• 8Feb 13

  Innovation; Dead in the Water?

  As an addendum I would like to state I am merely making subjective and general observations. I know that not every single gamer falls into such categories. Unfortunately the majority do. I also put a bit of praise towards Nintendo for trying to at least think outside of the box. They aren't impervious to cynicism; as much as I'd like to think they are being incredibly innovative they still rely on established IP's and release and remake just as frequently as other publishers and developers.
  
  This current generation has really opened my eyes to the flaws of gamers in general. Gamers no longer care about innovative gameplay and features; they want the exact same experience repeated ad infinitum. This is backed by the countless titles that, despite receiving stellar reviews, failed to sell enough to keep the developers out of the red. What are gamers most looking forward to; the next GTA or COD. Games that have hardly had a creative idea since their inception years ago.
  
  Let's look at Nintendo now. When they released the Wii they had an idea of making a system that deviated from the norm. How many developers fully embraced this and created games that utilized it fully? Not very many, much to the detriment of the system. The Wii mostly received water downed ports of popular IP's which poorly tacked on the gimmick of the console. This isn't to say Nintendo didn't have any of the blame for the lack of great games on the Wii. Most of the games released were horrible fitness games and poorly designed party games. There hasn't been this much shovelware for a console since Atari. The depressing part of this is Japan had seen many stellar games; but Nintendo of America was dense and forgot to advertise and release them outside of the land of the rising sun.
  
  The Wii U was there next step in trying to innovate the gaming scene. This time they wanted to rectify the mistakes they made with the Wii. Establish a repertoire with amazing developers to create games on their system. So what happened ? Most of the launch titles were poorly made ports for the Wii U. The developers put the bare minimum amount of effort to integrate the controller with the gameplay and even less effort in making sure the games ran smoothly. It's not helping the Wii U's case that so many anticipated games have no release date as of yet. Compounded on that Ubisoft recently decided to make an exclusive title cross platform and delay the Wii U's version for seven months. Aside from all this; most modern gamers only care about one thing and that is of course power. Tim Taylor would be a proud.
  
  I feel disheartened knowing that the majority of gamers out there base the worth of a console solely on its horsepower. The tragic truth is that this new generation of consoles are already on ancient technology when it comes performance. They won't even be close to a gaming PC created years ago. If gamers truly just wanted graphical superiority they should really invest in a gaming PC. Of course that would cost thousands of dollars and hundreds of dollars every couple of months to keep up with the technology. No one said being a PC gamer was cheap!
  
  I would love if every console had a specific gimmick that separated it from the herd. Instead of Microsoft and Sony being sheep and just adding a new processor and graphic card in their next generation; they really should try to shake the pot. Force publishers to fund developers to create new and innovative experiences. Stop them from copying and pasting the exact same game across multiple consoles. Isn't it depressing that the only difference between PlayStation and Xbox is a handful of exclusive titles. Wouldn't it be a better place when gaming discussions boil down to which system has the more fun and innovative mechanics instead of which system processes shadow quality slightly more realistically.
  • Posted Feb 8, 2013 11:31 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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