Video Games: Guess what, Wii Fit sucks

Wii Virus

A while back, the President of Epic games compared the Nintendo Wii to a virus. Basically, he explained that the Wii was the perfect PR hype machine. It’s the kind of product everyone talks about, but once they own, they stop playing it. As an early adopter of the Wii, unfortunately, I’d have to agree. Essentially, the Wii’s endless hype, and subsequent retail dominance can be traced to two factors: first experience and word-of-mouth.

First experience basically means that the Wii is built to be awesome when you first try it. Who can’t remember trying out Wii sports tennis for the first time and being blown away by how much fun it was to swing the remote? The problem is, this experience doesn’t become more rewarding the more you play the game – if anything it stays the same or drops as familiarity leads to tedium. The reason for this is that Wii sports is a casual game, and by nature, it’s game play is shallow. There’s no real progress and there’s no real depth to continually playing. It’s the same exact game each time you turn it on.

However, because the first experience is totally awesome, it leads to a lot of positive word-of-mouth. Here’s the typical scenario: Your friends try Wii at a friend’s house, and the next you thing you know, they’re telling everyone how great it was. It’s not reflective of actually owning the Wii, but that hardly matters. The word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire, increasing demand, decreasing supply, which just reinforces the cycle.

Wii aren’t Fit

Now, here comes the Wii fit to replicate the experience of Wii Sports. It’s the same exact situation. There’s uncontrollable hype for the game because it is a lot of fun to play for the first 10-15 minutes. Add in promises of getting fit and you have another game that’s being driven by word of mouth. The reality however, is that Wii fit is just as shallow as Wii Sports and owning it, isn’t nearly as fun as just trying it. The evidence can be seen in growing dissatisfied Amazon posts or the huge number of gamers who are already giving up on Wii Fit’s fitness programs.

Couple this with the fact that the Wii is still struggling to sell third-party games and my earlier prediction still holds strong. I feel strongly that the Wii’s innovation, while unique and needed in the video game market, simply isn’t enough.

The Wii’s technical limitations mean that it’s not appealing for most developers who are concentrating on next-generation titles. Add that to the fact that the Wii’s glut of cheap imitation games makes it different for its consumers to choose quality games – resulting in people only buying name brand games (Nintendo games) means that third-party developers will be less willing to design games that just won’t sell.

Wii Music Too Casual for Casual Gamers?

With the release of Wii Music this week, a lot of gamers are paying special attention to how it’s received by the general public. Why would that be?

Because, for many gamers, Wii Music is symbolic of Nintendo’s movement away from traditional “games.” When it was first presented at E3, the buzz was hardly positive. With no rules and essentially no way to win at the game, some critics considered it nothing but a toy. For core gamers, it seemed outright alien. It was a game you couldn’t play.

Now, the release imminent, gamers are wondering whether Nintendo’s full shift to casual will replicate the successes of Wii Play and Wii Fit. If the game does well, it could very well mean the end of core Nintendo games. After all, the games will go where the money goes.

So with that in mind, it’s interesting to see that the game’s launch in New York was pretty tame by Nintendo’s standards. As Kotaku wondered aloud, does a poor launch mean that Wii Music is the first failure in Nintendo’s casual foray, or does it just mean that casual gamers aren’t likely to attend launch events. I have my own thoughts on Wii music – and they go down like this:

I have a suspicion that Wii music won’t be successful (or as successful as Nintendo’s other casual games) and the reason is that it’s too casual for even casual gamers.

The problem is, casual gamers are already used to rhythm-based games and these games are not nearly as casual as Wii Music.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band are phenomenal successes and certainly a large reason for that is their wide adoption by those that fit into the casual game territory. As Gamesutra points out, the term causal game is pretty broad and Guitar Hero and Rock Band definitely fall under the genre. What that means is that a large percentage of the people Nintendo has targeted previously with the likes of Wii Play and Wii Fit have likely played a plastic guitar or drum set before.

That said, these people are already familiar with the structures of these games, which arguably are a grey area between casual and non-casual. Sure, you can pick up Guitar Hero and just start playing, but it adheres to some pretty traditional structures, such as points, bonuses for doing well, and penalties or ending the game for failing. Though the rhythm and music components of these games give them a broad appeal, they still play like core games.

Now, Nintendo is trying to entice this audience to play a similar rhythm and music-based game, except without the need for points, or even winning. I would argue that this won’t appeal to casual gamers coming up on Guitar Hero or Rock Band because they’ve already been socialized by these other game structures – they’ve come to expect points for playing well and losing for not playing well – and by removing this aspect of the game, you are removing one of the, now, key reasons they play it.

I could certainly be proven wrong this December at the registers, but I’m betting that the people Nintendo hopes will play Wii Music are the same ones saving up to get Guitar Hero and Rock Band instead.

Wii Music Struggles to Sell

As I suggested in my previous post, Wii Music is competing in a market where casual gamers already feel that Rock Band and Guitar Hero are casual enough.

As this recent news post from Wired suggests, Wii Music is struggling to make the same kind of sales that came with Wii Sports or Wii Fit.

Perhaps it's just a minor miscalculation by Nintendo in terms of finding the right audience, or perhaps, Wii Music's struggles are a sign of bigger trends to come. I'll always applaud Nintendo for attempting to break out of the mold, but even so, I think there's danger in relying solely on a casual audience - sure it's a big market of people, but it's a fickle market too.