Ambidextrous Link?

[ijdgaf]

You really don't understand at all what Nintendo is trying to do this generation, do you?

Take a look at Wii Sports. Take a look at Cooking Mama. Take a look at WarioWare. On the DS, look at Brain Age. Nintendogs.

Nintendo is reaching out toward people who don't buy games right now. Girls. Middle-aged adults. Seniors. People who don't know the first thing about video games.

Hell, look at the controller itself. It's probably the first time in the history of console evolution that a major console designer has opted to decrease the number of buttons on the controller. Hand your grandmother a gamecube controller, or an x-box controller, or a PS2 controller, and try to explain how to play... well, pretty much any game available for any of these systems. It's not going to work very well. It's not terribly intuitive, and the sheer number of buttons on controllers these days makes video games somewhat intimidating to the uninitiated. And Nintendo's whole aim this generation is to expand the market to precisely these people.

The Wii controller is designed to be extraordinarily intuitive. You really don't have to explain much to tell a person how to play Baseball on Wii Sports. Even the most technologically inept person on the planet could be made to understand.

Forget Zelda and Metroid and Mario. Nintendo's still making these titles because they know they still need to draw in the hardcore gamers with in-depth gameplay. But they're reaching beyond these people as well. And they know "Nintendo Revolution" sounds pretty damn generic to anybody looking on a shelf. Wii grabs your attention. Wii is the sort of name that could easily enter the pop vernacular. The name is not for the hardcore gamer; he's going to buy the system anyway. The name is for everyone you know who doesn't know or care about video games.

I don't know why I'm bothering to explain this, it's been very thoroughly articulated over and over and over for months. Which is why it's so laughable that you seem so critical of the name, yet clueless about its global implications.

And its why its so utterly irrelevant what a few stubborn gamers think about a "W" and two consecutive "i"s.