Yuumoushin.com (勇猛心)

I pulled the chart below from the Onion (posted two days ago). Funny, although I don’t think my peers would see the Wii as something one needs to hide. On the contrary, most of my friends are more eager to play the Wii.

Man, I’m on a Wii kick this week, and I haven’t even played the damn thing yet. I guess it’s all about expectations – from what I’ve read so far and from my own experiences playing both the PSP and the DS, I think Nintendo is taking the right route. Rather than trying to keep up/race the other two systems, they’re venturing off into a relatively new direction.

The next big thing in gaming? That I don’t know, but it sure does seem like Nintendo has done everything right thus far. Their focus: increasing their gamer base. They’re looking at bringing in people who have either shied away from gaming due to a lack of interest, or have been reticent to try any of the new systems due to lack of skill (some modern day games are quite involved).

…Many Wii games are so intuitive that no explanation or experience is necessary. Activities such as swinging a tennis racquet or sword, steering a car, conducting an orchestra or shooting a gun are made easy.

Nintendo is branching into, what is essentially, un-chartered territory. And when you consider the popularity of arcade games such as dance dance revolution and the drummig game (especially in Japan), it makes sense.

“Sitting in front of your monitor with a controller, there’s nowhere to go from that paradigm. All you can do is make it prettier and faster,” he says. “What Nintendo wants to do with its development is to open up that road, create something that goes beyond. We’re going to be able to create a lot of interesting new and creative gaming experiences.”

They’re making a huge assumption about the current market for gaming, by essentially bucking the advanced feature trend and embracing simplicity. Their gamble has paid off with the DS, but will that carry over to the Wii?

Whether the Wii has the “fun factor” advantage or not, the software will ultimately make or break them. Let’s hope it’s the former (what can I say, I’m a Nintendo fan…hehe).

And for fellow Penny Arcade fans, check out their latest comic strip, which ties somewhat into my previous post.

If you have a couple of minutes to spare, watch this YouTube Video of a guy getting a little TOO involved while playing the Wii. Although, with the physical component to the games on the system, I can’t say I’m surprised something like this has happened. Then again, this guy really does swing the paddle a bit hard. Even back in the day when I would use the power glove, I don’t think I ever punched harder than was necessary. I wonder how many people will actually have this happen. As careful as I am, I’ve accidentally thrown my racquet during racquetball, but fortunately there was a strap attached to my wrist (as is always the case). A necessary Nintendo accessory? You be the judge.

I will say this: it’s a good thing his controller hit the whiteboard and NOT the LCD TV. Oooh, that would have been bad (and expensive).

The Wall Street Journal Online edition has a nice article about the physical exercise involved with playing Nintendo’s Wii. This is great – if you can’t get kids to go outside to exercise, trick them by bringing “exercise” to them in the form of a video game system. That’s essentially what the Wii does, and I think it’s great. I’ve been saying this from the beginning, and I’ll say it again: what a cool concept, and makes me all the more eager to try it out with my friends.

In Rochester, Minn., Jeremy Scherer and his wife spent three hours playing tennis and bowling, two of the games included with the Wii. Mr. Scherer says he managed to improve his scores — at the cost of shoulders and back that were still aching the next day. “I was using muscles I hadn’t used in a while,” says Mr. Scherer, a computer programmer who describes himself as “not very active.” Mr. Scherer is vowing nightly “Wii workouts” to get in better shape.

Nintendo has said they want to bring more people into gaming. Their hands-on approach has worked with the DS so why not push exercise with the Wii? They could have an entire series of games designed around exercise, similar to the DS’ brain trainer series. I bet this gamer would agree (from the article): “I was soaking wet with sweat, head to toe — I had to go take a shower,” he says. And the next morning? “I had trouble putting my shirt on”

I read an interesting article this morning on Wired’s website: “YouTube vs. Boob Tube.” Their story starts off with a cool little price break down of Google’s $1.65 billion purchase:

The price tag for YouTube, just to put the investment in perspective, is what Target paid for 257 Mervyns department stores and four distribution centers in 13 states, and just a bit more than WPP Group paid for the Grey Global Group advertising network with 10,500 employees in 83 countries generating $1.3 billion in revenue. Those, of course, are both profitable enterprises with vast fixed assets. YouTube’s fixed assets pretty much consist of a video interface and a cool retro logo. So why is it worth nearly six times the gross domestic product of Micronesia?

That’s an interesting question, and something that pops up a lot, especially in the modern economy. With essentially nothing to offer outside of a service, where is the value added in YouTube? Is YouTube, in fact, the next big thing? If it is, imagine how much pipeline that opens up for Google (lest one forgets, they are an advertising company). The article and I agree on one point in particular – YouTube, in its current construct, is a big fan site. How would one need to change the business model to make it more of an ad generating (i.e. revenue generating) site? Keep in mind, Google did it and look at them now. And when you consider the broadband saturation rates in places like the U.S., Japan, and Europe, and the fact that more and more people are connecting all the time – it has ENORMOUS exposure potential. But what sort of tangible impacts will this have on our current media economy? The author of the article seems to think it’s over:

There was a time when almost all video-entertainment content was produced and distributed by Hollywood. Period. That time is over. There was a time when advertisers could count on mass audiences for what Hollywood thought we should be watching on TV. That time is all but over. There was a time when broadband penetration was too slight and bandwidth costs too prohibitive for video to be watched online. That time is sooooo over. “The era of the creepy blue light leaking out of every living room window on the block is now officially at an end,” says my pal and occasional colleague Steve Rosenbaum, founder of video-sharing startup Magnify.net and one of the inventors a decade ago of citizen video. “The simple, wonderful, delirious fact is that people like you and me can now make and share content.”

Do you think the line between TV and Internet TV is really about to disappear?