More Nintendo Love and Happy Tofurky Day!

My office was let out an hour early today, and yet I sit here at my desk waiting for a ride. Bad, bad day to carpool. But this article, spewed into my brain out of sheer boredom, might be worth it to a Nintendo geek like me.

How The VideoGame Industry Shot Itself in the Joystick... and Why the Wii has Stopped the Bleeding.

The faithfully hardcore gamers, the ones who shrug off the Wii as a fad, or those who just plainly prefer the old method of 20-input controllers because that's what they know and are comfortable with, can't see what Bill Harris is talking about here. Or rather they might, but they are still fuming about it. The latter is the more admirable reasoning. Regardless, be you a Halo Tournament Champion, a level 70 Tier 6 Shaman, or a simple breeder of Nintendogs you have to admit that "PLAY IS FUN."

Said play, with videogames on the Gamecube, PS2, Xbox360 and PS3 is more often than not too complicated in terms of control for anyone who has long been outside of the gaming trends. Give someone who was a master at Pitfall a PS3 controller and tell them to play Uncharted on the Blu-Ray system and they'll look at you like you just asked them to translate a dusty tome of Latin.

Videogames, in just over a quarter century had become too complicated for all but the willing to learn. The market was closed in this manner. There was no real growth to be had. The advent of shoulder buttons, dual analog sticks, and so on and so forth had created a significant entry barrier for someone who wanted to get into gaming. Couple that with a fickle industry trend to stagnate on old formulae (even Nintendo can be bundled into this category), and you have a world of gamers that was totally separate from the rest of the people of the world.

Enter the Wii-Mote.

Now, instead of me rambling on, go read the above article. If you disagree with his points, you're fooling yourself. If you still hate the idea that our past-time is getting back to basics, this I can understand. But you'd better become accustomed to seeing casual games. You'd better be prepared for things to get easier. Because the industry is changing. For the 1st time since the NES brought it back to life 80's, it's showing significant signs of growth. We may see more party games than we want to, but really it's best to look at the big picture. More people, equals more games, equals more fun. Even if there's more crap to wade through.