Comic Con is on here in New York, and while I am not quite interested enough to attend the whole shebang, I'll definitely be hitting it up this weekend at least casually. I'll be sure and let you know what catches my eye -- to me, half the fun is hanging out with my colleagues, since so rarely do we have big New York-based events.
Meanwhile, after Nintendo's financial results came out in Japan, the company provided a transcript of a Q & A with Iwata that yielded some really interesting stuff we covered over at Gamasutra.
One thing that genuinely distinguishes Nintendo is their willingness not only to take hugely divergent risks -- but to stick with them dutifully on faith that the investment will pay off. Iwata knows, however, that some Nintendo products (arguably, its most successful products, at least) don't make a lot of sense at first. They tend to require a head-tilt and a ratcheting-open of the mind, a certain patient mulling that we've learned to accord Nintendo whenever it does something weird.
And Iwata's been talking about how it's hard for a product to spread if it doesn't make a lot of sense to the first wave of people that try it. He let on just how much Nintendo relies on sentiment -- a sort of holistic cycle of positive feelings that originate from a small group of early adopters who instinctively "get it" and then spread the love.
Iwata doesn't understand why Wii Music has not caught on (though I think most publishers would be pretty happy with 2 million-some units sold, right?), and he wants to mull it over a little more closely. He talked about how Brain Age didn't really start to sell well until the second installment, and that further investment in Wii Music (a sequel?) is necessary to figure it out.
I talked this over with some of my colleagues and our general opinion seems to be that what hurt Nintendo on Wii Music is the fact that, rather than pioneering the genre, it was late to it, having been beaten by Rock Band, basically, for the music-focused, more collaborative and less competitive experience.
Iwata doesn't seem to blame the audience for Wii Music's shaky start; rather than suggesting that the lack of comprehension is a failing on our part, he seems to be saying Nintendo ought to evaluate why their Midas formula failed with this title.
Normally, I wouldn't even bother talking about Wii Music here, since I think it's made for the demographic that would not be reading this blog. But maybe I'm wrong -- what do you guys think? Where was the chink in Nintendo's formula that time?
Also worth reading: Iwata's thoughts on the Japan-U.S. cultural divide and the DS.
14 comments:
I was actually pretty interested in Wii Music. The act of using the controllers as an air-violin sounded really fun, to me.
However, I read on a lot of different reviews that the selection of music to play just wasn't there, and that it's a game you can get bored with rather quickly.
That was enough to divert my attention elsewhere.
I'm not so much sure that the reason lies with Nintendo coming late to the music game party. Rock Band and Guitar Hero don't have much of a presence in Japan, and even Wii Music's Japanese sales are fairly sluggish.
That said, I'm not sure what is keeping Wii Music down. Maybe it's more the sense of Wii Music as a toy rather from a game. It has collaboration, but not really measurable collaboration (ie point scores a la GH/RB). Perhaps it requires less skill so that there's less of a feeling of accomplishment.
It'd be my guess, at least. Maybe that was conveyed in the reviews and subsequent word of mouth.
I read a blog a while back, and it actually romanticized the game for me to the point of I almost actually considering buying it (despite me not typically playing music games in anyway).
It looks like to me that people just compare all the music games by default and Wii music suffers because of it (whether it deserves it is arguable). Not necessarily that it's late to the party, but it's at the wrong party...with nowhere else to really go.
~sLs~
I think it boils down to Wii Music not being very good. You never feel like you're playing music, you feel like there's music playing and you're waving your controllers around to peel away the silence and reveal the song in the background.
I've never played it or even thought about playing it...so, maybe that answers your question?
I haven't played with my Wii in a long time....ugh. Why did they have to name it that?
After I heard of Wii Music I understood where the Wii was going to and it remembered me of a PC. Why a PC? When I was young, the first PC I got was for "study". You could also play games or mess-up in Paint and that was because the PC was able to do all that. And that's how I see the Wii. It is a console, you can play games, but you can make so much more with it. Just like the DS became you personal trainer, the Wii really is the tool of the future we always imagined. In Back to the Future, the children laughed at the concept of having to use "your hands". Technology didn't go that fast but at least we are not bound to buttons (so much) anymore. So, instead of only focusing in games, why don't they try something more interactive? And there you have: WiiFit and WiiMusic. Has Wii Music failed... ? I doubt so. I think it will hit sooner or later. I mean, it’s already being used in education ( http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/g4kroj8bE-AOnuxW_CB57mVL4RHA55YI ). I love the innovation the Wii has brought. But to tell the truth, right now the only game I want to play is Mario Galaxy. Should I blame Nintendo? I don't think so. They can't do everything from the console (Wii) to the interactive software (WiiFit) and also the classic games (Mario Galaxy). If I blame someone for the lack of games on the Wii is the third parties. It seems to me that the greed is keeping them from experimenting something interesting on the Wii. But I hope that same greed make them experiment later. To tell the truth... I don't know what the third parties think. When Konami said that they would make a Castlevania but they weren't going to make you use the whip with the WiiMote it sounded ridiculous to me. I mean, you can't have accurate feedback from a Sword in a game because sometimes the sword and your WiiMote won't be in sync (when your Sword in the Game hits something, it recoils; your WiiMote doesn't). But the Whip was the perfect weapon to be used in a game, since the handgrip of the whip can always be synchronized with your WiiMote. But instead, Konami made a fighting game that I hope I never play... Well... at least here comes Muramasa, Fragile and Mad World... I have some hope, maybe I will get a Wii after all.
I blame reviewers - a majority of whom are from the hardcore gamer scene. I've read quite a few reviews from northern europe where the reviewer makes fun of the product for not being competitive. The idea of creative play doesn't ring well with someone raised on competitive play. Making postrock versions of the super mario song never gets old. But it's not for everyone.
But then there's the shelf presence. Wii music, as a christmas gift, doesn't have the latest pop songs or tired old rock songs and doesn't come with a huge interface, the guitar hero instruments take up huge space. And wii music is definitely a late comer fighting an uphill battle, it might need some really popular songs to even get a chance to show off it's awesomeness.
Nintendo dropped the ball on Wii music for several reasons. First, people want to pay things like guitar and drums; they don’t want to play things like the flute. Yes, there are some people who would be prepared to play another instrument than guitar or drums but the market has shown that this is a minority. Second, the music selection is not what many people would consider fun and half of the reason to purchase a music game is to play the music. Third, among the people I know who have played this game (and admittedly my sample size is small) never got over the feeling that the game is playing you and you are not playing a game – even in the improvisation mode. Finally while the plastic instruments add cost to the other music games and they add to the clutter, it gives the user a feeling that they are playing something, and in marketing terms this adds much more value to games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Many people watching other play with a plastic guitar saw it as a gimmick, but playing one never seemed to feel like a gimmick because it brought you into the game. Playing with the Wiimote never got over the gimmick.
Is Nintendo responsible for the failure of Wii Music, absolutely and on two levels. It is apparent that they did little market research on the topic to determine if their customers would even enjoy the concept. This led to a flurry of horrible reviews and more importantly a legion of people who bought the game and determined that the only reason it was released was because Nintendo thinks that people will buy everything with their name on it now. In the end the game is a fiasco and has tarnished the Nintendo name. If they continue on this route then they should go back to the drawing board.
And for selling 2.5 million worldwide being a failure? It could be in a sense, it may win for making some money but did it start a franchise? I don’t see how it has. How many people bought Wii Music and felt like they got their money’s worth or would buy another of the same product (and arguably this should be asked of Wii Fit). More importantly, how will the “failure” of these products affect the Wii?
just one thing bugs me about it....more mii-like characters that prevent me from taking any of these games seriously.
Nintendo's big failure in marketing the game is that everybody still thinks Wii Music and Rock Band are the least bit similar. They're not. Put simply, Wii Music was marketing wrong, on two levels.
The first level is that consumers did not understand the product (because Nintendo failed to help them do it). I don't think it's true at all that Rock Band "beat" Nintendo to the punch, because consumers should never have compared it to Rock Band in the first place. It's a very different product to Rock Band (Wii Music is not a game, whereas Rock Band is) and Nintendo failed to make that clear. It should have been marketed in the same way that Jam Sessions, Wii Fit and Brain Age are marketed, not as games, but more as tools or accessories. It should've been something that sold at half the price it did and was never treated as a "AAA game", because that just leads to misconceptions about it being a competitor to Rock Band. It should've had a byline like "Learn to Harmonize!" or "Arrange music YOUR way!" or something to that effect and emphasized that this was not a "game" about following music, ala Guitar Hero, but rather a tool for you to see what you can do to a song on your own.
The second marketing error is that I don't think they knew who their audience was when they made Wii Music. It's too musical for the average Guitar Hero player, who is more interested in playing a game rather than actual arrangement of music, and too limited for actual musicians to use as a creative tool. The audience who are left can be summed up as people who enjoy the creative process of music but lack the skills/knowledge to do it in any other way.
Where Activision and Harmonix offer real music, Nintendo offer midi samples. I can see Nintendo thought there may be a gap in the market for a non-threatening, more accessible music title for the "Wii generation" of new gamers, it looks to offer little more thrills than those baby toys with bright coloured buttons that make funny noises.
The E3 presser looked like a bad joke, the adverts look like a bad joke, and Nintendo's wide-eyed enthusiasm as they try to promote it looks like a bad joke. Meanwhile, faithful Nintendophiles who keep hoping for real gamers games look on slack-jawed in horror.
However, the Ravi Drums mash-ups on youtube make the whole thing worthwhile for me.
I must have some kind of defective taste, because I love the sound of MIDI. Maybe it's because I grew up on SNES-era game music, but I often prefer MIDI to more sophisticated techniques - including recorded orchestral performances. I still think FFVI has the best game music of all time, and I feel like game music has become far less memorable since the original Playstation came out.
So, anyway, what I mean to say is, why do people hate MIDI so much?
Wii Music does not have the engagement of RB or GH, since it does not «make» you a Rock star.
The success of all those music titles (Singstar and the like) it the fact that you BECOME someone else.
In Wii Music, you become some childishly animated persona doing elevator music...
I could see 2.5 million units sold being a failure when the Wii user base is much, much larger than that. The number in its own right sounds impressive, but as a percentage penetration into the Wii-user market it's pretty small.
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