I'd like to take up a further conversation, but I've a column to finish. I do want to ask you about the bolded part here.
I may have made the sentence a little difficult to understand. metalslimer was saying that Nintendo could've been called dumb by shifting the Wii to "completely forego traditional console" gaming. Before addressing the point about being called dumb, I wanted to completely rebuff the idea that Nintendo had foregone traditional console gaming as this was totally not the case. Nintendo absolutely still had traditional console gaming on Wii, but they 1) often added some motion into the mix for better or worse and 2) didn't join the HD tech era for that traditional console gaming with Wii. They just added the new non-traditional gamer/casual gamer stuff (e.g. Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit) to the mix of their traditional franchise titles (e.g. Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda, Metroid). They still provided a traditional gaming environment, at least through the early years. (Support across both sides has faded in the last few years, though.)
Do you think that if Nintendo had pitched the Wii in a different way, one that pointed out it could do traditional hardcore gaming (albeit not necessarily everything the Xbox 360 and PS3 were doing) and new control methods, that it would have turned out differently?
They would
say that in interviews, and they would
show that with their games. But when it came to
advertising, they went with the casual angle mostly, yes. Nintendo stated a few times in the early parts of Brain Age/Wii launch that reaching the non-traditional market required a much larger marketing budget than reaching the traditional market. I think they could've found a much better balance than what they did, though, absolutely, in how the advertised Wii games.
Metroid Prime 3 was a huge example. Back in August 2007, it was like Nintendo was all the way ignoring the launch. They had that Metroid Prime Wii Channel, which only the active internet-connected Wii owners might've even had a chance of knowing about, and they mixed in Metroid Prime 3 with the "Wii would like to play" guys, which was probably a mistake (mixed messages as to what the focus was; traditional/non-traditional). However, there wasn't a big marketing push for the game, and you pretty much had to be looking for it to even know it was coming. Therefore the fact that it took the first real big step is showing the value of FPS gaming with the Wiimote was overlooked by anyone who wasn't looking for it in the first place. Of course even if they had gone all out on MP3, it wouldn't have made CoD4 come to Wii in 2007, which was the driving force for FPSs in the generation.
That is, do you think evangelizing the system in the right way could have changed the tide?
If they had pushed more with advertising and evangelizing their own traditional efforts, it might've helped some, but third-parties were still geared up big time for HD development (i.e. the logical next step after PS2 generation). Therefore, Nintendo still would've needed to incentivize certain games (e.g. CoD4 in 2007) to come to Wii
along with upping their own efforts to make known the traditional gaming abilities of Wii. Really, Nintendo was sort of screwed the moment they decided to focus on going off the beaten path with motion/pointer controls being the main face of the system (remember that the nunchuk was only added later after teams like Retro begged Nintendo to include it) instead of doing that
and following along the HD tech race. HD development needs mutli-platform, so an HD Wii would've gotten a lot of that support just as a matter of course, if it was an easy port job to the system.
Advertising alone wouldn't have made up that gap, though, no, in my opinion, but it probably wouldn't have hurt.
And obviously it's a very big seller.