The Wii U continues

A thing I keep repeating over and over again without much good examples is that modern video game developers need to learn from the past mistakes and not repeat them. Similarly, the developers need to learn from the past successes but not copy or repeat them but to see the inner workings of the customer mind.

Nintendo made an announcement of sorts that they will not abandon the Wii U. The game industry hated this. There is a recurring motif in the electronic gaming industry where Nintendo is absolutely hated, despised even, when they put out a product will sell like hotcakes. The NES was hated on many levels, but the customers loved it and it sold. The GameBoy, for what I can recall, is a surprising exception if you ignore how the competition barked at its performance power and computer side more or less hated it. The DS was hated when Nintendo changed it into a portable SNES and became a success. The Wii is still despised by the industry and the hardcore crowd despite almost everyone owning one.

The Wii U is a different thing, a console not really hated by the industry, but neither it is celebrated by the consumers like the Wii. At this moment, Wii U has gotten some steam, but it lacks uniqueness. Same goes for Xbone and PS4.

Why Nintendo shouldn’t abandon the Wii U, many have asked. The single most important reason for this is that it would be stupid.

Customer relations is hugely important, and losing customer trust is the worst thing a company can ever go through. SEGA will tell you that, as will any company who screwed up.

The SEGA Saturn was supposed to be a beast of a console. Technically speaking it is a very competent 2D machine for its time, especially with the RAM expansion carts, but the games did not attract customers. Well, most of the good games stayed in Japan because certain individuals pushing 3D games on the front. Actually, the whole console release was a disaster and SEGA ultimately just said that Saturn is not their future. That was a bitchslap to customers’ faces. Dropping promises and support for a product that demanded large amounts of money. Saturn was a disaster and one of the final nails on SEGA’s coffin.

Personally, I do like Saturn. It has some gems and the number of arcade games it has is nice. What I think of the Saturn doesn’t matter, only that it sucked, bombed and was buried.

If Nintendo were to abandon the Wii U now, they would repeat SEGA’s mistakes. Nobody wants that, except hardcore fanboys and people who would prefer one console with every game on it.

This would be a horrible model. A competition needs and demands a one-two beat. Another one needs to beat the first one, and another needs hit the second beat. It’s sort of dance, and there is need for disruption every now and then, if not in regular intervals. Everything different is not disruptive, but the keys that hit the points just right are. The NES, GameBoy, DS and Wii were all disruptive and allowed the competitive dance to hit the one-two beat.

Wii U can become a great console yet. All it needs products to hold it high. I doubt this, as Nintendo seems to fail to realize the full potential of their products. One thing everybody was thinking for the Wii was either a damn good Star Wars game, or a really good sword fighting game. It could not have been Zelda, because Aonuma hates fighting and masturbates over puzzles. The very moment we saw the Wiimote, we all knew what we wanted. That, and the light gun games, which could’ve worked slightly better. We never got any good sword fighting games, thou the Wii Sports Resort had a good basis, but it was far from being anything good and proper.

Another game customers thought when they saw the camera and tilt function in the 3DS was Pokémon Snap 2. It was a couple made in heaven, and nothing. Pokémon Snap is one of the most fondly remembered games on the N64 as well as one of them most well made camera based games, despite everything that went against the N64.

Often it is not all too good to give the customer what they want, but what they need. Sometimes it’s very recommendable to listen to your customers. This sounds stupid and may show hypocrisy to some extent, but in all reality it is about choosing the time when to put either choice into action. In reality, while market research follows very straightforward methods, but how, when and where changes with time and what were are researching as well as what we are researching for. Despite Nintendo promoting new ways of playing games, they haven’t pushed their new ways as far as they could have and without a proper example no company wanted to follow.

Actually, if we want to really talk about dropping system in the middle of their life, Nintendo did drop the DS and the Wii like a dead fly. Both systems saw very little supports from Nintendo in the last few years of their life. The Wii got software like Wii Music, which was hated practically everybody in and out of the industry. Those people who bought a Wii and experienced Nintendo taking their resources to 3DS, then to Wii U, never moved up a console. Why would anyone buy a console from a company that doesn’t even support it to the very end?

Nintendo wanted to have the Wii U as the console Wii users would move on to. Fat chance. The Wii U is not the Wii but in mere name similarity. It is a very opposite console. If I were to observe the current consoles from personal view, there’s very little games that catch my attention, and those which do are all multiplatform par few exceptions like Splatoon. While sequels are the things that seem to draw in most money, they cannot be repetitions.

Console exclusivity is…

Exclusivity in video games is polarising matter to handle. It might be strange to find out that while I am all for the customer always, I am a solid supporter of exclusivity when it comes to video games. As such, this is one of those rarer posts where I will voice a clear statement that is mine, rather than from a point of view that I might or might not agree with.

 A common argument why most, if not all, video games should be available on all platforms is that this would enable the customer to choose whatever platform he prefers and purchase those games for it. It sounds really good argument and tickles the hardcore crowd’s funny bone in their lower backs. A general customer would then ask Then what would be the point of having multiple machines?

That’s a question that thickens the plot and makes the spider spin its web. Why DO we have all these consoles? After all, the machine’s purpose it to run the game, and the machine shouldn’t matter, right? If all games would be released on all consoles, shouldn’t that increase the competition? Or if we just had one console, shouldn’t that increase the competition too?

Well, the very reason we have multiple consoles is that we would have different companies running their machines in our houses over the other. At the moment we have three competing machines, two of which are basically the same shit in a different package and then one that has a screen on its controller. On the handheld side we have a machine that’s barely successful and then one that repeated every fault its predecessor had and added new ones. In contrast to this, on the fourth generation of video games we had around nine consoles running against each other and at least three handhelds and buttloads of Tiger Electronics games.  And fourth generation of video games was insanely successful and popular in contrast what we have nowadays.

And all those consoles had large amounts of exclusive games and nobody complained.

As the Neo HD-Twins are the same shit with different package, the devs are having perhaps the easiest time of porting games from those to PC or back. Wii U is the only machine that they’re having trouble with, but according to an article it’s mostly because Nintendo themselves screwed a lot of things up with their devkits and helpdesk organization. Thus, Wii U will see lesser amount of stuff than its competitors. Then you add the cost of HD development, which again went up with the generation shift.

I don’t want game developers to have easy time. Their work is already relatively easy, as all they do is sit inside in front of their computers and type shit down while they chat and drink coffee. Most of them barely want to do the math how to take all they can out of a system anymore, and just want the best and most powerful machine out there so they can go all wild and not care how well their game is formed up. This might be shocking to hear, but I’d love to see games made with care, with high level of coding and so that it wouldn’t take three to six years. We’re barely getting a new real Zelda games twice a decade now, and we haven’t seen a well made 2D Super Mario game since Super Mario World. In hindsight, New Super Mario Bros. got a freepass because it was the first 2D Mario game in a long time. Now that Nintendo has milked half-assed 2D Mario to death, they’ve been forcing 3D game elements into 2D Mario and its failing.

A successful company is for the customers’ best. A successful company that has tough competition is better for the customer. A successful company that has successful competitors need to put our good amount of high quality products and hit the Blue Ocean market in order to eclipse their competitors, and this is good for the customer.

What I mean by this that the current situation is all kinds of wrong when you look at it properly. We’re seeing the exact same games repeated in slightly different forms, or in Fifa’s case just with a skinjob. Just as the Neo HD-Twins are same shit, their games to a large extent are the same with a different package. While there would be nothing wrong in having the same game on all machines, it does take out the uniqueness of each released game. Say you have ten games released on three different system. You’re basically left one unique game in that set of ten, because three games would be on three systems, effectively making you have either three to four games depending on the system of your choice. The competition is screwed, and even more so if that one game is for a whole other platform from the three others. On the other hand, the devs could make one of those games a multiplatform game, and the rest would be unique standalone titles. We would see seven different games that wouldn’t only compete with each other, but would also compete with the platforms. We would see a thing called variety.

When you have a large amount of variety aimed in different parts of the Blue Ocean with the aim of making the possible product, magic starts to happen.

The most successful console has the most games. Most of these games are also exclusive to this console. When it was said that the NES had the best games, it was true. It saw the most sales, and numbers don’t lie or change. People lie and change, and are prone to be biased. While quantity does not mean quality, there is a higher chance of having quality products in high quantity set than in small quantity set.

When you start thinning out all the multiplatform releases from the last generation, the overall amount of single games released starts to look a bit strange. A multiplatform game barely matters; it doesn’t sell consoles. However, games that sell consoles matter always, and the most games that move console sales are exclusives.

There are also sad sides on exclusivity, such as that it creates fanboys. The common customer doesn’t actually give a damn if they’re playing a Nintendo or Microsoft, all they care for if they have games they’re interested in. It’s the small hardcore crowd that cares if they have a certain console over another. I can completely understand the existence of Nintendo’s fanbase, as they’re basically the only hardware and software manufacturer nowadays, but seeing that most SONY and Microsoft fans always put multiplatform gaming on a pedestal and compare the exact same product side-by-side to see the minuscule differences, I don’t understand why these two would even have an issue with each other? Most of their competition doesn’t even come from the games, but from the company producing the machines. At least during the 8-bit and 16-bit Console Wars we used to compare games against each other.

There’s also the interesting point, that while the hardcore and the rest of the industry just laughs at Nintendo, they can’t help but say how much they’d love to play their games. In comparison, very rarely does Nintendo owners have a feel to play games on other consoles because they had ports of games or other games that filled the same niche.

And that where it all actually lies; by having these companies creating different games for different platforms, even within same genre, there would be competition to outwit the other. Even better if this would happen inside the developing companies too.

And when companies compete with each other, and with themselves internally, that can be highly beneficial to the customer.

Sadly, the game business is warped nowadays, and not just because of Neo HD-Twins being completely dumbed down PCs rather than game consoles and the hardcore crowd driving the industry further down, and the industry actually listens to these Red Ocean  people rather hitting the Blue Ocean with all their might and making money. Of course, the macro-economic situation doesn’t help in this either.

As such, I stand on the side that wants to see more different games populating the console libraries rather see the same games populating all the consoles. The customer would have much wider selection to choose from, as well as more reasons to pick one console over the other. As such, the customer would have the option to pick from multiple games rather than just one on many platforms. And naturally, this would also be good for the console business.

Music of the Month; Ritmica Ostinata

This December we’ll avoid using the Christmas-y music I’ve been aiming here and there a we return to something more brassy; Akira Ifukube’s Ritmica Ostinata.

The last few months have been rocky to say the least. There was a lot of… mishaps first of all with increasing amounts of deadlines, and then my main desktop broke down, forcing me to get a whole rig that has been running pretty decently for a time now. There was also a death in the family, which kind of forced me to stop everything I had planned, thus pushing planned things back as well as just dropping some altogether due to all the lost time.

Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to get my editor run the blog for the time I needed to get things sorted out. Not all the plans are abandoned, their timings have just been thrown out of the window. That’s life to you.

There’s going to be few things left for me to do outside the Internet that are keeping me busier than I’d like to be, which means that some weeks may see a post break. Then there’s this small thing that yours truly is going to Scotland in mid-January to study industrial design for around a half year, so updates will get somewhat uncommon. I intend to find another person to keep this site up with me, so the flow won’t be cut too much. However, just like with everything, there are obstacles in this, mostly in that finding the right person is insanely hard.

Have you noticed how similar the Xbone and PS4 ultimately look like? They both are split into and share sort of chocolate piece look, and their main colour is black out of all. Without their few details, they’d just be black blocks of plastic. They look decent, because they really don’t look like anything.  The NES was made to look like the entertainment electronics of the time, namely a VCR deck. The MegaDrive, SNES, Saturn and bunch of other consoles do not really look like run-of-the-mill appliances, which asks the question if modern game console design has gone insanely bland because nothing is designed to have shapes any more? Of course, the 00’s and by extension, the 10’s have been very sleek, no-nonsense looks and surfaces, a thing that Apple started.  I can’t say that I personally like it, as that kind of design is rather easy to do. iPhone’s design is pretty… well, the design it has is there to justify the phone looks. That’s it. So, does the same apply to Xbone and PS4?

No, because the question is unanswerable. We know what kind of basic design a phone should have in that it needs to sit well in your hand, is able to capture your voice clearly near your mouth and have a speaker you to hear from. That dictates the core design quite a lot, unless you want to be an asshole and make a three part phone. What kind of design is necessary for a game console, or any media device?  First of all, it needs to accept the media it’s designed around, like SD cards, USB sticks, discs or cartridges. Then you have the controller, which might or might not be a separate entity from the package, ie. cordless.

I was asked What are designers needed for? recently, and the question I provided was Designers are there to fulfil your needs.

A  designer is there to take a look how something works, observe its use, and then make it work better, faster, stronger, better. It would be a selfish thing just to do whatever you want, designer whatever you want, to whomever you want, whenever you want and disregard the reason a designer as a field exists.

As such, the answer how a game console should look is dictated by its function and use, and this is why game consoles, other entertainment machines and most household appliances are hard to design; if they don’t work as intended because of the design, they’re badly designed. I’m not talking about the looks here, but also about the functions; how well a machine vents air, how the casing shells the inside mechanisms and takes impacts and how well all of it comes together as a whole piece. Both SONY and Microsoft have been failing with their console design for some time now, and it’s because they haven’t paid attention to design of their products. The looks should come naturally from the core design, but I’m afraid that too many times the process if backwards, where the design and design come from separate origin. We can have design, but we don’t need design.

These two designs are two separate things that share the same name. The first one is what I answered, the one that dictates all and everything, and then we have the second, which is people splattering stuff somewhere in order of aesthetics and good looks. We call people who use the second design as artists for good reasons and only the Lord knows why they’re in a field where they are doing more disservice than anything else.

I’m just saying that the people who design the consoles have exactly one job, and there’s no defending the fact that they failed when a machine breaks down.

Now how did Microsoft manage to put millions of dollars into the development of the Xbone controller? I have no idea, but all they had to do was to fix the D-Pad and they would have been ready to go. Ergonomics is a well researched field, and human hands haven’t manage to evolve into a new shape within a decade, so fixing what wasn’t broken seems to be the wrong thing to do. Then again, Microsoft is seeking to gain more profits from keeping you re-using any 360 gadgets with the Xbone. Sometimes it just seems they’re making new shit up just to justify the existence of any design department in any corporation.

Technical burnouts

I have to wonder what has been going on in the Microsoft and SONY research and development laboratories during the days when both Xbone and PS4 were under development. Both of these consoles have been gaining far too much negative press on the systems’ faults rather than on the games. What sort of engineers and designers are proud of a machine that is too delicate?

It’s a good thing that both of the companies have admitted the problems with their consoles, but that’s too late now. The damage has already been done. The negative press is out there, and a well informed customer will steer far away from the launch consoles for some time now.

However, we live in the era of the Internet, where even the faintest fart in Sahara desert will be reported as a massive methane explosion in the middle of nothing.

All the reported breakdowns of Xbones and PS4s are a small number of all the sold units. That’s a fact, but it is also a fact that as these small number of units are faulty, there is a possibility that units produced with same components in same batch can have the same breakdowns. The only really reliable way to know if any of the problems with these consoles are common is to check if there’s more than one in your friend circle.

The PlayStation was a faulty console en masse as it used to cook the laser, and pretty much all of my friends fixed it by turning the machine upside down. The revision of the PS1 fixed practically all of the issues with the console, and is build a bit more sturdier too, except the lid that was built to break after the first two times you insert a disc in it. I’ve seen original PlayStations scratching the game discs too, which just prompted my friends to buy pirated games from Russia even more, as you could get something like ten games for twenty marks. That’s around ten games for four euros, and they just bought new games like that because the machine kept eating old discs.

The  360’s Red Ring of Death was also a major issue, as one popped up in the middle of a game session years back. When you have three friends cursing the 360 for the same reason, there’s an issue. Personally, I never had my second-hand 360 die on me, but then again I did change the fan to a more powerful one and tinkered with its insides to prevent any problems with overheating. PS2 units also had a lot of troubles from what I’ve heard and read on the news, but I have seen none die personally. Then again, it was commonly reported that watching DVDs on your consoles would consume the laser faster, but who would want to watch their movies on a console anyway? That’s why you have either a PC or DVD/BD player.

Then again, I do admit that I watched one disc of Raijin-Oh on my Wii.

There’s also the problem that people were expecting these mechanical faults and jumped on them as soon as possible. Microsoft already admitted the disc drive problems and SONY blamed on the console faults as shipping damage, I have to question how these machines are built. The 360 had an awful quality control, a thing an electronics producer should never overlook, and now there’s been two instances of the magic smoke that makes electronics running has escaped Xbones. Whether or not this smoke issue is true is an open question, as mentioned in the forum.

What causes these problems is pretty rarely mishandling, but the way the physical console is designed. For example, the Xbone seems to drain so much power, that its power brick has its own damn fan. Everybody hates the separate power brick, especially now that Microsoft seems to have moved towards their own locked-design power cords, that just have an extra nudge to prevent you from using any other power cord than Microsoft’s own. Which is bullshit. Apple has done the same thing with their products, and it’s just as bullshit.

There’s a problem with modern consoles… well, modern is loosely applied here, as even some of the machines from the 90’s apply here as well, but the problem is that in increasing amounts these machines are designed for ideal use and environment. You can’t put anything on top of them any more, they barely can withstand one nudge and the goddamn piano black surface will get scratched to hell the moment the machine is out of the box.

Let’s be straight here for a moment; game consoles are consumer products that exist there to be used in a normal family environment. They are bound to get hits, bumps, moved around when they’re on and the occasional fall due to children and adults alike. A basement dwelling hermit that barely goes outside is not a proper comparison point. If these machines are deigned to exist in an environment that barely exists and asks the consumer to treat them like newborn babies, that’s a completely idiotic way to design anything. Design your machine to last and work for a long time, and the customers will like it more. A satisfied customer is good press, and a returning customer to boot.

GameCube wasn’t the best console out there, but it could take a sledgehammer to its side and play games. It could be dropped from few meters to a concrete floor, and it would still boot up and most likely play games just fine. It was build to last, much like the GameBoy, which could survive a bombing during the Gulf War. Nowadays you close your 3DS and it scratches the upper screen by itself. The Wii was reasonably well built too, surviving pretty bad drops and still be completely fine.

And now you’re thinking that Nobody treats their machines like that. It’s not about how they’re treated, it’s how a normal family life is. If these companies really want to sell their product to everybody, the machines need to withstand daily life. If not, then they can keep selling to the hardcore nerds and their small market, and finally wither away.

I can’t even buy a PC game from a store without it forcing me to subscribe to Steam. That’s just bad design all around.

Music of the Month; The Invincible Iczer-2

Did I ever tell you that I really love brass instruments?

This time on Monthly Music; not much. In the following months I most likely will be a bit overworked, so the updates will most likely dwindle down a bit. Expect the pace to be cut in half at times. I hate to do this, but at the moment I’m involved in three different service design projects, one limited production design and one electric car design.  It might not sound like much, but I’m the kind of guy who likes to concentrate only on one thing at a time. Juggling between different tasks is not a problem, but you’ll see the lack of quality in there. It’s something I must get better at, I admit. It’s one step closer to being a proper professional, something we all should strife for.

But let’s get some issues out of the way.

The PS4 is a question mark. SONY’s attitude to think the machine as just a box is a good idea, but I’m not completely sold on the Internet connectivity and the Share idea. Hardcore people most likely won’t like it, so PS4 might become pretty good after all. We saw very little regarding games overall, so I’m waiting for more news. Nevertheless, I need to put up a proper overview of what we know at the moment. PS4 might be decent, but it’s not the best idea for SONY to do at the moment. The controller is an interesting idea, but overall I don’t see it as a good thing, as it prevents you from using the PS3 controller on the system. It’s also a problem that PS4 doesn’t support PS3 titles natively, which should be a standard nowadays on any platform.

The Wii U seems to be failing and I’ve seen news about publishers bailing out to some extent. It’s somewhat sad to see PSV outselling the Wii U. I hope Nintendo will be pulling the same thing they did with the DS, as in realizing that they need NES 3 and not N64 3. Hell, the PSV is the most selling console at the moment, which tells how badly everything else is selling.

However, I must admit that today I saw some bit of news that convinced me to buy a 3DS. A Japanese 3DS to be exact; Sayonara Umihara Kawase.

I really do find hoodies comfortable to wear. It’s either that, or a black suit

These two are the scans floating around the Internet

Seems like Umihara is 20-years old in this instalment, and will be the last one in the series if the title is anything to go by. I really like the news that the original staff is working on the game, as the PSP port was an atrocious piece of garbage.  I want to buy it from somewhere just to crucify it.

Now the last game I eagerly expected was Metal Gear Rising, which I’m writing a review of at the moment, and it’s weird to think that I’ll be making a pre-order for the first time in a long, long time. Last time I pre-ordered anything was… well, Umihara Kawase Shun Second Edition Kanzenban for the DS. MGR was store-bought, I usually don’t order anything in advance. In restaurants I pay the meal before eating thou.