More on Wii Fit… and some cause for concern

I’m hooked on Wii Fit.

It’s fun, it’s a damn good workout, and I’ve lost 6 pounds last week. Still got plenty left to go, but hey, it’s a start.

It’s also got me worried…

One of my biggest gripes about the Wii is with the third party developers. Third party developers can be classified in one of the following two categories:

• Developers who are so captivated by the Wii’s controls that they feel obligated to write novel games that aren’t very good but take full advantage of the motion controls
• Developers who have (foolishly) convinced themselves that the Wii is not an actual console, and therefore won’t develop any third party games for it

If I were the CEO of Nintendo, I would be absolutely fuming right now. I mean, one of the biggest problems right now is lack of solid third party titles. It seems almost like third party developers have completely missed the fact that underneath all the fancy controls, there’s a game console there. A game console, I might add, that is capable of just about everything that the XBOX 360 and PS3 are.

Not only would I be fuming, but as CEO I would be making every effort possible to remind the third party devs that this is, in fact, a game console, and that games that do not take full advantage of the unique controls would be just fine by me. In fact, I would be going OUT OF MY WAY to make the third party devs comfortable doing what they do best — designing games, not novelties. (I’m looking at you, Ubisoft… how about releasing a GODDAMN RAYMAN PLATFORMER FOR CHRIST SAKE?)

But instead, I think Nintendo might have muddied the water. By introducing yet another unique control system for their console (the balance board), they’ve set the bar for the third party devs. I can just imagine some of the internal strategy meetings… “Wait, you mean they’ve got another goddamn control scheme?”

But to be clear, I really don’t blame Nintendo (much). Sure there is probably more that they could be doing to court the third parties, but really the onus is on those third parties to get over themselves and just get back to what they do. Make some damn games already.