Topic: The Problem with Wii reviewers (rant)

Hi thexorcist. I like the debate as well, and having kicked it into a higher gear, I rescind any misgivings I may have had about your first post. All the same, my welcome was sincere.

The opportunity I mention was not one of selling more Wii Sports Resort discs. Instead, by offering a very meaningful number of users (see #7) a compelling reason to connect their Wii's to the Internet, Nintendo would have seen an increase in the attach rate to their shop channel, a huge incremental revenue stream when you consider the numbers we're talking about. Add to that the customer reinforcement factor. Any time you can educate your (millions of) customers that what they just purchased can do something more than they realized, that's a HUGE loyalty builder. And on top of those, there's the perception as compared to the Xbox and PS3, which are already renowned for their online playability. Cheers, -V

EDIT: Clearly Adam is not only a mindreader, but also a faster typist.

These fingers were trained under Mario himself in his best-seller Mario Teaches Typing. Nothing motivates a young boy to learn home row better than falling Thwomps.

@Adam

I guess no one is enjoying Grand Slam Tennis or Virtua Tennis online with their motion pluses right now then since they can't see their opponents' faces.

Those are fuller games, with all kinds of modes and options, ie. complete retail games that do nothing but simulate tennis. Wii Sports Tennis simply is not about that. I'm all for a thing product fulfilling its goals, not trying to be everything to everyone. It would fail miserably if Wii Sports was trying to make each of its individual segments compete with games dedicated to the kind of experience you'd find in Tiger Woods or Virtua Tennis. Where Wii Sports excels is in its accessibility and pick-up-and-play fun, not its fullness of simulation for each sport, nor in anything that would point to a robust online.

There's only been one game. You can't deduce a trend from that. Wii Sports doesn't have to be offline-only just because it once was.

This sequel is very clearly about trying to reinvigorate the original social experience of the Wii and then simultaneously get the Motion Plus into as many homes as possible. Again, it is very targeted, and would flounder if it lost track of its core objectives.

So some online newcomers would be turned off by the experience and wouldn't use it again. If they weren't using it before and then decide not to use it again, it's not like Nintendo lost a customer since they weren't using it before.

Or you'd have lag for everyone with all these people coming online and pairing up with you in random matches.

I mean, it's not like anyone has to play online. I'd love to, and I see nothing wrong with someone wanting to play a game online just because it doesn't appeal to someone else or that some users wouldn't know how to use it.

I look at this as a business matter, and a question of strategic decisions. A game will never succeed if it doesn't understand its precise target experiences and if it doesn't use every ounce of its development time to hone that. You may think that Wii Sports Resort was simple to develop, but it was very likely a grueling, resource intensive, and demanding project for Nintendo (just read Iwata Asks, and see all the problems they had to contend with to even come close to packing in all the features they have in order to meet this launch schedule--closer to the present than you may think, they were still racing through R&D to get the Motion Plus to behave consistently and to have a consistent response; and time means everything for them right now in rolling out this new hardware / software package).

Nintendo not only has its exceptional developers, it also has some brilliant business minds, and I have no doubt in my mind that any suggestion that they take this game online during the development process would have been discarded immediately by those same strategic minds, at Iwata's desk if not long before it reached that point. I'm deeply opposed to the idea that a product should try to cram in as many features as possible to attempt to cover all ground. The most successful products--and the original Wii Sports, you must recall, was the greatest selling console game of all time--are remarkably precise in achieving what they set out to achieve.

Look, if you don't have any friends to play local multiplayer with, I'm not going to judge.
Just kidding. But the thing is, turn based games are cool locally, because you can trash talk and and actually have a conversation with your opponents. But it's kind of lame having to watch some random kid from Japan that I can't talk to or communicate with take his sweet time on the 8th hole of Wii golf, you know what I mean? I'm all for putting online in games where it's practical. I just don't think that Wii Sports Resort is the best option.

@warioswoods & Kid_A: I'm looking at this from almost purely a business perspective. Call it a work-related byproduct, but I'm always looking at these things from that angle, among others.

I wouldn't sacrifice one iota of local multiplayer fun for online functionality in WSR. I'd even understand if there were some games at "the resort" that you could not play online. It would be okay, really. It's just... look, you're going to have MILLIONS of people buying this game. It's a first party title, why not use it to cross-promote your other offerings, increase your attach rates, and boost revenues? Frankly, I'm stunned. The only legitimate reason to leave it out I could guess would be that Nintendo had conversations with 3rd party devs and didn't want to piss off too many of them by not only offering sports games like tennis and golf that are more fun to broader base of players, but also giving those games online playability to salt the injury. But those devs must have had some VERY compelling arguments (e.g. "if you ever want to see another EA title on your precious Wii...).

Funny thing is, I don't really care about the online play more than the next guy. I just thought it could be cool to bowl a game with my nieces and nephews 300 miles away while chatting with them on Wii Speak, telling them about the latest cool game I just downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel. I can't believe I'm the only one in that position. Oh, Nintendo...

And @Kid_A, good joke - but I don't have like a gazillion accessories for remote multiplayer.

Nice contributions from Vendetta and Adam that almost had me convinced. I really don't think Wii Sports Resort was necessarily worth the effort for Nintendo, though I can see the argument otherwise. I doubt it has as much to do with technical issues (though if penetration is even half of the first Wii Sports title that would be a significant hurdle negotiating that many online match-ups). I do think that Wii Fit Plus would be interesting with some kind of online component where distant Wii friends could offer some kind of virtual support by sharing their progress in some way -- maybe having data uploads where you could see how you're all doing in the fight for fitness! Somehow I doubt this will happen though.

@ Wario
I don't understand how VT or GST work better online because they have options. It is the same core game: Tennis. I don't see why you'd assume it would lag for every random match when these similar games can do it. Plus, options are just that: options. You don't have to use an online option. It's optional.

The original Wii Sports did not have online because the servers were not ready yet. It wasn't until the next summer that they were ready, so you can't say that was the goal of Wii Sports to be offline. It wasn't even an option.

Plus, connecting with people is an essentially social thing. Nintendo tried hard to get this point across in their Animal Crossing commercials. I see no reason why they couldn't do the same with what is another very social game. They could even make it FC-only like AC is, which might satisfy you more since the main problem seems to be with random matches.

Also, I never once said that either Sports game was simple to develop, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. The guys who set up the network aren't going to be the same programmers anyway, and it's Nintendo's own console and servers, so it shouldn't take up that much time in comparison with the rest of the project.

That's false; adding online to the games is not just one simple feature, it would be a massive overhaul, requiring every game to be properly programmed and re-optimized to make sense online. I don't believe moving a game online is anything like just taking the same code and making the inputs originate from a server rather than a local controller--instead it's likely the kind of thing that is a fundamental decision at the outset, so that the way you handle everything will be affected by it. EAD spent all their time playing, testing, replaying, and retesting the local gameplay until it felt perfectly smooth in every way (and in Iwata Asks you can read how Miyamoto would regularly call staff members of charge of a particular segment to present the current gameplay to him for an hour or more, and grill and berate them about any minor shortcomings or issues that made it less than a perfectly intuitive experience--this was going on until the very end of their development schedule, with, as usual, the whole team racing to get all the games up to his high standards before the deadline).

Those other games like Virtua Tennis don't just have more options in the sense of play modes, they also try to give a fuller simulation of the sport. Remember, you couldn't even control your character's movements in tennis in Wii Sports, nor could you apply any kind of advanced draw or swings in golf. That's intentional, and was absolutely the right way to handle it: Wii Sports was and is all about reducing the sports in question to something that doesn't require a lengthy explanation of controls, so that you could conceivably ask anyone to join in--be they an older family member, a young one, or someone who just is clueless about games--and still have a great time, essentially competing on a level field, unlike games with advanced controls where the person who knows the game well will always have an enormous advantage (it's like playing an old FPS with someone who doesn't understand "strafing" controls and just keeps coming at you head on). Those games like Virtua Tennis that encourage expertise in the players make sense in an online competition, but the reduced games of Wii Sports simply wouldn't be compelling or enjoyable in the slightest in an online environment. Maybe it would be enjoyable for some people, like yourself, when played with their friends and with Wii Speak etc, but that's such a low number, realistically speaking, that the tremendous shift online play would have required in development could not possibly be worth it, not by any calculation.

If they want to get people online to see the Shop and so forth, this is the worst way I've heard for encouraging it. Instead, they could include some sort of free downloadable extension, or just use a different game to encourage going online, one for which the online experience is actually a good fit.

How is online a massive overhaul? The games would make sense online as they are. You wouldn't have to change the games themselves.

Golf seems like a bad example, too. You couldn't do draws in golf before because the remote wasn't sensitive enough. Now that Motion+ is here, you actually can do this. They demonstrated it on the Nintendo Channel. That only reinforces the fact that the original Sports is not a good precedent because they weren't able to do online at that time.

Nintendo has said that they have a high number of Wiis and DSes connected online, so saying I'm part of a small number is silly. I'll trust Nintendo's word on that. If it were friends-only like AC, there would be no problem with random matches, though I think it's an exaggeration to say there would be a problem in the first place. Mario Kart levels the playing field just as much with its items and simplified motion controls, but that game is online. And just like in Sports, if you get good at it, you can overcome leveling factors.

And just to be clear, I don't think getting people to the shop channel would be anything but a side benefit to the game. I was only explaining Vendetta's idea, not subscribing to it myself. But it should be pretty obvious that Nintendo as a business should want its users online. Otherwise, they wouldn't have included the feature in the console in the first place.

They've said time and again this generation that online is important, but missed opportunities like this send mixed signals. It's perfectly legitimate for reviewers to criticize the company based on the company's own stated goals and something the average review reader cares about a good deal.

I dunno that it is mixed singnals.

I would love online, but I am not broken hearted. For whatever reason, time (remember, it was delayed already, and some are hot and bother over NPC, wink) or concept, they did not include it. It is obviously a family/party type game, and that sould not disqualify it from online, but I also think it is a stretch that it is a missed oppurtunity.

So it is maybe fair criticism. But really games should be reviewed on the goal the game in particular has, not on the reviewers idea of 'potential'. Cause that is opening a real can of worms.....!

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more. Yea, I don't agree with rushing games even if there is a lull in releases, and Miyamoto has said before that he doesn't agree with this either.

But if July was an important deadline and online would have delayed it even a month or two, I could see how that would not be good to the marketing suits at Nintendo, given the summery theme, which I had rather forgotten until just now. That seems like a good enough reason, though unfortunately I'm not a mind reader as Vendetta posits, so who knows what Nintendo's actual reason is.

Doesn't change the fact that a lot of people, especially those on such sites, would like to see such a feature. Of course, whether the game is intended for this type of audience is a different question, but if not, then the reviews shouldn't bother anyone, either. It'd be pointless for IGN or Gamespot to review the game according to the standards of an audience that is hardly to be found in their readership.

Plus, explaining business reasons has nothing to do with reviews or player expectations. If it is financially smart to release games with less features, that doesn't mean fans or reviewers should be happy about it.

Well, their presumpitve audience, perhaps. A lot of people, even some of the losers like us who like to type on forums, lol, don't see online as must have in every game. In any case I think reviews are overrated across the board - they are nice in extreme cases -this game is broken! -, but most of us I think know what we want from experience and reputation of whichever developer and/or franchise, and will go see for ourselves, regardles of score, And if a game like this is bumped score for no online feature it matters even less, this will not stop very many people at all from buying it. People who cannot stand the wii series anyway will use it for further justification, which is fine, that is their taste,

Like I said, I would take the presumptuive delay, and have online, like you, but maybe that was never even on their radar. I would not be surprised either way, it is hard to outguess Nintendo, and especially Shiggy. They really do 'go their own way', just like Fleetwood Mac. They are pretty free from conventional wisdom, and I am sure their success insulates them from what some would consider or market as 'must have' this generation.

Did nobody ask Shiggy about why no online at E-3? I believe he said there was not going to be any in New Super Mario because they had pushed the game engine to the limits already. He could be blowing smoke of ocurse, probably it is fun for him to toy with the media.

Yea, that has got to be blowing smoke. I love how the game looks, but to say that a game that looks just like a DS game is pushing the Wii's limits just sounds silly. Unless the game is actually filled to the brim with levels and there isn't room for online code -- now that would be awesome, though that's not quite what pushing the game engine to its limits would imply.

It's another game like Sports that will almost certainly be better local anyway (then again, what game isn't better locally?), but online would have been nice.

At least I know that when I come home for holidays I'll have no shortage of games to play with my younger siblings and old friends, though it'd be nice if we could play year round.

It seems like all reviewers care about is online play. There are hundreds of games that would be utterly pointless online, yet they still demand online play. Every single time. It's been driving me crazy for maybe five years now!

Concerning the graphics issue, video games were not intended as an art. They are a form of entertainment, something played for fun. Nintendo usually fulfills that requirement. Lately, however, reviewers have been looking for games as realistic as Metal Gear Solid 4 or Grand Theft Auto 4 as the "highest quality" games.

Online does improve the game but i would respect it if they would include local Muiltiplayer aswell cuz Online can be crap as hell.
also no lag and free options.

How is online a massive overhaul? The games would make sense online as they are. You wouldn't have to change the games themselves.

It seems to me that you would. Every game that handles online well is doing some sort of adjustments behind the scenes to cover over the slight lag. In a game like Mario Kart, you see those jerking karts for players with lag, and that moment of sudden adjustment is where the game had been estimating the player's trajectory, and the real trajectory was so far out of alignment that there is no option but to immediately jerk back into place, but even where games seem smooth, a continual process of adjustment is surely taking place in order to give an illusion of perfect continuity where there are in fact breaks. I'm also sure that things like hit detection have to be thought out differently in that context, and rather than each console simply trading inputs over a passive connection, you'll need a server to be the middle man and maintain the "official" version of what is happening.

Again, I believe that every bit of polish you see in the game took a tremendous amount of development and effort all the way up to the deadline, and the deadlines were likely determined from a strategic standpoint of getting Motion Plus out there in an appealing package as quickly as possible. It paid off at E3, where Sony and Microsoft were just showing off concept videos, while Nintendo had their new enhanced motion detection wrapped in a shiny new software package that could be demoed live and show exactly what gameplay is now like with the new tech.

Golf seems like a bad example, too. You couldn't do draws in golf before because the remote wasn't sensitive enough.

That's partly true, they didn't put in draw or fade because it couldn't be detected by motion, but it, along with the automatic movement in tennis, was also a matter of intentional simplification. Other golf games on the Wii have included draw all along, just mapping it to a button or a choice you make before swinging; likewise with moving your character in tennis. With Wii Sports, they refused to add those complications. Now that the remote can pick up the angle of your club face, it meets the standard of simplicity enough to be included.

Nintendo has said that they have a high number of Wiis and DSes connected online, so saying I'm part of a small number is silly.

There are certainly many people who have the Wii online, but I'm saying that the intersection of those users with those who would care about competing in WSR games online is likely very small. WSR should be pinpointing the broadest user base possible in order to get Motion+ into as many homes as possible. The small subset of those who would care about online in the game is a group that already is highly likely to have bought Motion + in another sports package anyhow, and who can already enjoy their tennis or golf online in a more complete package tailored to whichever sport.

It's perfectly legitimate for reviewers to criticize the company based on the company's own stated goals and something the average review reader cares about a good deal.

Not every game should be trying to achieve all these different goals at once. The battle for more online content in order to compete with Sony and Microsoft (and the iPhone I suppose) in that arena is a very different matter from the competition with the same companies to produce the most streamlined, accessible, and popular motion controlled gaming for a wider audience. The former has much more to do with the subset of customers who are gamers of a more dedicated sort, while the latter is aimed at continuing to dominate living rooms of all types. Targeting Wii Sports Resort--the first sequel to the phenomenon of the original game--as closely to the goal of moving their base forward and rejuvenating excitement about social games with motion control is the best thing they can do strategically, and they shouldn't waste resources trying to make this game address online matters as well.

Reviewers should judge the game on what it clearly sets out to achieve, and online is in no way a part of that.

Online, I agree, has plenty of problems. First, everyone has a different web service. Slower connections lead to lag, which can make things unnecessarily difficult.

Second, there is no regulation on skill. Newbies can play against experienced gamers constantly and never win, or experts can play against newbies all the time and always win. Either way, it's a turnoff.

I agree that leaderboards are useless. Joy! I'm in 500th place! But, out of how many? A million? A thousand? Five hundred? If it's 500, I suck.

If there WAS online I wouldn't be upset. But there's not online. There's never going to BE online, so I don't see what the big deal is.

Star Fox, there is regulation for skill online. Nintendo has used rank-based match-making in the past, and it works well. If you don't play well, it will attempt to put you against others of a lower skill level, and when you improve, it'll move you up. It would be well-suited to a game like Resort, too.

Wario, I see what you're saying in general, though as usual I really just have time to skim through each chapter of the post, but I just don't think you can say online play is important and then ignore it in what is probably the company's biggest Wii title. It shouldn't be important sometimes. Nintendo has the resources to get it done, and they should have prioritized the game.

Two huge multi-player games are coming out this year, this and NSMB, and neither has online play. That is definitely a mixed message coming from a company that claims online is important. And that's disappointing because it could have been fun. Oh well.

I agreed with everything you and the guy with the vendetta had said up until now. Miyamoto explained why NSMB Wii wouldn't work well online, and it made perfect sense. Online doesn't make everything better.