This week, Joshua Hyles from LoadingReality.com explains why Nintendo will never be able to break into the hardcore market with their current system, the Wii. Wii Shout is a weekly column by LR.
From Horse Armor to Mass Layoffs: The Price of Greed in Gaming. Inside the decades-long war on game workers and the players who defend them.
maybe a real enemy is people who use terms like "the real enemy"
there can be more than 1 bad thing, t's not like a kids show with 1 big bad
This is very much a “dummy who volunteers themselves to the middle” comment.
The real enemy is a common phrase, people use it all the time.
Calm down.
You don't seem calm at all. Don't take this so seriously, you seem desperate responding to others defending your opinion that lacks any value or critical thought.
stop projecting
i'm not desperately dong anything, i'm tapping at keys on my keyboard bud
DEI was never the problem and it was an ignorant take to begin with.
DEI is why games like Kena Bridge of Spirits, South of Midnight, and Ghost of Tsushima exist.
DEI is why we have a huge resurgence in Japanese, Chineses, and Korean developers producing games like Stellar Blade, Black Myth, and why Nintendo & Sony exist.
DEI is why more and more games have HUGE accessibility options with both Sony and MS fully behind this.
DEI was never a bad thing, the entire purpose of DEI is representation of all people, genders, disabilities, etc…
The problem was people used DEI as a default derogatory term to describe what they believed was forced representation, which allowed colorist, racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, and xenophobic fools to run away with the negative DEI narrative.
Executives seem to often have an obsession with perpetual revenue growth. There is always a finite amount of consumers for a product regardless of growth. Additionally, over investment is another serious issue in gaming.
The fact that they also rarely have any real expertise in game development compounds things. They'll look at what's been successful elsewhere, lack the knowledge to properly understand why they have been successful and then force a team to 'reproduce' their badly interpreted idea of that success.
We see it so often with sequels to games that were successful too. The team are left well alone, they have a break through hit and all of sudden the money men descend on the IP and completely railroad the dev team's ideas. Usually winds up being 'make the same game but MORE'
This is true throughout all of the corporate and public sector organisations to be honest. CEO's generally move amongst the corporate world without any need to have experience of a particular industry, they simply need to rely on their senior leadership credentials. A CEO of a retail giant will just as easily transition to a CEO role in the energy sector for example.
Not defending CEOs here to be clear, I think it's a huge part of the reason the western world is so fucked up. CEOs don't need to care about the sector they work in, in fact it's better if they don't care if they want to screw everyone to make profits.
Companies don’t hire executives to break even. If the goal is breaking even then why start the company in the first place.
That's understood; it's getting record profits and expecting to always beat those record profits, and seeing anything less as a total failure. Then they lay people off and raise prices to reach those record profit levels again, just to sate shareholders. It's setting expectations way too high just to spike share prices, then inevitably falling short. It's feeling entitled to being more successful than everyone else. It's the CEOs doing all this to boost their own bonuses.
Growth benefits the company’s profits and therefore the company’s stock if publicly traded, which pleases the shareholders making them more and more rich, which is why Growth is always at the forefront of the vast majority of any publicly traded company.
More growth = More Money and the people at the top want all the money they can get. I can’t really blame them anyone would love to see their profits go from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, to multi-millions it’s almost like a gambling addiction.
But it also goes to show someone how morals can go out the window for a lot of these people, and how amazing some CEOs are when they catch this early and provide a balance solution that takes complete care of their employees across the board while keeping the business sustainable IE: Insomniac Games ALWAYS on the best places to work list. The rest of the industry could learn.
honestly, the "real" enemy of gaming, is ourselves
if nobody bought horse armor, shitty dlc would have died almost overnight
if we stood firm and nobody bought games from companies that were bad with layoffs, it would be solved
we're the idiots supporting awful business practices, we are the ones enouraging it
I think the reality that we don't want to convince ourselves of is that without the rise of "horse armor" and DLC, game budgets would have essentially stagnated (smaller teams/smaller games), or game prices would have risen much more dramatically than they have. There was an incessant drive for bigger worlds, infinite detail, and hundreds of hours of "gameplay" over the last two decades, that while perhaps a natural evolution of things, needed a suitable funding stream to accomplish.
What...CEOs make tens of millions and that doesnt include SLT etc etc...we now have multiple editions of games, in game currency, MT's, battle passes.....and what do we get..worse game than what was coming out 20 years ago....dont drink the cool aid, its this nickel and dime crap that is absolutely leading us to gaming destruction.
This is the worst possible answer to this conundrum. Blaming the masses is blaming the only people who are constantly “told” to buy.
Consumers are the only ones not to blame here. People make their own choices all the time. Disney movies are bombing and DEInis being blamed. Has that been enough to put Disney out of business? No and it never will.
Disagree. Businesses are able to do what they do because people are bad consumers and don't think critically about purchases. Disney got away with doing shit stuff for years and it's just the last year where people got tired of it. It's not like it didn't work for 5 years or so for Disney to do the things they've done. They'll just move onto another way to get people to see movies and it will be just as bad but more profitable until people wake up and realize it.
Consumerism drives business behavior. It's not so much "blaming" as it is observing behavior. The point I'm making is that the direction that games have gone are driven by the spending. Consumers are spending on DLC and they are driving the expectation of more glitz and padded out (lengthier) games. If they continue to pay, they will continue to drive that direction until a threshold is reached that forces a change in behavior.
Corporate advertising is the most powerful force on the planet.
This is N4G for god sake, every day there are arguments between people who are Team Xbox and Team PlayStation because they’ve been convinced that having an identity built on paying money to Sony and Microsoft matters more than having one as individual gamers who can play whatever they want.
And THEN we get to the corporate advertising part: to play whatever you want is to sink MORE into the advertising pits, making it so that you can more than one specific product.
ah you're right
they were told to buy it, it's clearly impossible to avoid that
if enough people stopped supporting, it would stop
disney not stopping would only be because enough people didn't stop
Agreed. I’ve been saying for years, announce you won’t be buying the upcoming game because of the practices of the previous game, then you only have to stick to your guns once, see how quickly things change for the better.
We have to unite in what we shouldn’t purchase.
just imagine a world, fifa came out worse, nobody buys the next one until they see proof it's better and stick to it
or games being forced online for single player and nobody buys it
things would change so fast
Greed and greedy people have and always will be the main issue for everything wrong in the world. Everything is a product to be exploited for monetary gain. Even when there are things that could help progress us along for the sake of making our lives easier that thing must be exploited for monetary gains. Anything that tells you otherwise is propaganda to make you complicit.
I've never thought "DEI" (although the way most people use it doesn't match it's real definition) is the problem with games. Good games have continued to be good when they have a diverse cast, and likewise, bad games have continued to be bad. There isn't a credible example I've seen where a diverse cast has been the direct cause of a game being bad.
Matt Miller: "Every subscription to Game Informer now raises funds for St. Jude. We want you to know what that means."
I subscribed to this not knowing about how some of the proceeds go to St. Judes.
Really cool that some of the money goes there.
Even if people don't subscribe to the mag, it might bring people to the charity.
One of the main charities my wife and I donate to. They help a lot of children and being a parent of 5 children I can’t imagine what those parents go through. I’ll probably get a sub to GI because of St Jude and of course because I love video games.
Celebrate the Super Star Wars SNES trilogy anniversary—1992 to 1994 classics that redefined retro Star Wars gaming with iconic levels, bosses, and chaos.
Really, it always makes my day to go to the zoo and laugh at all the people who think they know what they are talking about, but they don't. It's kinda like watching a fish that jumps onto dry land, thinking it can breath out of the water. Let's break this down, shall we?
First off, he starts off with the holiday season. Okay...well, for the sake of his argument you would have to ignore the rest of 2008 (and admittedly slow year for us Wii owners) otherwise it wouldn't make any sense, right? Actually, that first argument doesn't even make any sense, since I think out of the games he mentioned, Animal Crossing was the only Nintendo holiday release. If he's going to mentioned Wii Fit and Mario Kart, he might as well mentioned Super Smash Bros. since Mario Kart only came out a month afterwards. Oh, but wait, that would ruin his whole "not a single one of them rated T" bullcrap. Sorry, when you're trying to make a point, casually omitting certain facts to prove your point is not how it works.
He goes on to say that Nintendo will try to break into the hardcore market with games like Madworld, House of the Dead, and Dead Rising. A couple of fallacies with that claim. The first one is that Nintendo isn't making any of those games or really even publishing any of them. And you know what? Nintendo didn't go up to them and say "make some hardcore games for us kthx!" In interviews for Madworld, the lead developer said the Wii was chosen because the controls made a game with a new experience, in fact, the people behind The Conduit said the same thing, and Suda51 said the same thing about No More Heroes. Secondly, going back to his first paragraph-like monstrosity, he instantly clumps anything less than a T rating as "not hardcore". Excuse me, but that's also not how it works. Super Mario Galaxy is hard after you get passed the first 60 stars. Warioland's extra challenges are near impossible, and Fire Emblem is not a game any one not familiar with gaming can jump right into. Heck, even Animal Crossing is not a game worth the money if you don't dedicate the time to playing it, since it works in real time.
It would be nice to think that Nintendo has forgotten about the hardcore crowd...but since they are bringing back Sin and Punishment and a new Zelda and Mario confirmed, it's kind of hard to go with that statement.
Lastly, to answer this guy's last statement where they have better be more announcements for Wii stuff, they already have. The rock you're living under might be causing your internet connection to be slow, because there are a ton of games already announced that has Wii owners excited. Of course, it might also help if you take your hands off your ears and stop chanting "the wii is not hardcore lalalalalala the wii is not hardcore lalalala I can't hear you lalalalala"
Well said Xander.
Away from the whole idea of "hardcore" and "casual" all together. It reminds me of the marketing scheme Sega used against Nintendo back in the day with attempting to stigmatize their then competitor as the "Kiddy" system. I understand the distinction trying to be made but, I feel its just a bunch of politicos trying to get the ruler out.
But anyway, I feel Xander did make a valid argument (on both posts) I see alot of fans of other consoles, cheifly the PS3, get pist off when an xbox fan tries to say PS3 doesn't have any games worth owning besides mgs4, or vice cersa for ps3 fans to say xbox is nothing but a shooter console. Then turn around and make such outlandish claims about the Wii. Its a tired merry-go-round as far as I'm concerned.
I've said this since the Wii became a smash hit, it is following the same trend as the DS. The same phrases and arguments were being said about that system as well. Now I doubt anyone is still calling the DS a fad or a handheld that doesn't have any "hardcore" userbase. At least not if they're sane. And DS has a library with games like brain training and Nintendogs.
I don't believe the statement that Wii will never attract the hardcore gamer. See in my perspective, the truly "hardcore" gamer follows the games, not the systems themselves. Sony is learning this the hard way this gen. Nintendo learned this two gens ago.
The financial climate has exposed the broken business model of HD gaming. Many of these companies will be looking at the Wii for salvation (for lack of a better word). There are consequences for ignoring the marketleader. And don't give the tired attitude of "graphics and horsepower" if that were true the psp would be wiping the floor with the DS, and console gaming would have been way past destroyed by the PC gaming world by now.