Need more proof that the gaming media can't stand Wii?

Filed in archive News on April 21, 2008

Image from amazon.com

Running like a speeding bullet from the blogosphere is the latest slam on Wii from a games industry hotshot, this time the villain being the president of Epic Games (note: I liked it better when they were Epic Megagames!).

I'm not so much interested in Epic's anti-Wii comments: they make super powered middleware that demands monster specifications, so they have a lot to lose if the gaming industry goes away from graphics as the primary driver of technology. So I perfectly well understand why they don't like the Wii. If I was Epic's CEO, I wouldn't either. It hurts sales.

But what was really telling was this exchange, which shows the sort of anti-Wii bias in the gaming media that is so obvious and annoying:

IGN: What do you think of the Wii and Nintendo's...

Capps: Pffffffffft...

IGN: (laughter) I know! I think the same thing! It's like, "Come on, why are you buying this system?!"

Capps: I know. I've got one.

IGN: Everybody does! Bring it out at parties and everyone's like, "Oh it's a Wii!"

Capps: Part of it's being cheap. I think it's a, I mean, so two things: first of all, great credit to them. The first time I played a videogame with my parents - aging myself a bit - was on Atari 2600. The next time I played a videogame with my parents, 25 years later or whatever, was Wii Tennis. So it's about bringing people together, families, Thanksgiving, all that. I think it's kind of like a weird virus because I have not yet found a reason to play with my Wii since then.

IGN: Exactly. For a real gaming experience...

Note how IGN.com decides to jump up and down on Nintendo as soon as Mr. Capps gives them permission to do so. This says a few interesting things to me:

1. It's pathetic and sad how this particular interviewer had to wait for permission to express his/her view. One gets the sense that if Capps said "I really like Wii," then the IGN.com guy/gal would have said:

"(laughter) I know! I think the same thing! It's like, "Come on, why do we care so much about graphics?"

Also, note the IGN snob's insistence on "a real gaming experience." Um, I own a Xbox 360 and a Wii, and I've gotten good gaming experiences on both, but to be honest, I have only gotten a "real" (if real means outstanding) "gaming experience" on Wii at this point. The 360's highpoints (for me personally) of Fight Night Round 3, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Eternal Sonata pale when compared to Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy, and certainly Super Smash Brothers Brawl (yes I am excluding big megaton 360 releases, but a man can't play everything, and that doesn't change how good those Nintendo games are).

Yet further on in the article, both of them basically write those games off as saying they would be done "better on a more powerful console."

Um, seeing as all of those games run at fast framerates and feature little or no technical glitches, I'm not so sure that's true. They all achieve, on a high level, the objective of their design, and that would be true no matter what platform it was on. In fact, the only difference that a work of genuis, such as Super Mario Galaxy, would have on an Xbox, is that

1. Slightly higher resolution graphics
2. There would be Super Mario Galaxy ads all over the Xbox 360 dashboard
3. You'd have to pay 500 points to get to play the Bee Suit because it's now "downloadable content."
4. You'd lose some of the gameplay variety due to no motion control support.
5. You'd lose the ability to have the nifty quasi-co-op mode.
6. princess peach and Rosalina would appear in Maxim, and their in-game outfits would be tiny bikinis.

So, really, at least in the case of the Xbox 360, the game would probably be appreciably worse!

Read.

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Tags: Epic Games Unreal Engine IGN.com Wii Hating on Wii nintendo gaming+media

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Response from: J.B. (04/21/08 1:46pm)

It just kind of sucks that, as people that follow the game industry, that we just understand and almost take for granted that the "media" that reports our news and impressions comes off like this at times. It's as if there is no real distinction between the "cool kids" on any given message board and the loudest voices in the professional gaming media, aside from one getting press passes and a paycheck for it. It's a little like the head anchor of a national news broadcast being chosen based on who has the highest post count on a news forum ;-) I really hope that the elimination of things like this, regardless of what company is getting slammed in what interview, is the way that the industry tends to evolve next.

Response from: Josh Baltzell (04/22/08 11:29am)

You are really underselling the 360. There have been a lot of great games on the system so far. Bioshock, Mass Effect, Fight Night, COD2, COD4, Halo 3, Orange box, Gears of War, Rock Band, Forza 2, Burnout, Puzzle Quest, Geometry Wars, N+, Rez, Catan, and Pacman CE to name a few.

There have been missteps in how to deal with digital distribution, but let's be honest. This system paved the way on consoles. Wii came later and sold us 20 year old ROMs for too much money.

Wii also botched online play by ignoring how a non-Japanese player wants to play games. With friends! With voice!

Your overall point that the gaming media dismisses most Wii titles as not "Serious" is true, but let's be honest. Most of the games on the Wii are minigame trash shoveled out to the public as fast as possible.

I own my Wii and I play it for it's strengths, but if it was my only console I would be REALLY bored.

My next game for the system is Okami. Maybe that will change my mind. Especially since I thought Zelda was boring and sort of childish. (Did I really have to retrieve a baby cradle with a bird? Then later did I really have to herd monkeys?)

Response from: Rob Howard (04/27/08 8:19am)

Well Josh, those are all excellent games, but of course I was talking about my own personal enjoyment level and experience. You obviously have your own preferences which definitely lie with the core audience.

I've played most of the games on your list, and I like them all to various degrees. I don't like how you've taken my personal experience with the two systems and my personal opinions on what games I liked the best and conveyed that to mean that I don't recognize that Wii isn't perfect. I never said that, and I've written over and over again about the issues you bring up.

Plus half of the titles you mention are downloadable small games, some of which are available on other platforms. I also have to chuckle at your inclusion of Geometry Wars, which is a game that has a vastly superior iteration on Wii!

And if you would be bored with Wii as your only console, that only means you are in fact selling its library short. Have you played every title on the system? Of course not. Just as I have done, you have made decisions based on your tastes, not all of which are going to be perfectly logical or based on a games quality. The things you mention in Zelda were hardly the major tasks in the game. They belie that you may not have given the game a fair shake, as the game does have flaws, as brilliant as it is, that I recognize but those complaints are not it. You've just decided that its aesthetic is not for you, which is fine, but is hardly a real comment on the games quality. What other games that are high quality have you dismissed on Wii due to similar concerns? Battalion Wars perhaps, or maybe Zak and Wiki?

Also, in terms of 20 year old ROMS, five dollars isn't too expensive, unless of course one is participating in the illegal downloading of those ROMS for free. I suppose then that any price is too much. If we are going to cast stones about digital pricing, why not bring up the infamous Oblivion horse armor, of the fact that Geometry Wars was supposed to be free?

Mostly, though, this blog post had little to do with underselling anything or taking a whack at another console; I've said plenty of nice things about the 360. This isn't about degrading that perfectly fine gaming platform. I could end up working on games for it.

The post was really about the video game media and its contempt for Wii, which should be obvious to anyone that reads the print magazines in particular. And I'm not talking about reviews, which are editorials, but I'm talking about the way hard news is reported in those magazines. It's silly and you can tell what platform is being rooted for by the tone of the articles.

Plus you miss another point I'm trying to make, which is the continued insistence that even Nintendo made titles like Mario Galaxy would somehow be better on another platform. Imagine the outcry if Miyamoto or Iwata-san said that Halo 3 would be better on Wii due to the motion controls. There would be riots in the streets (metaphorically)!