were knocked down a few notches when the PlayStation came to power, but Super Mario 64 proved to the world that 3D video games could be done. It was also ground-breaking. Two years later, you came out with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: almost universally proclaimed to be the best game ever. You came out with Pokémon, which brought great joy to me as a child.
The GameCube was not your finest hour, and by 2005, many were proclaiming the premature death of Nintendo consoles, having seen the great fall of Dreamcast a few years before.
But you persevered. You introduced the Wii.
Many mocked the name and the inferior graphics, but you were able to make into a smash hit: the innovative Wii Sports pack-in game, an approachable controller, and a reasonable price (compared to the 599 DOLLARS PlayStation 3) made it sell well. But things began to work against you: the Wii sales started to slow, software sales slumped, and your competitors were improving on your ideas. So you tried again: the "Wii U".
It was not exactly the same experience over again. The graphics were much better this time around, and the name was even goofier than its predecessors, but the Wii U is building on experience where it has none. The Wii's gimmick with its Miis is over, and rather than create a future embracing name, you chose to name it after a dying system.
Wii U has none of the things that made the Wii a runaway success: no low price point, and no truly approachable controller. Sure it looks neat, but it's unwieldy. You wanted to create a controller that could attract both casual and hardcore gamers. You will probably fail.
I could be wrong, but I have serious doubts for your future.
I have considered myself a fanboy since before I could pronounce your name correctly, but toward the end of the Wii's lifespan, that began to slip and fall. I have little confidence in your product, something I had never said before.
I did not see a single worthy game at E3 about the Wii U, something I have not seen ever at E3. The Wii had many exciting games, including Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Wii Music, Super Mario Galaxy, Project H.A.M.M.E.R, Red Steel and more. Even if they were cancelled or weren't what I expected, they were exciting enough for me to give it a second thought.
Even if Wii U is a moderate success, I will not purchase one myself. Despite that fact, I will always treasure the good times we had together.
Signed,
Pseudo3D
No comments:
Post a Comment