Simpler, cheaper, and better than the Wii?
N’Gai Croal has just posted his ode to the Wii. He reminds me of stock analysts that simply rave about whatever is currently doing really well on the charts. They won’t say anything insightful, but they sure know how to read quarterly reports and turn reports of high profits into cheery stories of wonder and turn reports of losses into stories of gloom.
If you are praising Wii for its simplicity and sales figures, you are missing it’s biggest competition. It’s a hot selling video game console that’s *much* simpler and *much* cheaper, and more child/parent friendly than the Wii.
Can you guess which console I’m referring to? No, not anything made by Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo. I’m talking about the market leader and sales juggernaut for baby video games: the V-Smile!
What are the sales figures? I don’t know: NPD, MediaCreate, and vgchartz aren’t tracking them.
How are their games rated? Most sites aren’t reviewing them. Heck, Metacritic doesn’t even list them as a category, despite their high sales figures.
But why not? Those things sell well. I have seen tons of parents who buy those things for their small children. Why doesn’t the video game media cover them? This is definitely a widespread media bias!
Probably for the same reason most fine food media covers obscure recipes and subtle flavors rather than talking about chicken fingers.
The Wii and the V-Smile may own the sales charts, but the adults who like to read and talk about games, want to focus on the more complex and sophisticated titles.
Not to take the discussion to the shotbox, but come on..? Nobody likes all games, its that simple. Some like the mother, other like the daughter 
Keep your "hate-articles" coming, Gary!
November 15th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Who cares about this crap.
November 15th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I think my daughters might like that.
November 15th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
This thing looks like it was designed by Nintendo. That’s like the gamecube’s sister….lol
I got banned from NEOGAF forums for saying that the gamecube was designed with children in mind…lol
November 15th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
How old are your daughters? I could see getting something like this for a 2-6 year old girl. For a son, I would start him off on better stuff.
D.Vader, well spoken
November 15th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Man I thought I was at another site you guys are starting to scare me!!
November 15th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Got one for my four year old and quite a few games and he loves it. He does prefer Flow though.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
“Hand someone who’s never played video games a PS3 or 360 controller, and they’ll just stare at you. It might as well be the controls of a helicopter–good grief, it kind of looks like it should be the controls of a helicopter.”
This is the dumbest thing I’ve read in ages, and if it is the prevailing mentality in the industry than I may end up with a new hobby before long. Most genres have already been dumbed down considerably compared to where they were in the 90’s, how much more does this guy want to cater to people who should probably just be playing board games instead?
Carnival Games? Is this what passes as quality these days? I honestly feel sorry for developers that spend so much time and money making games that advance things and have worthwhile stories, characters, and concepts because it seems like they’re going to be left behind in this wave of the console equivalent of $9.99 PC jewel case games.
Sony and Microsoft have both done a hell of a lot wrong that would deserve the beatings they’re seeing in sales (pricing on Sony’s part, hardware failure on Microsoft’s part) but to start heaping praise on software that is objectively terrible isn’t going to help anything. Games are starting to turn into what music became in the late 90’s, and that segment of the entertainment world hasn’t gotten any better in terms of quality.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Controllers? Hah. A mate bought his wee (oops wii, i mistyped that accidentally - honest) around on the weekend (He mostly wanted to see metroid on widescreen I think).
One of my nieces is staying at my place and she’d never seen one before. He almost got angry at how long it took her to get used to the controller. Trying to type in her name with the wobbly little pointer took her 3-4 minutes (admittedly her english isn’t great - she’s from Thailand, but her name is only 3 letters long). Also, he had a phone-call as we were setting it up, so I ended up adjusting the settings for widescreen - and even I had trouble just pressing the big buttons to navigate the menus because of the wobbly pointer. I guess it’s something you get used to, but initially it feels like trying to press buttons 3m away using a long piece of thin dowel - not very accurate.
Anyway this whole ‘the controllers are too complicated’ argument has been going on for some time - and is just as pointless as it ever was. Usually in connection with playstation vs nintendo systems. It comes down to the games - I as an adult don’t mind having well thought out yet complicated controls in the right game - and it’s up to the developer as to how they use them. Without a keyboard a console really has no choice but for complexity for many games (although I think L3 and R3 were overkill on Sony’s part).
As a side note, I had downloaded the demo of Toy Home and the kids loved playing that - the sixaxis has plenty of faults and is poorly used a lot of the time, but they got the hang of it quickly enough - steer with tilt, accelerate/reverse l2/r3 and mostly ignore the jump/boost and hand-brake).
And I hardly think the PSP/PS3 nor XBOX360 are failing products - it’s hardly a market that needed ’saving’ by the wii.
I gotta comment about this quote too:
“Hand someone who’s never played video games a PS3 or 360 controller, and they’ll just stare at you. It might as well be the controls of a helicopter–good grief, it kind of looks like it should be the controls of a helicopter.”
Umm, yeah that’s exactly why joysticks were like helicopter/plane joysticks in the first place wasn’t it? Because everyone’s seen flyboy movies, they know basically what a joystick does … But considering that a ps3 or xbox controller isn’t really anything like a flight joystick the whole paragraph makes no sense.