Nintendo is lazy....and I approve

Folks, if there's one thing I pride myself when it comes to gaming companies, it's Laziness. In fact, this is the only time I wanna salute Nintendo, other than the other times I saluted Nintendo, though that's off the top of my head. Of course, Matt Casamassina of IGN managed to point this out and I gotta agree with them.


With all due respect to Miyamoto, a proven gaming genius and innovator, that's just lazy. Either that, or Nintendo has gone off the deep end in its dogged pursuit of the business bottom line. This is not a two-man garage developer which works on games after its kids go to bed. It's a multi-billion dollar corporation with thousands of employees, many of whom have helped shape the very industry as we know it. A cash behemoth with unrivaled game-making experience. That it might even ponder recycling a character for one its most beloved and lucrative franchises so that it might save time, money, or whatever, seems ludicrous. That it actually did so is unbelievable.


Exactly. Little effort means a lot of green nowadays. It worked with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 when they ditched Dedicated Servers and had a single player shorter than New Super Mario Bros Wii all to focus on Multiplayer. Isn't that what shooters are all about, Mr Casamassina? It's all about playing your friends online and cursing at them like drunken sailors, only to de-friend them when they pull a cheap shot at ya. I mean, it's not like millions of gamers ignored the Gamecube's hardcore titles and left the Gamecube in the dust. I mean that forced Nintendo into playing this hand.


But Mr Casamassina, what I heard just shocked me.

We all praise Nintendo for returning gameplay and not graphical pop to the forefront. Since their conception, games have been designed to be fun first and everything else second. Nintendo seems to realize that more than any other developer in the world, which is why some of its presentational shortcomings are usually overshadowed by welcomed over-compensations in control and design. But make no mistake: Wii Sports is also the product of Nintendo's bottom line and, yes, even laziness to some degree. The developer could have achieved a simple, accessible visual style with lots of added detail and effects, but it chose not to. Wii Sports dons a crisp, clean look, but is otherwise decidedly generic, static, and frankly, archaic. Nintendo spent less time, energy and money on the graphics because it had a winning hook to fall back on, which was of course the new motion controls. Why, though, should innovation come at the expense of presentation? Because it's easier and cheaper.

Mr Casamassina, haven't you learned the truth about laziness? You don't need innovation to be easier and cheaper. You can copy off recent fads just to be easier and cheaper. EA copied off of the Grand Theft Auto fad with the Godfather, by using an actual movie license. Killzone 1 and 2 are supposed Halo killers. Unreal Tournament came off of the popularity of Quake III Arena. There are tons of shooters on the X-Box 360 due to the popularity of Halo(Yes, I'm referencing Halo again). There are MMOs that want to be like World of Warcraft. In fact, the gaming industry wants to outperform Hollywood itself and make it look outdated. How's that for laziness?

And another thing, Mario Galaxy and Zelda: Twilight Princess were just mere updates of the previous game. But then again, everyone does it even with new IPs.

Works Cited: IGN Article: Nintendo is Lazy and You Don't Care