The Contrarian

Gamers talk about how game culture has permeated everything, but resident contrarian John Tynes is on hand to explain that when gaming is everywhere - It's nowhere.

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It takes guts to make predictions in a public forum like this, because there's always a chance that you'll be wrong and people will mock you for it. Still, I'm guessing that the author is happy to have been wrong about this one. I know I would be.

Well, there's certainly no doubt that the Wii has been extremely successful for what is now a full year. But there are still people like myself who are suspicious that boredom will set in due to the eventual limitations of the controller, and mere promises of later games. I doubt that'll happen, though; when it's being bought for hospitals and non-gamers, you know it's more than likely going to be around for a long time, regardlessly.

Can they get "ONLINE" through their heads though?

The thing that's always put me off about Nintendo is that it appears to heavily favour style, with very very little substance to back it up. It's gimmicky. Nintendo innovates for innovations sake, reinventing the wheel and expecting others to pat them on the back for it.

Take the wii-mote, for example: A device which allows you to achieve with a complex series of gestures what most control-pads let you do with the push of a button. This is progress? Hardly, for all that it's very clever.

I sat there, reading this in amazement, trying to figure out what the heck he was going off about. The DS and "Revolution" "dead on arrival"?

Then I checked the date. 2005.

Ah. Now I get it.

And I can understand what he was thinking at the time. Two years ago, Nintendo was "dead in the water". The Gamecube was flopping the almighty PSP was coming with the same powers the PS2 had (it not only plays games, but music and moves too!). The Xbox was everywhere.

I think what happened wasn't so much a Nintendo thing - it was an Iwata thing.

Iwata, I am guessing, must have at some point read Sun Tsu or even Miyamoto Musashi. The former counseled that the best defense is where there is no attack, the best attack where there is no defense.

It worked for Nintendo, and Harmonix, and others - don't do what everyone else does, and you can find success. The question now is:

Now what?

I had to change my my msn's personal message about 6 times whilst reading this. So many good quotes, a very nice piece of writing.

Predictions are dangerous things without a bit of logic and a few cold hard facts, and Mr.Tynes here was well and truly drowning in logic when he wrote this piece. It make sense, it all makes sense. To the point where he can't possibly be wrong. I see truth, I see logic, I see a point. What I don't see, is the resolution of his claims. Why? Because it's simply too early.

He's right, there's no two ways about it. Nintendo have done what Nintendo always do, bring on the innovation, and the only reason the Wii's been so successful is all down to clever marketing , lucky timing and Sony releasing something that i'd have to sell my good testy to buy, three factors that can't be , and were not predicted.

The console race isn't over until development stops, this means the PS2 is still in it, alongside its bulky-over weight and egotistical brother the PS3, and of course the crooked pick-pocketing little bastard child, PSP. And what have nintendo got? The DS and the Wii. This generation race is only just beginning, it had a slow f**king start i'll admit that, but it's still just the beginning. For both the main contenders, Wii and PS3.

And so I think John Tynes logic hasn't failed him yet. The facts of 2005 are still the facts of 2007, and they will still be factual in many years to come. Unless of course publishers spontaneously decide they don't really fancy making as much money as they can possibly squeeze out of a title. They practise on wet ties y'know?... and bunnys, and terminally ill toddlers.