But in this case, I feel that Nintendo is taking advantage of the casual gamer. The high price tag proves that, if the casual gamer will buy it, Nintendo will make it. And for the principle of it alone, I hope this product flops, and this is coming from a devout Nintendo fan.

Of course, we could all be surprised by the final result. But my gut instinct is telling me that this is going to be an opportunistic rotten egg.

Um. But that’s exactly the sort of improvisation that real musicians bring to their music! It’s all about the tiny flourishes and alterations in tempo. That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying it does… I think you’re just vastly underestimating the importance of those seemingly small things. That being said, it’s quite possible that the biggest issue is in fact the people demoing it not being very good at “playing” it, or potentially worse, they over reached with the interface design and tried to mimic the instruments too closely instead of trying to better capture the feel aspects of the sound.

You’re quite right that there’s no “gameplay” per se, but this is not a flaw, it’s quite intentional. It’s a toy, not a game. At 50 dollars it’s probably too expensive, and I can give you that. If it were priced at say, 30 bucks though, I think it’s quite fine for doing what it does.

Here, if you watch this, you’ll get a better sense of what I’m talking about, just the first bit, where she goes over technical playing versus expressing feeling by breaking away from the notation.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html

There’s no way a Guitar Hero or Rock Band can pull off what she’s talking about. Because they punish you for breaking away from strict notation. There’s no room for changes in intensity, tempo, additional flourishes that exceed the written music but better capture the *feel* of the music. Wii Music ostensibly attempts to convey those OTHER parts. Whether it succeeds in doing so or not is something *else*.

So if there is any fault in Wii Music, it’s an implementation one, by not having the interface be set up enough, or by not representing the user’s actions well enough. Conceptually, there is no fault, it’s just not what you think it is. Implementation wise, there may be. And they’re hurt here by the fact that really, no one, as far as I know, has attempted to do this before. I’m not saying that Wii Music is actually a good “game” because I haven’t played it. But I am saying that conceptually, there is nothing wrong with it.

That being said, I’m afraid I cannot agree with you. In fact, I can’t even agree with Jack (although I can see the sales numbers being impressive for the first week in Japan). Usually, I’m a “wait and see” kind of guy, even backing the Balance Board upon its announcement despite the lackluster reaction from fans, but there’s so little going on with this title that it’s almost offensively bad.

This “game” has no objective except to make the player feel as if he or she is playing an instrument…sort of. To the knowledge of the gaming public, there is no customization mode that allows you to “create” music, and the movements you make do not even particularly change what’s happening on your screen, other than perhaps whether or not a note plays or even the speed of the music (the latter being doubtful beyond the conductor’s baton). You simply do your best to “play” in time with the music, waving your arms or pressing buttons in whatever fashion the game begs of you. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to pay $50 to play a glorified air guitar.

But maybe I’m being too harsh, right? Perhaps the music will sound great, despite all of the nonsense concerning this backwards interpretation of “gameplay.” Not so much. This game might be half-convincing if the music coming out of your speakers actually sounded appealing. Unfortunately, instead of some form of orchestrated, studio-recorded music, you’re stuck listening to horrible MIDI versions of songs that sounded lightyears better in their original forms. Don’t get me wrong, digitally-created MIDI music can go a long way (thank you very much, Twilight Princess), but the samples that have been presented to us thus far are really atrocious. Nintendo has the money and resources to do better than that. It’s time they started using them.

It should go without saying that, if you had the chance to watch the Nintendo Press Conference at E3 (particularly if you watched it live, like I did), the presentation of Wii Music was embarrassing. Never have I squirmed in my chair and wished something would hurry up and end before I explode more than Nintendo’s Press Conference. Watching the gaggle of Nintendo execs and creatives wiggle and waggle their entire beings all over the stage was hard to watch because it was so uninteresting, so…so lame that I could hardly believe my eyes. The “joy” that said folks were conveying was clearly contrived and stale. And personally, I don’t like making a fool of myself when I’m playing a video game. Surely this embarrassment of a product couldn’t be what Miyamoto was so proud of? Which brings me to my next point.

I think another reason many of us are so distraught over Wii Music is that we’ve come to expect great things from Miyamoto. Not all of his games are masterpieces, but all of them are well-made and fun to play. We’ve never had to be Miyamoto-apologists until now. It’s a shame to see such genius wasted on an underwhelming game when he could be making something so much better.

Finally, what it all boils down to is that Nintendo should not be putting its faith in such a half-boiled product this holiday season. They would be wiser to release Wii Sports Resort with MotionPlus and push Wii Music into next year, perhaps as filler during the usual “game drought,” or even to further work on it and make it a better product, because there’s definitely potential. I hate watching my favorite game-maker make such a terrible decision.

But in the end, it probably won’t be much of a dent even if it bombs. That’s something I’ve come to realize – being the number 1 console on the market allows you to take undeniably stupid risks. I just hope they haven’t started a trend.

The game wants you to improvise, to play with the music until you figure out how various things effect the sound you’re hearing; how the flourishes and timings improve or detract from the sound. It’s not trying to replicate what it’s like to play an instrument as much as it’s trying to get you to *feel* the music. It’s not about the mechanics of playing in time, it’s about more about getting across the way that a true musician will add feeling to their music rather than about following notation. It’s a very different angle. And Miyamoto felt it so important that the game be about feel than he cut out the parts that don’t let you focus on that; the need to play individual notes, the score systems, being able to fail at the song and have to stop mid way through. They’re all gone because they all detract from what’s trying to be expressed.

Trying to compare this to Guitar Hero or Rock Band is inane. In both you need to play perfectly in time or you fail. There’s no real room for a sense of “creating” the music in either; only for a sense of playing it. You cannot insert yourself into the music in those two games, you can only be technically proficent at replicating it. They do not do anything that Wii Music does, and Wii Music does nothing that they do. A more valid comparison is actually something like the creature creator from Spore, only with music instead of creature parts. It’s about unleashing the players’ creativity and sense of wonder, not making them perform difficult tasks that may give them a sense of achievement upon completing but ultimately do nothing for them except improve their coordination and manual dexterity.

Miyamoto is trying, though whether he succeeds or not is to be seen, to enrich the player on a much different level than Guitar Hero or Rock Band does. The intent is that you think about what makes the music sound good, not what makes you technically proficient at playing it. You’re all coming at this from completely the wrong angle.

They’re doing their own thing with this game and we’ll only really know what it’s like when we’ve seen the full package.