The Battle for Gaming Continues...
by Crom
I recommend checking out a link to Genre Maturity to hear some of the thoughts FOR the new Nintendo controller. Talking about innovation is always a painful process, because one man's idea of what is innovative is never quite the same as another's. The thing that chafes me about all of this is the idea that innovating their hardware will, by default, innovate their gaming experience. There's "for" and "against" arguments behind ALL of this, but I see the skein of gaming behind me and have to wonder how they can puff out their chests and say Nintendo has always led the market in innovation. I don't know if they've put their heads in the sand, or what, but I can't honestly think of any of their whacky shit that has been SUCCESSFUL. The powerglove, VirtuaBoy, the light bazzoka, this shit didn't exactly change the face of gaming, if anything they contributed to the downfall of the brand. They eroded away support.
What I find so hilarious about it, is that Nintendo is claiming their futuresight is so perfect, and this is the company that adopted COMPACT DISC LAST. They hung on to fucking CARTRIDGES when the rest of the industry looked on, totally baffled, and released wicked titles on CD. Nintendo LOST the Final Fantasy line because of this, talk about a kick in the nuts. Now they come out with peripherals for their systems that are totally messed up, and claim that they HAVE to do it in order to acheive the innovative market, instead of the consolidated mature Genre market.
Here's my problem with the new controller, and it's pretty straight forward: It isn't an innovation in controlling. It's a contravention of our way of interfacing. Now Nintendo would immediately jump on that and say "Of course it is, that's our plan!" but they'd be stupid. Remember when you first started playing games, and if you wanted to jump over something, you tended to physically move the controller around? You just did it cuz your brain had yet to realize that physical movement was a waste of energy, and it actually detracted from your concentration. Nintendo started all of this. They originally made the d-pad, and everything since then has been that basic idea made greater and more powerful. We've trained ourselves to NOT move our hands when playing games, and now they want to create an interface that not only wants you to engage in an action that you've spent years training yourself NOT to do, but they RELY on it. It's part of how the fucking thing works. More to the point, you can't have both, I guarantee it. It happens to me when I play games on the PC. When I change from a game that has one set of particular controls to another that rely's on similar hand placement to do DIFFERENT actions, I always have an hour or so of bungling before I get it straight in my head again. Nintendo is driving a wedge into the gaming universe. Those who chose to play with the traditional interface and those who dont. Because once you go down that road, holding hands with Nintendo, you will begin a regime that is Detrimental to your abilities on the other consoles.
Search your feelings. You KNOW this to be true.