Nintendo's Dual-Screen Fetish

[Nester the Lark]

We touched on this a bit in the third-party forum, but YL brought up how no one, not even Nintendo, seems to know what to do with the screen on the Wii U Gamepad. I mentioned how it's part of a strange "dual-screen fetish" that Nintendo has had since the GameCube with its GBA connectivity. (And before someone calls me out on this, the dual-screen Game & Watches from the '80s may have inspired the DS, but they're not directly part of the modern trend.)

So, it's kind of funny and interesting, and I wanted to talk about it and see what you guys had to say. The Wii U Gamepad is this strange anomaly, and not even Nintendo has done much with it. Yet, here it is. Nintendo still thought it was so important that they built an entire console around it. And we can trace its lineage back over 12 years. What is it about this extra screen that Nintendo finds so important?

All I can think of is that I seem to recall an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto from either the late '90s or early '00s where he expressed frustration with the limitations of a television screen. Games were confined to this square, and the worlds within could only exist through this one window. He wanted to figure out a way to extend the game past that. Is the second screen simply his solution? (Perhaps, in a different way, motion controls are another, more visceral solution.)

[Koopaul]

Honestly I think the Wii U is the result of them not knowing what to do next. Think about it. The Wii U is basically a Swiss Army Knife of all the ideas that they used in the past.

[Shrikeswind]

I believe Da Robot summed it up well enough: Nintendo applies a mindset of "Good for the Japanese market" to their products, which is fine since a lot of their products end up working for a non-Japanese market too, but then you end up with something like the Wii U Gamepad. As Da Robot said, it's quiet and off-TV play is perfect for a small house with one TV. But then you come down to implementation of this thing as more than just a spare screen for playing on, as more than just something for off-TV play, and you don't really have anything. Maybe set someone up as a sort of dungeon master? But that's a very limited amount of games that something like that makes sense with, and after a while even those where it could would start feeling repetitive, like the only non-utilitarian use it has in a game is adding blocks around. I mean, it could definitely be used for a few things, but nothing which would necessarily warrant the second screen.

The end result is that, as of now, there's not much being done with this thing, because no one has any ideas. =/

[Nester the Lark]

Well, like I said, the Gamepad isn't really the new and revolutionary thing Nintendo likes to tout. We've seen them using the idea for well over 10 years now. I guess the question is, why do they keep bringing it back if they don't know what to do with it?

Maybe Koopaul is right. The Wii U sums up every major innovation Nintendo has had in the past decade. It has console-to-handheld connectivity like the GameCube, the duals screens with touch screen control like the DS, and the motion control from the Wii.

The 3DS was kind of a similar beast, though. It had a lot of ideas that weren't really compatible with each other. You can't have 3D and a touch screen on the same screen, because one messes up the other. Similarly, the gyro sensor also undermines the 3D. No wonder they made the 2DS.

Perhaps a version of the Wii U without the Gamepad the next step?

[Shrikeswind]

Then you just end up with a high-graphics Wii, which is not all that much of an improvement and you're basically watching the progression from the XBox to the 360 or the PS1 to the PS2. What makes Nintendo's hardware so special is that they don't just upgrade the graphical capabilities and call it a day, they really put in a lot of effort, even if it means having a year or two where their current console is last generation. When Nintendo releases, it's a potential game changer.

For example: During the Cube days, no one took Nintendo seriously because they didn't have the software, and so they couldn't really make the hardware seem special. So when the Wii came out, marketing that they were doing motion control, everyone else was like "Wow, what a dumb gimmick. It'll never catch on." And then the software came out, literally everybody and their grandma was buying it up, and the Wii out-and-out pwned the 360 and the PS3 to the extent that, by the end of the generation, both were trying to jump on board with motion control.

So no, the Gamepad isn't particularly innovative, but it's something Nintendo's going to have to do something with if they want to avoid the Wii U being just another console.

[Nester the Lark]

I agree, but in terms of cutting the manufacturing cost of the console, I think the Gamepad adds at least $100 (based on the cost of buying a separate Gamepad in Japan). They could still sell the Wii U with the Gamepad, but they could also offer a cheaper package without it, and let people buy the Gamepad separately if they choose to.

But now that I think about it, the Gamepad is pretty tightly integrated with the OS, so I'm not sure removing it would work without significantly retooling the software.

Something else occurred to me about the Gamepad, though. Nintendo is sometimes perceived more as a toy company than an electronics or software company. Maybe some people mean it in a derogatory sense, but I think it can also be a complement. For Nintnedo, the hardware isn't simply a means to play fun games on, but it's also designed to be fun to use in and of itself. We may not be sure what Nintendo was going for with the Gamepad, but I have to admit, it's still really cool! It's fun simply to use it in the same way that it was fun to use the Wii Remote for the first time. Novel? Gimmicky? Maybe, but it's certainly not boring.

[TV Eye]

Jan 14, 2014 2:46:25 GMT -5 Shrikeswind said:

I believe Da Robot summed it up well enough: Nintendo applies a mindset of "Good for the Japanese market" to their products, which is fine since a lot of their products end up working for a non-Japanese market too, but then you end up with something like the Wii U Gamepad.

The whole idea reminds me of R.O.B.
Nintendo creates a separate product meant to be used conjointly with a small handful of games. But since the Gamepad is built into the system, most developers have no idea what to do with it and add maybe a map or something.
As I've said in the other thread (and is probably insanely evident in my posts about the Wii U) I am completely ignorant about everything the Wii U has and does aside for a few standout features so I'm going to use the Wii as an example.

Nintendo creates the Wii on the basis of motion control. Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft have the PS3 and 360 which decide that players prefer the standard controller and instead focus more on improving graphics since most people are buying HD televisions.
At first this new idea of your motions affecting the game seems neat and Nintendo was smart to bundle Wii Sports with every console, ensuring Nintendo's domination of sales in its first year. Over time though, Xbox and Playstation build up more sales due to the wide variety of games and the comfortable nature that developers seem to have adjusted to making games for the Xbox and PS2.
This is also why the Wii had so much shovelware.
(And why it's seen as more casual-oriented. Some people even believed Nintendo sold out by getting more people who DON'T play video games to buy the Wii)
In the end, Nintendo sold more Wii's than the other console's. From a business perspective, they were visionaries. But from a fan's...not so much.

If the Wii U were to succeed, it would need to first secure the RPG market. JRPG's sell amazingly well in Japan (naturally) which doomed the Xbox and 360. The DS had a ton of RPG's and it become the second highest selling console in the world and the best in Japan. Meanwhile the PS2 is the highest selling in the world as well as North America.

And I completely lost track of the topic at hand...

Really, all it boils down to is the games. Nintendo's already got the gamepad, I personally wish for a classic SNES type console. One with a controller and a wide variety of genre's to choose from. _{Maybe even a return to less story-based games...}

[Da Robot]

Jan 14, 2014 23:53:03 GMT -5 TV Eye said:

and Nintendo was smart to bundle Wii Sports with every console, ensuring Nintendo's domination of sales in its first year.

Actually, Nintendo of Japan wanted to bundled Wii Play with the Wii console, that why the games included in Wii Play are there to "teach" (through gameplay) new owners how to use it (eg: pointer game, twisting/roating, small amount of motion control and finally nunchuck), but either Nintendo of America (or some marketing team that wasn't NoA) pushed very, very hard to convince NoJ to bundle Wii Sports because of how well it received it was with the general public long before the launch and also the mindset of "swing the controller like a tennis racquet/or do a bowling motion for bowling is much easier to market to people.

I read this in an article I think on Gamasutra possibly, still trying to find a source for it. It's hard to search for "Wii" articles without bring up Wii U/Wii Series games.


The sad irony of Wii Sports is that some casual consumers (eg old folks) bought the console and nothing else (because they thought that was all it had for some dumb reason). Just imagine what could have happened if Nintendo had made the Wii more online connected and "pushed" more ads toward those consumers through the console itself (like today).


Also thank you to those who read my long posts, they take some time to write.

[Koopaul]

That reminds me of the 60 year old woman I used to intern for. She had a Wii for a couple of years but only had Wii Sports. I said "You know there's other games for it right?" She was dumbfounded to find out that there was all kinds of games for this thing.

This is the critical problem with the casual market... they're stupid. They don't know anything about what the system is truly capable of and can be incredibly unreliable for sales. They'll buy the system, but that's it. If you want to truly be a success you can't rely solely on the casual market, that money pit only lasts for so long.

I've always said it's easy to please the casual market, you don't have to make a lot of games for them. One really good one will do, and they'll play it forever. Have they gotten sick of Angry Birds yet? I don't think so. But to please you're other audience takes more time and effort.

So my advice for Nintendo is: Make one or two really good casual games, that's all they need, then put most of your effort on making games for a more dedicated audience.

[Shrikeswind]

Disagreed, Koopaul, though less with the actual sentiment (which I agree with wholeheartedly) and more with the advice: The casual market is a cash cow for a reason. Think about it: Wii Fit sold pretty damn well. It wasn't because people didn't know about it, and it wasn't the hardcore gamers who were buying it. It was the casual market. And they bought it because Nintendo made it clear: "New game to help you have fun while working out, and it fits into your busy schedule!" Nintendo needs to keep doing things which catch casual gamers' attention, then hit them with "By the way you can only get this for our system," and the casual market will keep coming.

What a lot of us keep forgetting is that Nintendo has not forgotten about us, and there's a great reason for it: We're much better money. I don't care what Potatomoto jokes and "Wii's not for real gamers" people throw at us, Nintendo knows very well where their money comes from. A core game will typically cost $40-$50. A casual game will typically cost $10-$20 unless it comes with an accessory (like Wii Play, which came with a remote, which, reminder, cost $30 on its own.) So multiply that by the sales numbers. Which is worth more? Hint: It's us.

[Koopaul]

No but you see, Wii Fit and Wii Sports are pretty much the ONLY games they bought. They buy so few games, why bother making a bunch for them? They just need the two and they're happy.

A casual gamer like granny isn't gonna go out and buy a ton of casual games, she's like "I already have the Bowl'in game."

But the hardcore, we go out and buy a lot of games.

[Shrikeswind]

Koops, let's break something down. Despite what you've seen, casual games sell A LOT of copies. There are 6 Wii series games which you need to remember: Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, and Wii Party. Except for Wii Party, every one of those games sold over 20 million copies. Wii Party "only" sold 7.9 million. However, for perspective, Wii Party, a casual game not bundled with anything, sold enough copies to earn the right to give Halo 3 crap (Halo 3 ultimately outsold it, but not by anything near a significant margin, at 8.1 million copies.) The casual market is quite a bit more lively than you give it credit for.

[Arcadenik]

I think I am becoming a casual gamer when it comes to new games... I just bought the Wii Fit U bundle two days ago... and I have never played Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus... I finally own a Balance Board.

I am really digging the Mii games... I am crazy about the Wandering Heroes from Find Mii games... cannot get enough of those cats and dogs... so cute!! IMO, Nintendo should make a simple RPG game with the Wandering Heroes for the Wii U... that could attract the casual gamers to the RPG genre!

I haven't downloaded any of the Wii Sports Club games yet... I am waiting for them to come up with something that catch my interest... because bowling and tennis just aren't cutting it for me... maybe if they start including games from Wii Sports Resort to Wii Sports Club.

[Kriven]

That's a very interesting conversation about the casual audience vs. the core audience, and it makes me wonder: is the casual audience more accepting or more enticed by the Wii U gamepad? Speaking as someone who grew up on video games, I find the gamepad... unwieldy. I should mention that I haven't had a whole lot of hands-on time with the U yet, since I've only played the kiosk demos at GameStop and Walmart. Generally, though, I've found it very difficult to focus on both the gamepad and the television screen at once. This is fine for games that let you pick one or the other to stare at, but I can't imagine playing games which are more intensive on utilizing both. This isn't even considering how jarring it is to take my eyes away from one device to look at another... it completely removes me from the game, and I find myself slightly disoriented by the process.

It just seems to me that if experienced gamers are a little put off by the gamepad, then wouldn't a casual audience be even less likely to enjoy it?

[Shrikeswind]

Jan 28, 2014 13:37:21 GMT -5 Kriven said:

That's a very interesting conversation about the casual audience vs. the core audience, and it makes me wonder: is the casual audience more accepting or more enticed by the Wii U gamepad? Speaking as someone who grew up on video games, I find the gamepad... unwieldy. I should mention that I haven't had a whole lot of hands-on time with the U yet, since I've only played the kiosk demos at GameStop and Walmart. Generally, though, I've found it very difficult to focus on both the gamepad and the television screen at once. This is fine for games that let you pick one or the other to stare at, but I can't imagine playing games which are more intensive on utilizing both. This isn't even considering how jarring it is to take my eyes away from one device to look at another... it completely removes me from the game, and I find myself slightly disoriented by the process.

It just seems to me that if experienced gamers are a little put off by the gamepad, then wouldn't a casual audience be even less likely to enjoy it?

Hey Kriven!

The answer is "Possibly." It could be more interesting to a casual audience, like the Balance Board was, or it could be less interesting, as you'd expect, so ultimately, I can't give a solid answer. Casual audiences seem less likely to utilize online, which means multiplayer for a casual audience is a get-together, which would make the Gamepad appealing to them...but on the other hand, the casual single-player games aren't going to do nearly as well because the Gamepad does not integrate well with the Casual 1P games that have so far sold well on the Wii, i.e., what use would the Gamepad have in a game like Wii Fit? Or even worse, Wii Sports? So it seems like it's best appeal is in-room multiplayer...which means I can't say how the casual audience would react.