So. I've had Grand Theft Auto for the PSP for two days now. My current conclusion is that Nintendo better get their "quirky" thing rolling, because they've really just definitively lost any hope of winning in the traditional market. GTA has some flaws but c'mon - it's GTA on a handheld. With multiplayer. Game over man, game over.
I actually have a lot of respect for what Nintendo has been saying about doing different games, engaging different customers and so forth. But what they've been doing is a different matter. We haven't had a top notch Mario game in . . . nine years (Sunshine was OK, but not classic in any sense). Instead we have Mario in DDR, Mario in soccer, Mario in baseball, Mario branded onto any number of things. We have Metroid Pinball, but we don't have an actual Metroid game. Does this look like franchise milking to anybody else?
It seems to me that Nintendo just gave up on the console market, accepting a very small (and in my opinion non-sustainable) role. They still make some great games, but each year it seems like they make a few less, and I don't see how they think their brands are renewing with new customers. At the time I thought they did that to focus on the enormously-more-profitable handheld market. Then came Sony.
So if the future of gaming is touch screen, it's high time to show me good touch screen games. If the future of gaming is two screens, show me games that do something other than treat them as one big screen, or simply show an overhead map on the other. 'Cause if you made me bet right now my bet is that the future of gaming is great 3D worlds in a game that needs scads of storage space. And you can't do that on Nintendo.
I actually have a lot of respect for what Nintendo has been saying about doing different games, engaging different customers and so forth. But what they've been doing is a different matter. We haven't had a top notch Mario game in . . . nine years (Sunshine was OK, but not classic in any sense). Instead we have Mario in DDR, Mario in soccer, Mario in baseball, Mario branded onto any number of things. We have Metroid Pinball, but we don't have an actual Metroid game. Does this look like franchise milking to anybody else?
It seems to me that Nintendo just gave up on the console market, accepting a very small (and in my opinion non-sustainable) role. They still make some great games, but each year it seems like they make a few less, and I don't see how they think their brands are renewing with new customers. At the time I thought they did that to focus on the enormously-more-profitable handheld market. Then came Sony.
So if the future of gaming is touch screen, it's high time to show me good touch screen games. If the future of gaming is two screens, show me games that do something other than treat them as one big screen, or simply show an overhead map on the other. 'Cause if you made me bet right now my bet is that the future of gaming is great 3D worlds in a game that needs scads of storage space. And you can't do that on Nintendo.