Nintendo talks Call Of Duty on Wii U
Wants to capture core gamers, understands Wii U can be "confusing"
Nintendo of America vice president of sales and marketing Scott Moffitt said that Nintendo hopes to win back core gamers with Wii U, and that it wasn't worried about what Sony and Microsoft were doing.
"Do we want to reach out to the core audience? Absolutely," he told GameSpot.
"They're very much part of our audience and the group of consumers we hope will find the way you can reimagine games on the Wii U. The Wii U could become the preferred way to play those games for some of the core gamers. You can imagine how a game like Call of Duty would work on the Wii U--the GamePad will allow you to declutter the TV and pull gaming items like maps down and not interrupt your interaction and enjoy the cinematic quality of the game on the TV. That's one application that could be exciting and could enhance gameplay for a core gamer."
Moffitt admitted that the machine's control system did cause problems when it came to communication.
"Well, it's confusing relative to the Wii," he said.
"With motion control gaming, when you saw Mr. Iwata and Reggie stand up and swing a motion controller, it brought it to life immediately. With a second screen controller, you need to see what's on the second screen, so by nature it's a more complex system. It's less visually easy to understand."
Nintendo plan to combat this by ensuring gamers and press spend as much time hands-on with the console as possible, so expect to the machine at consumer shows and in gaming stores closer to launch.
As for competing with Sony and Microsoft? The marketing head said the Wii U launch wasn't about beating them to the next-gen, but innovative design.
"We don't tend to follow what our competitors are doing when we don't time our console launches or hardware evolutions; it's when we believe there's true innovation available that can move gameplay forward. Being first or being behind is less of a consideration for us."
Moving mini-maps, HUD elements and inventory menus to the tablet controller really isn't a step forward, especially when it means propping up your tablet next to the TV and using the Wii Remote to control the game, like the Pikmin demo (a real face palm moment for Nintendo). But so far that's pretty much all we've seen from the Wii U. Where's the innovative design?
Posted:11 months ago