Via the NeoGAF forums, courtesy of HylianTom, we have news today that 1up.com is taking a calculated risk and will not be focusing on Nintendo or those people who own its systems.
You can judge the grammatically challenged exchange (not because of Tom, as you’ll see) for yourself after the jump.
The exchange:
Over at NeoGAF this morning, I read an article about the Dewey’s Adventure review over at 1Up.com.
It didn’t take long for someone to suggest that 1Up hire people who are actually interested in Wii games. I had to throw my two bits in:
“Naaah.. that would make too much sense. I think it would be a fiscally wiser decision for 1Up/Ziff-Davis to continue ignoring/alienating next-gen’s largest userbase.”
This actually prompted a response from Luke Smith himself:
“Wait a second, I thought the Wii was expanding the Market and selling to alpha moms? I don’t think alpha moms are driving traffic to enthusiast websites. Now if the Wii is just selling to the hardcore, then your point is valid, but Nintendo’s market-broadening efforts and success aren’t exactly catered to by the enthusiast press. Some website or start-up should absolutely try and capitalize on that expansion.
“See, even if Ziff was alienating/ignoring the Wii’s userbase (and their [sic] not), but the Wii’s market-fresh expanded userbase doesn’t know they [1up] exist, it doesn’t matter and your attempted point becomes fanboy nonsense.”
Funny that my post elicited a response from him.
It seems to me that, in making fundamental assumptions about the Wii demographic’s composition,
1Up is taking a calculated risk with such a move. (Kinda like many third parties, now that I think about it..)
What we can conclude from this is that 1up.com does not consider Nintendo’s Wii or its expanded audience to be an integral part of gaming. I can say this because of the site’s own tagline: “Where gamers call home.” Can you imagine a legitimate news agency ignoring an entire sect of people simply because they’re new and different? Can you imagine them trying to sustain that strategy if someone who covers the same industry starts covering that group of people?
The thing is, people who have not gamed before, or who were put off from it for the past five years or so, are in fact searching for information on gaming today. Google traffic reflects this, as do small town newspaper articles posted online, etc etc etc. And their numbers increase every day. That a company or web site would actively and condescendingly brag that it is purposefully not addressing them is too much for words. I’d say it’s sad, but it’s kind of funny, so I won’t.
Nintendo may do all sorts of things differently, but in the end all of these things don’t make them any less of a gaming company than the others.. which leads back to my original point: if 1Up is going to call themselves a general gaming site, they need to cover ALL gaming. Either that, or be honest about it and advertise/label appropriately.
Thanks for the link to NWR.. I’m taking a peek at it now. Looks really nice! How have I not found this site yet?
It used to be called PlanetGamecube.com. You have been to it under that name.
Sorry, you “MAY” have been to it under that name.
Good correction on the “mindshare” numbers. It probably is better to use North American numbers when talking about 1UP’s target market…
But oddly, gaming coverage rarely seems to reflect those percentages – with or without handheld coverage included – as Sony seems to be commanding a lion’s share of enthusiast media attention despite a lack of strong software up to this point. (After sitting through the hype machine and prerelease fanboy praise for several lackluster PS3 titles, I might be more jaded now than at the start of summer.)
Agenda?
Not likely.
Journalists letting their personal excitement for one console shine through?
Probably.
Disappointing for those more interesting in other gaming platforms? Definitely.
“Look, I’m not saying it isn’t disappointing. I would like more coverage for Wii games as well, but the difference is that I understand why it’s not there. It’s not some unspoken jealousy or bias inherent in the enthusiast community. The products coming from Nintendo largely aren’t aimed at them.”
I disagree with two things in this statement.
First: Although not jealous, the enthusiast community certainly is biased. Consider the upcoming Medal of Honor game: how is rolling your eyes and saying “finally” unbiased, when this game should provide a unique gaming experience for console systems?
Second: The assessment that Wii products aren’t aimed at the 1UP audience, so Wii lackluster coverage is understandable misses the point. If Wii isn’t their target market, then either: (a) expand their target market and improve the quality of their Wii content, or (b) eliminate the half-assed coverage and focus on the current PS3/360 target market. Trying to keep everyone happy, but some more than others, is a losing affair.
One final thing:
Regarding the “lack of material” to discuss about for Wii, that is silly. Nintendo first-party games are often held quiet… but there are more than enough third-party developers working on projects. There is no problem getting information and interviews from those developers about PS3 and 360 projects. Only a lack of interest could explain why Wii doesn’t see the same efforts being made.
Suggesting that upcoming Wii games don’t fit their bias towards serious games does hold weight, however…
Hey Guys I’m new here been lurking for a while but I had to post something on this a little food for thought.
I simply want to pose the question why are people so mad that a supposed majority of Wii owners are “casual” (I hate that term), which for that matter nobody has demonstrated (especially with the huge amount of people who purchased Zelda in North America), but most didn’t care that the vast majority of PS2 owners were casual and only bought one in order to play a couple of hours of Madden (or FIFA in my area) a week?
I find this extremely interesting. Is it Nintendo’s stated purpose of selling to the masses? Or were people a whole lot more patient back then and waited quietly for the 20-30 hour a week games to be developed?
1up has always focused more on Sony and Xbox. Even after the DS Lite hit and the DS was quickly becoming the most popular handheld, 1up’s coverage favored the PSP. So, this is not a surprising move to me.
I am a hardcore gamer, generally spending 3-4 hours a day during the week and more than that on the weekend. I don’t leave home without a handheld system – ever. I bought the Wii exclusively thanks to the promise of more interesting ways to play, Nintendo’s great first party games, the promise of SNK support and some other great games that I know are coming. The VC also played a large role in my decision, since I’m a serious retro gamer. The promise of NeoGeo on the VC has me salivating. When I was making this decision, I looked at several factors: 1. the 360 hardware is faulty and the game library is generally PC/western style games. I prefer arcade and Japanese games and I require quality hardware. 2. The PS3 is overpriced, and I am by no means poor, and it has no games I’m interested in. The Wii/DS combo will keep even the most hardcore player busy.
1up is being very short-sighted here – but they are sister to EGM, which complained about hand-painted backgrounds in Baten Kaitos and eternally lost my respect. A business, whether its a publication or a developer – cannot ignore an industry leader if it wishes to remain successful.
I think the Wii will become the gateway drug of consoles. A few friends of mine have bought a Wii after playing Wii Sports at my house and also picked up several other games while at it. Video games are for everyone; the trick is illustarting how much fun can be had with them.
“Why can’t I “cherry pick†my market?”
People with weak arguments have to cherry pick their data. People with strong arguments use all the data they can.
“Do you deny that casual gamers exist?”
Do you know what an arcade style game is? Where it focuses on pick up and play nature that is easy to learn but hard to master? Apparently not. Casual Pong succeeding over hardcore Computer Space shows who the real cash cow of this industry really is and always will be.
The term “casual games” is saying that these Wii expanded audience games are ABNORMAL to ‘regular gaming’. This is not true. Rather, they are the bread and butter of gaming, they are the ‘regular gaming’ while the huge long games are niche.
“You say it’s the return of arcade style play, but people don’t go to the arcade every day. People go there once every few months, maybe every few weeks at best.”
Dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about. The arcades are dead in America.
“The type of gamer that Nintendo is creating, is not one who anticipates future releases, and visits blogs like these.”
I know Go Nintendo has received an upsurge in traffic with the Wii. RawMeatCowboy has posted emails from those soccer moms. Other sites are surely benefiting as well. But also very important is that many of these new gamers graduate to more complex titles as all the data from Japan showed with the DS phenomenon.
To ignore a potential market and possibilities to grow one’s readership is pretty poor business. But that is OK as the game industry is filled with stupid. You have to laugh at how so many publishers are kicking themselves for not doing what Nintendo did: finding a way to make cheaper games that sell more.
“This is why Nintendo was labled “kiddieâ€; because to a large extent the label fit.”
So if one said that Xbox is nothing but a Halo box, that would be true since the label ‘fits’? Of course not. Only someone who does not want to pry deep into why the Xbox exists would just sum it up in such a small phrase. This is the same for the Gamecube.
Remember Phil Harrison mocking the DS as he was saying ‘poor Nintendo’ but at least the DS would sell to those who liked Pokemon (little kids). Boy, did he eat major crow on that statement. Had he, and others, had studied Nintendo beyond the ‘kiddie’, the DS would not have been a surprise to him (or to the analysts).
“The products that they truly want – the Halo games and the Final Fantasy games – they’re not done making those.”
Yes they are. The blockbuster Hollywood business model is not sustainable anymore. Look at Final Fantasy sales decline with each game as the costs keep going up.
I am trying to get you to understand that the Hollywood Business model, which the game industry has unwisely been imitating, can no longer work. The Cinema Cycle is coming to an end.
“And as long as there are games magazines like EGM and Game Informer, these will be more associated with video games than whatever you expect the “new wave†of gaming journalism to be.”
Print media said the same about online sites. And online sites said the same about blogs and forums. Viva la disruption.
“but the gamers making up the expanded community that you speak of are never going to have the level of interest to seek out a website, a podcast, a magazine.”
They already are.
“They are not going to go to video game websites, post on blogs, and give more than a few minutes a week worth of thought to video games.”
I am a casual gamer who rarely plays games.
“They own a Wii, they think it’s fun, but they also think Horseshoes is fun, and they don’t spend much time thinking about that either.”
You are insulting them. Don’t you see that hate bounces? The more the ‘hardcore’ hate the expanded audience, the more the mainstream keeps kicking Sony and Microsoft (as E3 2007 coverage showed).
What you must understand is that the games you like are seen as ‘nongames’ to the expanded audience. Where you might see Wii Sports as a waste of time and Halo 3 as the thing, they would see Halo 3 as a waste of time and Wii Sports as the thing.
Hardcore are not kings. They do not define what a game is or should be. The market does. Hardcore do not ring a bell and get what they want on a silver platter. They do not have slaves of developers waiting to do whatever they desire.
“These are not the consumers that will drive the industry.”
They are driving the industry right now. They practically ARE the industry in Japan as well. Wake up.
“And for the record, your attempt at saying that Super Mario Bros. was coming along at a time when the computer RPGS were king is pretty flawed, since Super Mario Bros. is really just a natural progression of some of the most popular video games ever – Pac Man, Defender, Donkey Kong, and Space Invaders. The transition to NES wasn’t nearly as “revolutionary†as you make it out to be.”
Do you even think before you type? Pac Man, Defender, Donkey Kong, and Space Invaders were arcade games. Long epic computer games such as Ultima were NOT ARCADE GAMES. The NES disrupted much of computer gaming at the time. My article “Drowning in the Blue Ocean” goes into this in more detail. What you fail to grasp is that computer gamers thought the Atari and arcade games were for “stupid people” (what hardcore project when they sneer ‘casual gamers’). Computer games overshot the market with their complexity and abstraction. They ignored kids and their families. This allowed a disruptor, Nintendo, to come in. As the NES sold to this ignored demographic, it eventually seeped over and began cannibalizing many of the computer gaming at that time. (Which is why EA jumped all over the Genesis when it came out.)
The Wii is selling to that audience the competitors have overshot and ignored. What will happen is that the Wii will begin cannibalizing much of the Xbox 360 and PS3 software. As Wii becomes market leader, more and more software moves to Wii at the expense of the other systems.
The avalanche is already falling; it is too late for the hardcore pebbles to vote.
*sigh*
“People with weak arguments have to cherry pick their data. People with strong arguments use all the data they can.”
People with strong arguments do not use data that is not appropriate. This conversation is about what coverage is appropriate for Nintendo products on a site like 1UP. Therefore, we look to see what types of games 1UP covers, and the answer is games in the North American market. It’s not cherry picking, it’s using the data appropriate to the problem. That you fail to understand this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your misunderstanding of the discussion.
“Do you know what an arcade style game is? Where it focuses on pick up and play nature that is easy to learn but hard to master? Apparently not. Casual Pong succeeding over hardcore Computer Space shows who the real cash cow of this industry really is and always will be.”
I understand what an arcade style game is, and why Pong beat Comptuer Space. I also understand that this was 35 or so years ago, and hardly relevant to this discussion. Maybe Computer Space would have stood a chance if it had PS3 visuals. You can’t say it wouldn’t have, because you don’t know that. You can only surmise, and that doesn’t create truth. It just creates opinion, something you are obviously full of.
“Dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about. The arcades are dead in America.”
That’s my point. If Wii is recreating the arcade experience, and arcades are dying, then what does that say about the future of Wii?
“I know Go Nintendo has received an upsurge in traffic with the Wii. RawMeatCowboy has posted emails from those soccer moms. Other sites are surely benefiting as well. But also very important is that many of these new gamers graduate to more complex titles as all the data from Japan showed with the DS phenomenon.”
Have they recieved an upsurge of traffic that is consistent with the upswing in Nintendo’s business? Has their traffic tripled? Has their traffic reached numbers that were impossible to imagine a year or two ago? If not, then perhaps there are other reasons for their traffic increase, such as enthusiast gamers, checking in to see what Nintendo games are upcoming now that they’re the market leader. What data do you have to support your claim that new gamers are moving on to more complex titles? Perhaps it is happening in Japan, but I am talking about the American market. That is the market I live in, the market I understand, and the market that is relevant to this discussion. Show me increased sales of Metroid Prime 3, and I will agree that new gamers are moving on to complex gaming experiences.
“I am a casual gamer who rarely plays games.”
You are one. One who obviously feels very passionate about the subject. That does not make you a case study for the majority.
“So if one said that Xbox is nothing but a Halo box, that would be true since the label ‘fits’? Of course not. Only someone who does not want to pry deep into why the Xbox exists would just sum it up in such a small phrase. This is the same for the Gamecube.”
If the largest percentage of Xbox titles had the word “Halo” in the name, then yes – it would make that true. As I stated above – the perception that Gamecube was “Kiddie” was due to a higher percentage of all ages titles. The Xbox is percieved as a shooter system due to a higher percentage of games where you shoot things. Perception leads to reality in these cases.
“Yes they are. The blockbuster Hollywood business model is not sustainable anymore. Look at Final Fantasy sales decline with each game as the costs keep going up. I am trying to get you to understand that the Hollywood Business model, which the game industry has unwisely been imitating, can no longer work. The Cinema Cycle is coming to an end.”
If declining sales meant that these types of games were done with, there wouldn’t BE an Xbox 360. Is it not clear to you by now that Microsoft doesn’t care how much money they lose trying to establish the Xbox 360 as a market leader? I will not deny that perhaps these games are becoming more niche, but that doesn’t mean that they are on the way out. How many copies of Halo 3 did they sell this week? How many copies of Bioshock did they sell last month? Maybe the sales of Final Fantasy are declining because they’ve released 13 iterations of the same game, and gamers are catching on. There are other factors in play here that you refuse to recognize.
“Hardcore are not kings. They do not define what a game is or should be. The market does. Hardcore do not ring a bell and get what they want on a silver platter. They do not have slaves of developers waiting to do whatever they desire.”
Again, how many copies of Halo 3 sold this week? Did it outsell Carnival Games? Feel free to point to Wii Play as an example of software being bought en masse by the expanded market, but that is a $10 title being masqueraded as a $50 dollar purchase. Maybe if Halo 3 sold for $60 with a free controller, it would have shattered every record one could shatter.
“They are driving the industry right now. They practically ARE the industry in Japan as well. Wake up.”
We are not talking about Japan, because Japan is a different market, with a different culture. Much of what you are saying has a lot more truth in Japan. Your idea to shrug off the North American market is pretty ridiculous – there’s a lot of money in that market.
“Do you even think before you type? ”
Yes, I think “How can I get Mal to sit down and type 15,000 words trying to make me shut up.” And then I go get an ice cold soda, and take a giant dump on my keyboard. Now who’s throwing hate around?
“The NES disrupted much of computer gaming at the time.”
Show me where, at the time, computer gaming was the norm, and driving the industry. The NES didn’t disrupt anything, because arcade games such as Donkey Kong and Pac Man WERE the industry going in. Your analogy for NES disruption only counts if Super Mario Bros was something new and different to the public, and the industry at large, and it wasn’t. The guys playing Ultima made up a small percentage of the crowd compared to the guys playing Pac Man at their local Pizza Parlor. When you compare that to the number of people who played GTA III in 2002 versus the number of people playing Wii Sports now, obviously the difference is greater now. The Wii has done a good job of disrupting things, sure. But to say that the NES was a meteor that changed the direction of the industry a complete 180 is simply not true. SMB jumpstarted the industry, which was not doing well at the time, but it wasn’t with new ideas, it was with slick execution and amazing gameplay. It was polish on a foundation that was already established.
“The avalanche is already falling; it is too late for the hardcore pebbles to vote.”
Tell that to the 4 million people who bought Halo 3. From One Retailer. Before it even launched. Without a free controller.
Man, Jack is so fast to point a finger. If only 360/PS3 fanboys gave a damn about you, your opinion and/or this site.
You are 10 times worst than that guy. I don’t know if your trying to make yourself feel better at the fact that this guy is semi closed minded compared to your completely shut mind.
He reviews games he plays, you talk trash on anything that is not Nintendo or is not Pro-Nintendo and never even play it. Great way to stir up comments however.
Your mentality: All Nintendo games should be 10′s and all 360/PS3 games should be 7.5 or lower for not being Nintendo.
How uninteresting you are, and semi pathetic.
I bet Shiggy plays Halo, would that make you cry or say “God no, it can’t be true!!!!”.
Nintendo is a company making executive decisions and selling to a market. They don’t care about you or your crusade to protect their marketable name. So get over it.
This may be a blast from the past, but Malstrom really tooled ya Drew.
You didn’t even address most of his points and showed a complete lack of understanding about this industry’s history.
And you also whip out Halo 3′s somewhat impressive sales as some kind of cure-all for debate about “hardcore vs. casual.” Till now it sold about 6-7 million worldwide. That’s good, except when you consider it in the whole picture, where Nintendogs and Wii Sports have both sold 17 million copies around the world, along with Brain Training at 10 million and other assorted “dismissed” “non-gamer-non-core-casual” whatever titles. Halo 3 is small potatoes in comparison, especially considering the mega-millions it took to develop and market, whereas Brain Training took a team of 6 guys and 4 months on a budget of $10,000 or so. That’s why Nintendo is pulling in BILLIONS of dollars while Microsoft is losing them, even with highly televised launch line midnight parties.
Halo 3′ 4 million at the launch is squat. Mario 64 sold 11 million and somehow didn’t save its console from a 2nd place finish. I certainly remember magazines that had catered to the SNES hardcores suddenly switching to Playstation in order to welcome the new market.
“I also understand that this was 35 or so years ago, and hardly relevant to this discussion. Maybe Computer Space would have stood a chance if it had PS3 visuals.”
And crap like this just shows your absolutely profound ignorance. Computer Space was basically a university toy/tech demo that required huge mainframes to even run. Pong was a game that ran on an Atari 2600. Only a few people got to even play Computer Space, while Pong was freely available to everyone, which is why everybody remembers Pong and only a few select game historians like Malstrom even remember Computer Space. The very idea that you think VISUALS had something to do with it just shows this point went right over your head and you simply do not understand.
“But to say that the NES was a meteor that changed the direction of the industry a complete 180 is simply not true.”
IT IS TRUE, idiot. The games market CRASHED a year earlier, with most saying the future of games would forever be on the 16-bit computersystems like the Atari ST and the Amiga. They said consoles were not viable ever again. THIS IS ALL DOCUMENTED.
This wasn’t really a fair argument for you. You came in unarmed and tried to bluster your way through it. The pathetic part is that you do not even comprehend how irrelevant you are.