Thinking Small to earn Big

The 3DS was supposed to be the talk of the town when it came out. It was supposed to be the next DS in terms of changing the face of gaming and drawing in new audiences. The PSVita was supposed to be the PSP on steroids and become an even bigger threat to Nintendo’s handheld market reign. Yet neither have really set a strong tone in the current generation. Who might be at fault? Nintendo? Sony? Not quite, but actually Apple.


Apple has changed the entire spectrum of the handheld gaming industry by showcasing that you can indeed have fun and provide excellent gaming on the go-------at extremely small prices. Angry Birds practically exploded but not because of the gameplay but much more because of the pricing. You practically get a full-length video game at a tiny fraction of the price of your typical DS/PSP game. Draw Something has become the latest smash and is connecting people throughout the nation (and has created some nice, nice art). While Apple has never once stated they are in the handheld gaming war, you bet your arse that their impact is still felt with 35 million IPhones sold and 12 million IPads sold in the last quarter.

Compare that to PSVita’s current sales figure: barely 2 million TOTAL since its release. This might be the last extremely profitable handheld generation in gaming. The DS sold 151 million copies, the GBA sold 81 million, and even the PSP managed a respectable 73 million. Do you honestly expect the 3DS and PSVita to reach these types of numbers? When phones, Apple products, Droids, and tablets are cranking out games just as consistent and at cheaper prices? Impossible, there’s no way. Even with the 3DS outpacing the DS’s first year in sales, there’s no way they could keep that up unless they virtually explode in software for the next five years.

Can this be fixed?

Yes, but it requires swallowing a few pride pills, and a total adjustment in strategy.

In order for these handhelds to compete and not get defeated by cheaper thrills, they need to actually provide some of the cheaper thrills themselves and then combine that with their usual flare of software. We are talking about your dollar/two-dollar games similar in style and addictiveness of Angry Birds. While Sony hasn’t had much of a history with your small fry addictive games, Nintendo has had a very underrated history with small unsung easy-to-learn games with their 1989-1991 Game Boy beginnings.


Why couldn’t Nintendo throw in $1 Tennis, Golf, Tetris, Tetris Attack, Faceball, Game and Watch games? Yes some are available in Virtual Console but if you really want to draw appeal away from the more expensive-yet-appealing Apple products, wouldn’t releasing Game Boy masterpieces at a buck sweeten the deal? Why couldn’t Nintendo also release $1 packages of extra levels for games already released like Star Fox, Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, Kid Icarus, etc.? That would strengthen the longevity of the game and the system itself.



And Sony (They are such a mess nowadays), your PSN Network already has a history of independent games, drawing into the past, and app imitations. Why haven’t you pushed for more cheap products, services, and software on your Vita? Not sure if Sony knows this, but they currently have a less than 10% share in the handheld market. Not sure Sony isn’t flipping out right now.

Lastly, both must become more connected to the social networking of the internet. Sony and Nintendo needs to connect to Myspace (Stop laughing, its still sort of alive), Twitter, and especially Facebook---which is approaching a billion profiles. Pretty much everything handheld nowadays is connected to some type of social site—it’s time the 3DS and Vita start doing the same. Apple actually (mildly secretly) allows for you to chat and text people around the world without a phone contract of any sort. Why can’t Nintendo or Sony pursue this? Despite what the handheld life used to be, nowadays handheld systems need to start behaving more like the Swiss-army knife phones and behave and function in multiple ways outside of its main purpose.

Bottom Line: While the PSVita is dying slowly and the 3DS is losing slight steam, Apple can be seen making incredible profits and applications extending throughout the phones and tablets are giving dozens of indie companies life and a way to make ripples in the technological industry. Unless Sony and Nintendo change their ways and try to imitate more of the “Cheap is Good” economic style of the sort-of competitors, then it’s going to be darn-near impossible to make a profit in the future. All it took was one month and Angry Birds Space has been downloaded 10 million times. Am I saying that Nintendo and Sony should drop their $30-$40 software in favor of $5 games? No, but they should push an effort to offer more economical prices. If handhelds not even involved with gaming are offering $1 games, why couldn’t you do the same?



Draw Something for the 3DS. It is that simple a solution.

The WiiU Should Become a WiiSNES

Argue all you want about the current quality of games, many hardcore gamers will still mention that the Super Nintendo was the greatest gaming console of all-time. It could be the nostalgia, it could be the fact that the better games in the system remain amongst the best ever made, it could be the simplicity of the content, or lastly it might be that the ratio of classic versus regular game is highest for the sophomore Nintendo machine. One thing holds true though: the Super Nintendo is the system we most refer to when talking about Nintendo’s better days. While the Wii and DS became Nintendo’s biggest moneymakers, we still don’t hold a happy candle to those systems when compared to the SNES. So could this explain the sudden glimpsing into the past Nintendo has been doing lately?

Link to the Past has been constantly linked to rumors about a sequel/prequel/remake. Super Mario 4 has been registered—which would potentially make it a sequel to Mario Bros. 3 or even Super Mario World. 2-D Metroid has been rumored on and about. Even good ol’ F-Zero has been brought up as making a comeback. While this is a longshot theory as to why this is happening, one thing remains true: if Nintendo wants to win the hardcore back it must imitate the Super Nintendo.

Super Mario World launched with the SNES, Zelda arrived around a year later, and then after a few old and new franchises sprouted about we got Metroid three years into the SNES lifespan. Lastly, several surprises graced the end of the SNES like the Donkey Kong Country sequels, Kirby Super Star and Dream Land, and of course Super Mario RPG. The WiiU should copy this lifespan down to a T. The last time a Nintendo system launched with Mario was the Nintendo 64—which some will argue was Nintendo’s last truly amazing system.

Super Mario 64 pretty much represented the Nintendo 64 and all it stood for----3-D immersive gaming full of graphical, control, and software innovations. Nintendo serious about Super Mario 4? They need to make Mario the man that will display what the WiiU is capable of---whatever that may be since we are still sorely lacking in details. Super Mario has been the go-to franchise since it never fails to bring in great numbers. The best-selling fighting, racing and platform game involves Super Mario.

We all know Zelda has seen better days, so why not deliver a massive epic 2-D Zelda adventure in Year 2 of the WiiU? It would not be too far off the launch, and would be the first console non 3-D Zelda since Link to the Past—whom most consider to still be the pinnacle of Zelda and adventure games in general. Then Metroid should also get the 2-D treatment as a throwback to Super Metroid—one of the 10 greatest games ever made.

But to win the hardcore back and imitate what the Super Nintendo delivered, Nintendo must do one thing that will alienate companies and may cause some tiffs amongst the industry: control the third-party content. The NES and SNES were the last two systems to have a near-dictatorship like authority over what can and cannot be released. In the NES days, Nintendo only allowed a select few games not from them to grace the system. The SNES days also were quite cruel in making sure nothing was half-arsed before release. The Playstation would be the system to destroy this trend and method of thought as they opened the floodgates to anyone that can make games. This is why the PSX sold more than the N64, had many more games, but at the same time had a much more pitiful ratio of classics. Come on, try naming 10 classic PSX games.

Now think of the SNES---it wasn’t just Nintendo making the classics. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III, Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter II Turbo, NBA Jam, Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts, Mega Man X, Turtles in Time, and many other gems were made by other companies. While Nintendo may lose the amount of games in the process, they need to set the third-party companies straight and prevent them from just mailing in stupid games like what happened with the Wii. Force the companies to take you seriously, as if you really want to impress the hardcore audience.


Bottom Line: The WIiU is coming out this year, and its success relies on its ability to imitate the SNES: start with Mario, closely follow with Zelda, sprinkle plenty of good-looking games here and there throughout the lifespan, and lastly don’t forget to throw in some good surprises. The Wii lacked true surprises, which is something even the Gamecube had (Rogue Leader, Viewtiful Joe anyone?), and its smaller-profile classics that can really propel a system to new heights of quality. Perhaps Miyamoto realizes that the SNES is the image hardcore gamers rely on when talking about how far Nintendo has separated from its fanbase, which is why we have Super Mario 4, an old-school look at Zelda and Metroid, and even revivals of dead franchises like F-Zero occurring.

While an HD Nintendo system is sure to bring some attention, its going to take a lot more than that to remove the sting the hardcore, long-running Nintendo enthusiasts experienced when seeing what the Wii delivered (er, didn’t deliver).

How the WiiU Can Own the Sports Genre

Way back in the N64 days, Nintendo mildly shocked the gaming industry with its inclusion of Nintendo Sports: which was a grouping of sports games that would be made and published by Nintendo, and exclusive only to their systems. Needless to say, Nintendo Sports was a big hit that rarely gets discussed, as the likes of Waverace 64, NBA Courtside, 1080 Snowboarding, WWF No Mercy, Wayne Gretzky’s 3-D Hockey, Mario Golf, and Mario Tennis became phenomenal hits. To add to that, you had underrated gems like Excitebike 64, Ken Griffey Jr. Slugfest, All-Star Baseball 2000 grace the system. But for whatever reason starting from the later days of the Gamecube on, Nintendo’s efforts towards sports games greatly diminished.

While EA owned the NFL license, Nintendo still had access to the extreme sports games, baseball, basketball, and more. The Seattle Mariners never made their next-gen baseball game, Kobe only did one more Courtside (which was weak), and the only true sports success story were the Mario sports games—especially Super Mario Strikers. As for the Wii, their potential with sports games was met with ho-hum attempts after monster smash Wii Sports. In the meantime, you saw a rise in baseball and basketball video games while Madden continues to make good money for EA Games. Sports games made excellent money for all three systems in the seventh generation, whether it’s the arcade sports games on the Wii, or the simulators on the competitors. Nintendo however can pull all the stops if they put forth the effort in showing its potential in the upcoming system. Which leads us to the WiiU: If the WiiU wants to truly succeed, they need to become the frontrunner and new frontier for sports games.

The WiiU would be absolutely perfect for most sports games, especially football.
And it has everything to do with the controller/tablet.
Let’s start with football, which would benefit the most from the tablet. Imagine being able to choose plays without having to look at a menu on the screen. You can just look at your controller and scan and pick. Even better the tablet can keep track of your statistic throughout the games, allowing you to alter your strategy depending on the results. Even cooler would be the ability to create your own plays by turning your controller into a whiteboard full of Xs and Os. Imagine being able to create dozens of random plays for your team and then taking it online to take on other opponents and their created plays. While the ability to make plays is nothing new, with the tablet technology it can be driven to a whole new level. Football is a very strategic sport so a tablet controller makes a perfect complement to the game.

Another sport heavy on the strategy would be baseball, which can also benefit well from this tablet. Imagine being able to quickly alter your lineups and shift your infield/outfield without having to press a variety of buttons or refer to a menu screen on the television. Imagine the ability to scan through dozens of statistics of the opposing players like a manager before drawing conclusions as to who is going out there on the field. The tablet for the WiiU will most likely be used for mostly gimmicks, but posing as an information center would be loads of fun and would definitely add depth to the sports simulators.

Then there’s basketball, which can also benefit from the tablet by doubling it as a playmaking whiteboard. Wouldn’t it be awesome to draw out what might be the game-winning play in the playoffs for your team? After years of screaming at the television when a coach makes a dumb move, this tablet allows you to see how you’d manage as a coach of a ballsquad. The only catch to all this is that outside of EA Games, Nintendo would have to whether convince the third-parties to step up in their gameplay to better suit the WiiU, or Nintendo would have to make these games themselves. Left Field Productions, the company that gave the N64 many great sports games, is no longer with them. Which would lead to Camelot and Next Level Games as the lone second-party companies that has sports experience---although both never worked on a true sim.

Bottom Line: Nintendo has a great opportunity to send the sports games to a new level with its tablet. The main issue is, will the other companies be on board with its potential and do something about it? The Wii had some excellent first/second-party games, arguably among the best in recent years. But their third party status is in shambles and has been for quite some time. Yet with a little effort, the likes of Sega, EA, and Next Level Games can produce some fantastic and innovative sports games that uses the tablet to its utmost potential. The entire gaming genre of sports can flip upside down if done correctly.

Until then, we gamers are just dreaming.