Innovation sucks.

I’ve noticed a trend in gaming, and in technology as a whole. Most companies have rightly observed that in order to keep customers coming and to keep consumers buying, you have to create a NEW product. Obviously, people don’t want to play the same game over and over again. Because new concepts for games are hard to come by, game devs have seemed to decide on a completely different direction. Rather than make games new and exciting, they’re going to make the way we play games more different and exciting.

Nintendo was the first to “change the way we play video games”. They attached to it the fact that “Wii” should play games together. The new technology and ideas that Nintendo used made their new console appealing to a huge audience, one that was previously completely untapped by the gaming community. Sony and Microsoft stagnate somewhat in their same old same old market while Nintendo reaches out into mainstream society. Obviously, this has turned out to be a massively lucrative strategy for those at the Big N.

Sony saw this coming somewhat, and at the last minute, created the Sixaxis controller. They wanted in on the new motion control hooha, so they threw a little gimmick in with the PS3 and hoped somebody would notice. They now know that they need to do something big and flamboyant, just as Nintendo has done, in order to break into that same market. So that’s what they, and Microsoft, are trying to do.

All that is awesome for them. More varied audience, more paying customers, everyone wins. But it hasn’t seemed to have happened that way. Take Nintendo for example: I had high hopes for the motion control concept, and defended the idea in my head when game sites decried it as abandoning their core audience. Now, the Wii has become a console to scoff at for hardcore gamers. The console has very little to offer by way of meaty, serious games. Go into the game store and the shelves are littered with games made by no-name companies looking to make a quick buck off of little girls and their mothers. Sure, Cooking Mama is great to play with friends, but it’s not something the gaming community can really sink its teeth into. Once again, the best games on Nintendo’s console are the ones they make themselves: Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda, etc. My Wii languishes in the corner, collecting dust while I play WoW and PS3 games, waiting for the next Mario or Zelda game, since those are the only ones I know are actually worth buying and playing.

This, I fear, is the route that Sony and Microsoft are now headed down. This year at E3, we saw more and more motion control, more and more casual games. All because they know that is what’s going to bring in the money. I much prefer a stance like Blizzard’s: make a game in an established form, but make it 300% better than anything else that’s ever been done before. Yes, innovation is something any company needs to keep on its feet, but perhaps our favorite companies are looking at this the wrong way. So many games have been made that have had wonderful sounding concepts, but soddy execution. Nail that down, and you’ll have great games that many will want to play. Hopefully I won’t have to flail around on my living carpet to play them.