Microsoft, Ahem, Wii is not just for Kids.
A manager of XBOX recently typecasted (right word?) the Wii. He was quoted in an New York Times story which was quoted on Sickr (an almost daily posted-upon Wii blog)
What else? "Overpriced gaming systems that largely market pretend killing as entertainment? I’ll pass," (how I commented on the Sickr blog).“We don’t feel like the Wii customer and the Xbox customer are the same thing,” he said. “We think that as soon as the Wii customer turns 14 they want something else.”
- John Rodman, group product manager for the Xbox and Xbox LIVE
The thing that I see the Wii doing is really going to back to more to what gaming was like when it first started. Or rather, what games were like when they first started... What I mean is that with the other consoles, you rarely see a game that is marketed to everyone. Take a good, long look at other consoles' games, just go to the store and look at the front of the game boxes of the previous system by the company, because that's what the games will be like.
You see mostly violent games geared for "people over 14", several really over-the-top games as far as offensive content for what is supposed to be considered "mature" (like it's something we're supposed to grow into), and then a few overly-kiddy games. (And I'm supposed to pay 4 hundred dollars for it?)
None of the games in those categories really appeal to me! I would have to work pretty hard to find a game that is meant to be fun for teenagers and adults to play that doesn't have the idea of me supposed to be getting pleasure out of something wrong.
Then came the Wii.
Yes, the Wii has a few really really really kiddy games, but at the same time, they have many games that are accessible to everyone with very little emphasis on blood and crime games.
At the beginning of consoles, the games were mostly for everyone. Mario, Zelda, Pong, Tetris, etc. If there ever was a game that wasn't for young'n's it probably was because it was too complicated, not because of offensive content.
The ESRB (rating peoples of games) used to have a rating that was "KA" for "Kids to Adults," meaning that it was a game that Adults could enjoy with nothing offensive. A lot of the games for the Wii warrant me saying that this rating needs to come back into circulation.
The Wii pushes the envelope with its unique fun-ness while other consoles push the envelopes of price, graphics, and violence, sex, crime, fill-in-the-blank-here.
2 comments:
eh, bad quote for microsoft. Although i do think the wii is geared for more of the younger, then older aged people. It does seem that more and more people like violent games-myself included. it all depeneds on the adduaince, and that will decide soon.
Admittedly I might have gotten carried away with the idea that the Xbox 360 markets pretend killing as entertainment.
It's like this: "name the top four games of the Xbox 360."
It's likely that those four games have some sort of killing involved.
I can understand how playing a game where you pretend to use military tactics and weapons to achieve a goal together would appeal to someone. On some level that did appeal to me when I went to a Halo 2 LAN party and ultimately ended up holding LAN parties of my own, then trying Xbox LIVE for a year.
I just don't like how (with a lot of games on other systems) we're supposed to get joy out of a person coming apart or yelling in pain or dying... this makes me think (that with the specific designers of such games and the consumers of them) that something has gone terribly wrong.
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