This isn’t the article I was originally going to write this week. After a quick examination of the sales charts for the Nintendo Wii over the past couple of weeks, I had noticed that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was plummeting…down at number 5 just two weeks after release. Zelda, one of the greatest game franchises of all time, was being outsold by Zumba and Just Dance. Seriously, what kind of sick joke was this? Coming off the back of quotes by Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime on plans to move the 3DS towards a more casual audience, I had the laptop out, ready to rush into a big rant about ‘those damn casual gamers’ and how they’re ruining things for the hardcore.
My first target, I decided, would be Reggie. Dammit, Reggie. The 3DS is Nintendo reclaimed for the hardcore. It’s a brilliant, powerful, innovative system which allows to play revamped versions of Ocarina of Time and Starfox, which has already given us two of the best Mario games in history, which is still to give us brand new Resident Evil, Kid Icarus, and Metal Gear Solid games. We don’t want 3D Sudoku, we want all the above, and you’re taking them away from us just to satisfy a different demographic? SCREW YOU, NINT…hang on. Wait. Those games aren’t actually being taken away from us, are they? Just because Nintendo are expanding the market for the 3DS, that doesn’t actually mean us hardcore lot won’t get what we want too. When Nintendogs and Brain Training pushed sales of the DS through the roof, we didn’t exactly suffer. We got two Zelda games, New Super Mario Bros, even a GRAND THEFT AUTO. Yes, an 18 certificate GTA…on the DS. And it was bloody brilliant! Since jumping on the casual bandwagon last year with Kinect and Move, have Sony and Microsoft abandoned their core fan base? Of course not: Gears of War 3, Arkham City, LA Noire, Portal 2 and Modern Warfare 3 prove that the top developers and franchises still have a massive role to play in the lives of the PS3 and 360.
In fact, let’s be really sensible about this. In 2006, the year the Nintendo Wii was released, it was estimated that the video games industry would be worth close to $50 billion by now. It is, in fact, worth around $65 billion, and still rising. It is no coincidence that the steep rise in console/game sales really took off following the release of the Wii. Nintendo took the gaming world into a new direction, one which may have caused upset amongst their loyal fanbase (and to be fair, when a major selling point of a console is that the Redknapps love to play it, it’s easy to feel like something has gone horribly wrong somewhere), but one which has actually, much as I hate to admit it, helped the industry massively. I mentioned the brilliant, innovative 3DS earlier; well, it’s not just technological advances that are making gaming more exciting, it’s the extra money that publishers and developers are able to put into making the most of those advances. Remember that Skyward Sword chart debacle I also mentioned earlier? Well, in its first week, initial figures tell us that it actually sold almost a million copies worldwide, making it potentially the fastest selling Zelda game ever. Brilliant games aren’t fading out; the industry has just changed. When you let passion get in the way, as I admittedly did, it’s easy to forget that we’re actually living in an incredible age for gamers. Yes, there may be plenty of turds about (I’m looking at you, Deal or No Deal: The Video Game), but you don’t even have to look hard if you want to find quality. No matter what system you prefer, there’s more than enough to keep you busy for a good lifetime of gaming.
So, casual gamers: I was wrong. For years, I have held a grudge against you based on passion and a complete disregard of the facts. This was very unfair of me.
I’m sorry.
