Nintendo’s Stupid Pill Regimen Is Showing
One of the places that I’m most interested in visiting is the land of fast trains, peculiar fetishes and most importantly, Pokémon; and I’m not going to let an earthquake, threat of a nuclear meltdown or tsunami stand in my way. When I do go, I may have to avoid drinking the water, because I’m just about certain that it will stupefy my American business sense.
Since 2006, Sony has consistently undercut its own potential by repeatedly making public relation gaffe over stupid comment over more PR gaffes. Most recently, their shenanigans culminated in the arrogant failure to positively react and control the narrative of their network security breach. This shut down their online entertainment services for about five weeks, cutting off any revenue and compromised customer information. But that’s not why I’m writing.
Apparently their domestic competitor Nintendo has decided to take up the torch of stupid for June and looks to be making a run to finish 2011 as such. Nintendo stumbled out of the gate in June with its shiny new console which, (excuse my paraphrasing) “puts the ‘you’ back into ‘real gaming.’” Yeah. That’s basically what was said. The Wii-U is what was unveiled and now has a tall order to fulfill. The console now looks to be for a single consumer and features a mini tablet-esque controller with a DS/DSi/3DS touch screen. Early speculation coming out of Nintendo means that each console will only feature a single controller. Oh, and it’s tethered via infrared to the console so you can play your games anywhere in the household (supposedly). Nintendo also decided to boast about having more 3rd party support, something that helped them make their previous platforms viable, the only problem is that consumers don’t know what the graphical capabilities will be considering some of the third party titles previewed were running off of Nintendo’s competition – Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Nintendo recently came out and said they aren’t interested or focused on developing or enhancing a better online multiplayer experience for their consumer base. Yep. Nintendo has now decided to hunker down into the dark ages of gaming. Maybe they’ll start a viral campaign directed at hipsters to start manufacturing cabinets and turn in all the now vacant Borders locations into mid 90’s state-of-the-art arcades.
The most perplexing thing is that Nintendo of America is leading the stupid charge. How can a company based in the same region as Microsoft even begin to start looking backwards. Perhaps Nintendo is banking on a polio comeback and is resurrecting the Edsel; did I forget to mention the Wii-U’s web browser is slated to be Netscape Navigator. People like being connected and interacting with other people from the comfort of their own home. Last I checked, gamers (or at least some gamers) are people; therefore enjoy being connected to others. There’s a reason why I’ve been an Xbox Live customer for 6 consecutive years and interacting with friends and playing games over a stable customer friendly proprietary platform is the main reason. Pretty soon Nintendo will have people blowing into cartridges again.
If you visit Japan, have fun, be safe, but if you’re an American business person, don’t drink the water. It may make you want to seek employment at MCI Worldcom or Enron.
