Nintendo's mixed messages

It's a legitimate question, but Fils-Aimé's attitude seemed to place the blame solely on third-parties. I don't think it's as simple as that.

Take a look at the line-ups on the three big consoles this holiday season. The Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 have big, 3-d powerhouses with photorealistic graphics and mature content such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Assassin's Creed 2 to vie for gamers' dollars. The former is a rather convoluted tale of modern-day global terrorism and warfare played through first-person, with some rather outré segments (one mission in particular puts gamers into the shoes of a CIA operative that has infiltrated a terrorist cell and actually has to mow down innocent bystanders at a major international airport in order to not blow his cover). The latter is the continuation of Ubi Soft's monstrously well-selling medieval stealth action/adventure game from 2007.

Nintendo's big answer to this for the Wii? A title which looks like something that—with a few minor downgrades—could have easily run on the N64 nine years ago. I'm talking, of course, about New Super Mario Bros. Wii—the rather unimaginatively named next adventure in the Mario Bros.' long series of platformers that have entertained gamers almost since the birth of the medium decades ago.

Its graphics, besides a few visual tricks, are about as old-school as you can get nowadays, shot from a 2-d perspective. Its audio sounds like no advances have been made in music synthesizer programs since 1999, and its gameplay seems to be a "best of" compilation of previous 2-d Mario outings. The move has been criticized by some gamers, who feel as if Nintendo is being cheap by charging a full price for the game, especially given the fact that the 4-player adventure does not even include online functionality.

I'm not necessarily going to call out Nintendo for releasing this game as their big holiday title. It will probably sell millions, appealing to parents of young children and nostalgic players wanting to relive a piece of their past (yours truly perhaps even included among them).

It's probably even unfair to say Mario's NOT a core game, particularly given reports of its rather unforgiving difficulty. However, perception is everything, and shallow as it may seem, anyone who takes a quick gander at it cannot be helped but to think the game just doesn't look that good compared to even other titles on the Wii.

Sure, Nintendo's got some more modern-looking core titles in the works for next year and beyond, and it's had some big releases on the Wii, but really, the last such title that pulled out all the stops was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and that was in March 2008. We've seen others since then, but they have simply not been up to the AAA standards we've come to expect from this company over the years.

In other words, Mr. Fils Aimé, stop pretending this new,

expanded audience you've discovered with the Wii, that doesn't really care about shiny graphics, that's had your company laughing all the way to the bank since November 2006, is not your top priority.

And if you really, really do still care about your "core" audience, and want third-parties to as well, then lead by example.