The Nintendo Kiddy Image: Part 1…

I grew up on video games and so it is only natural for me to have a place in my heart for all things Nintendo. In recent years as video games have evolved Nintendo has picked up the stereotype as a kiddy company catered to families and those who have yet to reach the years of puberty. With the release of the DS and Wii they have garnered more stereotypes as a company only interested in the affairs of a casual market. Through my fanboy eyes I am still able to accept that Nintendo isn't perfect, but they are however very much a hardcore company and take the business very seriously.

These stereotypes probably wouldn't bother me so much, if it wasn't for the fact that the other 2 players (Sony and Microsoft) respectably garner the praise they seek for. To the media and publishers, the PS3 and Xbox360 are currently hardcore systems and games are developed with respect to that. Sure the Wii is underpowered compared to its HD counterparts, but Wii is still capable of beautiful looking games whether approached at an artistic view (Super Mario Galaxy and MadWorld) or taken with a more realistic view (The Conduit and Disaster Day of Crisis).

Third parties on the Wii, as a whole, however continue to release casual titles with little development time and production values and yet is has been the market leader for almost a year. Their excuse: "Only 1st party titles sell well on the Wii" or "The Wii is catered to the casual." Lately their have been some rumblings of some quality 3rd party games being released later this year and early 2009, but as of right now they are few and far between. Miyamoto (The God of Video Games) recently made a statment regarding this issue:

"If there's only one piece of advice that I could give to the managers of third party companies, it would be that a lot of times it seems that when they're putting games out on Nintendo hardware, those games are being developed by their third-string team or their fourth-string team. Maybe that's because they see those products as being unique projects or somewhat smaller-scale projects. But when Nintendo puts out a title that is designed to really support and sell its hardware, that title is always developed by one of our number one teams. And so I think that when it comes to the question of trying to compete with our software, I would really like to see the parties try to do that with their number one teams rather than with the third- or fourth-string teams."

Nintendo fans want quality titles. The reason we continue to support Nintendo is because we want to continue playing games that we fell in love with and are fun and engaging. Their new titles continue to innovate and I look forward to each new announcement in the future…