One of the things I mentioned in the previous article was Shigeru Miyamoto’s influence within Nintendo. I told that it would be interesting to see an antagonist of Miyamoto working within Nintendo. About two weeks after I had written that I read that Nintendo had teamed up with Masahiro Sakurai, the designer of Kirby and the well-known Super Smash Bros. series. But that wasn’t exactly what captured my interest. No, what I found interesting were this quotes by Nintendo’s CEO, Satoru Iwata:

“The thoughts of game designer Masahiro Sakurai and Nintendo have become one, and a new project has started. In order to expand what can be offered to the world through games, we will have Nintendo’s full cooperation and make something that Nintendo could not do on its own.”

“From our perspective, it’s not something that overlaps oddly with something that would come from Nintendo or those close to Nintendo. It’s something that can be made because Nintendo is backing you up, but is also something that Nintendo could not make.”

“If one were simply considering effective use of funding, we’d have went with a plan similar to Touch Generations. But that’s not I wanted. We want to make something that will be wanted even by the more hardcore game players, and something that offers new ideas.”

Link (Andriasang.com)

These quotes don’t gaurantee success, but it’s clear that Nintendo is willing to look at the new ideas. The reason for this can be found in another recent publication. Apparently Nintendo has hired a company to figure out how to sell more games to Wii owners. Wii owners aren’t buying any games; they’re just playing Wii Sports. This seems to be in line with an earlier statement from Sega that the Wii is “the most expensive board game on Earth” (link). So, in that light Project Sora isn’t a complete surprise.

According to Nintendo, Project Sora is bound to bring new ideas in the gaming world. What these ideas are nobody really knows, but I’m silently hoping that it will influence gaming as an art. Gaming went mainstream thanks to Nintendo’s efforts with the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. It’s unfortunate to see people still consider games as a toy. Luckily it is no longer a toy only for children. But as many gamers know games are more than just toys. Myself I consider gaming as an artistic platform. It brings together visuals, music, narrative and interaction together in a very interesting way. Besides that games are also very suited for more serious applications such as education and simulation

It’s unlikely, though, that Nintendo is going to tackle this issue alone. Nintendo might not even be the “right” company to deal with the problem. Some of the most interesting games have come from the smallest developers. But it should be clear that this isn’t really only Nintendo’s problem. This is an issue that is of interest to everyone in the industry. If we want to push gaming as the big next platform, then it’s time to work together on this. And then we can hopefully finally speak of gamers as everyone would use it.

As things stand now, we’re facing one big problem in the game industry. It are not the casual gamers and neither the hardcore gamers. No, the real problem is the segmentation between these two groups. There were no casuals or hardcores in the past; there were only gamers. These terms came with the advent of the Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo always intended to make games for everyone. This doesn’t mean, though, that Nintendo is going to make games in all genres. No, Nintendo tries to make games that appeal to everyone. But the question is whether casual games (Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Music, etc.) really appeal to everyone. If I’ve to name a game series that, in my opinion, really appeals to everyone it would be Super Mario series. Wherever I go, I always happen to find people who are enjoying a Super Mario game. And this are both casuals and hardcores.

What we should realize is that the Nintendo Wii is a product largely based upon marketing. Without it’s marketing the Nintendo Wii wouldn’t have been where it’s now. Unfortunately that marketing doesn’t include hardcore gamers. That’s not very strange, though. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of Nintendo’s PR-people. And surprise, surprise… They were complaining about people asking them questions about Pokémon, a game which they didn’t know. That’s very strange as Pokémon is quite popular. I guess it’s just another job for them.

It’s worth mentioning that Nintendo gave the Nintendo DS a completely different marketing treatment at the beginning. As a result there is much better balance between casual and hardcore games on the Nintendo DS.

The lack of hardcore marketing is unfortunate as Nintendo has some excellent first-party teams (Intelligent Systems, Monolith Soft, etc.). It’s really too bad as these teams make great games. A good example is Disaster: Day of Crisis. Normally, I don’t buy games like this, but it was really refreshing. But compared to Wii Music it hardly got any attention. This is really a shame as the game is really nice for hardcores. Besides that the game had the potential to show casual gamers why we’ve been playing games for years. Disaster: Day of Crisis was quite accessible and at the same time it offered a very in-depth experience. Rumors about Nintendo alleged alienation of the hardcore gamer started to resurface during the marketing campaign of Wii Music. Although, I don’t believe Nintendo wanted this happen. Nintendo is known for promoting the work of their in-door genius, Shigeru Miyamoto. It’s was simply bad timing.

I’m a bit skeptical about Miyamoto’s influence within Nintendo. To be honest, I consider it as an potential danger. Don’t get me wrong, Miyamoto is a great person. He has made some of the greatest games and I hope he’ll continue to do that. But nowadays he seems to be involved in most of Nintendo’s project. The problem with this is that Nintendo can get locked into a mindframe, Miyamoto’s mindframe. And this makes the path towards innovation harder. Other peoples ideas get less chance than any of Miyamoto’s ideas. It would be interesting to see an antagonist of Miyamoto working within Nintendo.

But it looks we don’t have to expect hardcore games from Nintendo. Instead, Nintendo’s former nemesis, Sega, is going to test the water for hardcore games. It wants to fight the image of the Nintendo Wii. This bold move attracted the attention of other developers/publishers. It’s clear that if Sega succeeds, more third-party core games will follow. And that’s exactly what I hope for. It would take care of the imbalance between casual and hardcore games on the Nintendo Wii. And that will be really needed if we ever want to unify casuals and hardcores.

I also would like to mention Sony and Microsoft. You might not like their games, but you can’t deny their influence. Both have done good and bad things, just as Nintendo did. To be honest, sometimes I agree either with Sony or Microsoft than Nintendo (which tends to be conservative on some areas).

But to close this post. I hope that one day casual and hardcore gamers will disappear and that gamers will reappear. It’s a bit ironically to say that as I’ve used the terms casual and hardcore myself, but I guess you can’t escape it at this point.