作者：Christian Nutt

任天堂正处在一个艰难的处境。该公司的Wii U卖得并不好。通常情况下是因为该系统缺少良好的软件。但我认为事情并没有这么简单。我想是因为公众早已将任天堂抛在脑后了。

通常情况下这种情感是以相反的方式表达出来：任天堂并不能有效适应变化。但值得我们注意的是，休闲消费者并不想平白无故地购买一个专用硬件，就像如今的硬核玩家已经转向像索尼的《最后的生还者》这样的游戏体验。

因为任天堂单方面的坚持，你不得不去选择任天堂的游戏，而这也是Wii U的问题所在。我们很容易决定去购买一台3DS，但是却很难去判断是否应该购买一台Wii U——如果你并不认为任天堂的游戏是你的生活中不可分割的重要部分的话。

我并不认为如今任天堂在其数字展示中呈现的一切内容将会改变Wii U的命运。尽管他们承诺了许多游戏，但是除了死忠粉丝会购买它们外我们很难想到其它结果了。

Splatoon(from gamersky)

让我们以全新的IP《Splatoon》为例。这是一款带有虚构机制且围绕着在战场上朝特定领地喷射颜料的竞争类射击游戏。它很吸引人，具有非常丰富的色彩，看似具有许多策略可能性。但对于那些花了好几年时间专注于《使命召唤》的玩家来说，这似乎就是孩子们的玩具。它并不能迎合那些构成了射击游戏市场的成人与青少年玩家的喜好。

我发现对于军事射击游戏，说好听点是幼稚，而说难听点真的是糟糕透了。我同样也相信任天堂正在努力创造有趣的机制以及让人喜欢的游戏。但我也知道在今天那些拥有“如果任天堂创造了一款多人射击游戏我便会去尝试它”的想法的人在急剧减少。大多数伴随着任天堂早前系统长大的玩家要么适应了最后一代游戏的坚韧不拔，要么彻底抛弃了游戏。

美国任天堂总裁Reggie Fils-Aime在E3上的展示中向人们承诺“将出现一些对于任天堂的粉丝来说值得庆祝的不同内容。因为他们的游戏看起来都很精致，生动且具有创造性（除了《口袋妖怪》，它需要进行彻底的调整），所以这应该是对于现有的任天堂粉丝的一个承诺。他们之中到底有多少人还未拥有Wii U？

在明年或者之后的时间里该公司将会获得越来越多的这类型玩家—-他们将慢慢积累所有可能的玩家，甚至是那些只能勉强花钱去购买其最新主机的玩家。

任天堂清楚这是一场艰苦的战争。它正式发布了Amiibo玩具——这是任天堂旗下《Skylanders》般的形象平台，将能够用于多款游戏中，最开始的便是这个假日季的《任天堂明星大乱斗》。在展示中这同样也是具有主流感的内容之一。关于“主流”，我指的是“硬核玩家”而不是“大众消费者”。对于任天堂的粉丝来说，E3简直就是节日般的存在，同时也是该公司今后前进的方向指导。

Amibo将发挥作用——特别是作为早前游戏的新内容的传递向量（就像马里奥赛车8》的功能遭到嘲笑）。该公司之前曾经放弃与动视就玩具项目展开合作，而现在却致力于制作比其竞争者更加灵活的产品，当然它也利用了其IP的优势，同时还依赖于玩家对其角色的熟悉度以及对于他们尝试着这么做的理解。

任天堂必须像对热情的需求那样需要自制。它创造了孩子们想要苦苦思索大人们觉得不够时间去尝试的复杂系统。

对此任天堂也有点天真，就像展示上所呈现的那样。的确，Robot Chicken创造了一些有趣的缓冲器。但是视频节奏却还是很缓慢，它同样也花了很多时间与开发者进行交谈。任天堂很耐心地解释着其游戏背后的理念。但是是否有人在认真听？

《Yoshi’s Woolly World》的制作人Takashi Tezuka说道：“最大的区别在于《马里奥》游戏是关于在特定时间限制内执行挑战任务。但在《Yoshi》游戏中却不具有时间限制，所以你可以探索更大的游戏世界。你也可以在此发现更多新内容。”

同时制作人Eiji Aonuma也说了这是关于该公司迫切需要全新的Wii U《塞尔达》游戏：“这款游戏中的谜题解决机制是在玩家开始思考他们想要去哪里，应该如何到达那里以及在到达时他们想要做什么等问题时而开始。”当然，在预告片中有一场具有戏剧性的boss战斗。但这只是用于向玩家解释为什么他们会对玩游戏感兴趣的内容呈现。

任天堂总是将游戏和它们的设计师作为该公司可行性的支持理由。从一个纯粹的艺术角度来看，这是一个没有回应的支持理由：这些游戏都是充满希望的，并且都是独一无二的。但它们同样也拥有一个策略，即只吸引人们选择其中的几款游戏—-或者至少足够让玩家可以为此消费；只要玩家喜欢任天堂的视觉效果和游戏玩法；只要他们不想要电视般的戏剧效果；只要他们能够停下来并思考该公司到底是关于什么。

在之前的索尼大会上，在《孤岛惊魂4》的演示版本中，玩家将刀穿过了NPC的头。人群中响起了激烈的掌声。这让我想起了几年前《最后的生还者》的爆头插曲—-即用户在对用枪直射对手脸部的行动给予热情的回应时。

但在《孤岛惊魂4》的展示时，我同样也因为不理解而感到不安。他们是在为什么而鼓掌？是因为他们喜欢肆意的暴力吗？还是因为将刀穿过人们的头部是一个有趣的游戏机制？这是对于刺激物的情感反应吗？到底在游戏世界中是什么让他们欢呼起来？我感觉自己就像来自另外一个文化，甚至是另外一个星球的心理学家。

我不知道答案到底是什么，但不管怎样，任天堂都不需要这样的答案。这也是任天堂被那些曾经拥护它的用户抛在脑后的原因之一。

如果你着眼于微软展示期间在开发者的名字下方呈现的“我最喜欢的游戏”标题时（游戏邦注：每次都有人前来呈现他们自己喜欢的游戏），你会发现那里很多都属于第一方的任天堂游戏，通常是面向SNES。

Flis-Aime说道：“我们可以总是依赖于这些游戏去传达有趣和优秀的游戏玩法，因为这便是任天堂。”这归结起来便是因为该公司的天真，同时也表现出了其傲慢的态度。源于天真的傲慢也是一种特别危险的情况，因为这就像是提出像Wii U的GamePad等想法——这是对于没人好奇的问题的解答。是的，你当然可以为GamePad想出一个更棒的理念。是的，你可以为GamePad使用案例。但带着这些想法去消耗你的处理能力，你便看不到设备的初始作用将成为Wii U的沉重负担的事实。

《Splatoon》的一位设计师在提到开发公司的新游戏时说道：“我们先想出游戏玩法，然后创造出匹配该游戏玩法的角色。这便是任天堂想要做的事。”游戏看起来很不错，该方法也创造了游戏机制与游戏机制的无缝整合。该方法适合游戏层面。但是当提到硬件时它便不再适合，因为硬件是一种不宽恕人的业务，需要承受与游戏设计完全不同的压力。

很明显的是：任天堂并未在展示中呈现出其所有公告（显然他们选择了Tomonobu Itagaki的《恶魔三人组》，这是作为Wii U的独有游戏而开发的，还有Platinum Games的《Bayonetta 2》也一样）。我可以明确地说并没有第三方游戏，并讨论其中包含的所有暗示。大多数的Wii U游戏发行日期都在2015年，包括《明星大乱斗》。而Amiibo也将成为该公司在2014年的主要致力对象，这对于任天堂来说将会是一场艰难的战斗，他们不仅需要努力赚取收益，同时也要想办法去留住那些死忠的粉丝们。

对于所有指出3DS的销量少于DS的新闻报道，其实3DS是2013年最畅销的专门游戏硬件平台，更确切地说是，它能够有效地融入人们的生活中——许多人喜欢游戏是因为觉得它们是自己生活中的一部分，而3DS不仅用起来方便同时也拥有许多不同类型的游戏。只要你真的喜欢玩游戏，它便能够吸引你的注意——不管你所专注的是怎样的平台。但Wii U也需要获得与专门的主机同样的关注。

在现代，任天堂不仅需要与索尼和微软展开竞争，同时还需要与Steam，它的用户及其自身的掌上平台展开竞争，所以说Wii U面临着艰难的时刻也就见怪不怪了。从《异度之刃X》到《猎天使魔女2》再到《马里奥制造》等内容在展示期间都呈现出了非常吸引人的演示版本。

微软和任天堂在今年都主张“我们拥有许多游戏”。微软因为Xbox One而屡次疏远了用户，所以决定翻新《光晕》。而任天堂则是仍然保持本性不变——与其它两家公司的区别。

在过去几年里游戏文化遭遇了巨大的改变，任天堂已经被归类到分隔区了。如果你关心该公司的输出内容的话，这便是一个诱人的泡沫。在过去几年里游戏取得了戏剧性的扩展，没有一家公司可以宣称自己获得了“用户”——不管一款游戏多么受欢迎，它们可以假装吸引了所有的一切，但却不包含正在玩电子游戏的大众用户中的一个分支，每一天都会有些开发者或发行商致力于那些立基用户，因为这是帮助他们成为下一个Riot Games的方法。

但这种向次文化迸发的形态也是如今让任天堂受苦的根源，因为硬件并不适合使用这种方法。如果它想要待在专门的主机业务中，它就需要寻找一种方法去刺穿泡沫，并避免粉丝的流失。而这将会是一次痛苦的转变过程—-如果存在可能性的话。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Analysis: The Nintendo bubble

By Christian Nutt

Nintendo is in a tough place. The company’s Wii U is not selling. Often that’s been put down to a lack of good software for the system. I don’t think it’s that simple. I think what it is, is that the public has left Nintendo behind.

Usually, that sentiment is couched the other way around: Nintendo can’t adapt. I’ll get to that. But it’s worth recognizing that casual consumers don’t want to buy dedicated hardware without a very good reason, as core gamers have moved on to experiences like Sony’s The Last of Us, an emblematic game of the prior generation if ever there was one.

To stick by Nintendo’s side, you have to prefer Nintendo’s games to these experiences to the point where you want to entirely focus on them, and that’s the Wii U’s problem in a nutshell. It’s easy to decide to buy a 3DS in addition to a console or PC. It’s not easy to justify a Wii U if you don’t feel that Nintendo games are an essential part of your life.

I don’t think anything Nintendo showed in its digital presentation today will change the Wii U’s fortunes. While many of the games are extremely promising, it’s hard to imagine anything but the die-hards, me included, buying them.

Take the new IP, Splatoon, for example. It’s a competitive shooter with an imaginative mechanic based around spreading ink on the battlefield to claim territory. It’s appealing, colorful, and looks like it has a lot of strategic possibilities. But for gamers who’ve spent the last years baptized in the fire of Call of Duty, it’s going to seem like kids’ stuff. It doesn’t pander to the adults and adolescents who make up the shooter market.

I find military shooters at best sophomoric and at worst distasteful. I also have faith that Nintendo is crafting fun mechanics and, perhaps most important, a game that feels great to play. But I also know that the number of people who think “I’d play a multiplayer shooter if Nintendo crafted it” is vanishingly small these days. Most of the players who grew up with Nintendo’s older systems, I think, either adapted to or embraced the grittiness of games over this last generation — or fled games altogether as they became unwelcoming.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime promised “something different to celebrate what it means to be a Nintendo fan” from its E3 presentation, and that is what it was — and all it was. As polished, lively, and creative as its games looked — all the existing IP, except Pokemon, was either reimagined wholly or heavily tweaked — it was a presentation for Nintendo’s existing fans. How many more of them don’t already have a Wii U?

The company will accrue more and more of those players over the course of the next year and beyond — slowly gobbling up all of the possible fans, maybe even the lapsed ones, who’ve been reluctant to shell out money for its latest console. But that, I’m afraid, will be it.

Nintendo is aware of its uphill battle. It formally announced its Amiibo toys — that’s Nintendo’s Skylanders-esque figure platform, which will work with multiple games, starting with this holiday season’s Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. It’s also one of the only really mainstream-feeling things in the presentation. By “mainstream,” I don’t mean “core gamer” but “mass consumer.” E3 is a festival for its fans, of course, but it’s also a bellwether of the direction the company is going.

Amiibo is going to work — particularly as a delivery vector for new content for older games (Mario Kart 8 functionality, where I suspect it will act like DLC, was teased.) But the company was caught flatfooted by the toy-based boom Activision kicked off, and is now catching up with a product that may be more thoughtful and flexible than its competitors, and of course capitalizes on the strength of its IP, but also relies on familiarity and fondness for its stable of characters, and an understanding of just what it’s trying to do.

Nintendo requires forbearance as much as it requires enthusiasm. It creates the kind of complex systems that kids love puzzling out and adults feel like they don’t have time for.

Nintendo has a certain naivete about it, too, which the presentation showcased. Yeah, Robot Chicken made some funny bumpers. But the pace of the video was staid, and it also spent a lot of time talking to developers. While all the developers who made it on stage at Sony faked spontaneity, and the ones in the Xbox sizzle reels simply belched core gamer cred, Nintendo’s patiently explained the design ideas behind their games. Is anybody listening?

“The big difference is that Mario games are about performing challenging tasks in a given time limit. But the difference is Yoshi games don’t have a time limit, so you can explore the vast game world. You can make new discoveries,” Yoshi’s Woolly World producer Takashi Tezuka said, in the slow-paced segment devoted to that game.

Meanwhile, producer Eiji Aonuma said this about the company’s badly needed new Wii U Zelda game: “the puzzle-solving in this game begins the moment the player thinks about where they want to go, how they’ll get there, and what they want to do when they arrive.” Sure, there was a flashy, cinematic boss battle in the trailer. But it was fundamentally a presentation that aimed to explain to players why they’ll be interested in playing the game.

Nintendo always, in the end, relies on its games and their designers as the argument for the company’s viability. And from a pure artistic standpoint, that’s an argument that brooks no response: These games are all promising, and all unique. But it’s also a strategy that appeals only to a select few — at least enough to get them to spend; at least as long as they like Nintendo’s visual and gameplay aesthetics; at least as long as they don’t want TV-esque drama; at least as long as they stop and think and appreciate what the company is all about.

Yesterday at Sony’s conference, there was a moment during the Far Cry 4 demo when the player shoved a knife through an NPC’s head — right up from under the chin. A cheer erupted in the crowd. It reminded me of that notorious The Last of Us headshot episode from a couple years back — a revolting moment when the audience erupted into cheers and applause in response to point-blank shotgun blast to the face.

But during the Far Cry 4 presentation, I was also left with an uneasiness that was borne from a lack of understanding. What are they cheering for? Because they like wanton violence? Because knifing people in the head is a fun gameplay mechanic? Is it an emotional reflex to a stimulus? What in the world makes them cheer? I felt like a psychologist from another culture — maybe another planet.

I don’t know, but whatever it is, Nintendo doesn’t have it. Nintendo doesn’t want it. Nintendo will not deliver it, and that’s one reason Nintendo has been left behind by the audience that once embraced it.

If you looked at the “my favorite game” titles splayed underneath developers’ names during the Microsoft presentation every time someone came in to show off their own personal flavor of face-shooty, so many of them were first party Nintendo games, usually for the SNES.

“We can always count on these games to deliver fun and great gameplay, because it’s Nintendo,” Fils-Aime said. That sums up the company’s naivete and also its arrogance in one statement. Arrogance born of naivete is a particularly dangerous, because it is the kind of thinking that comes up with things like the Wii U’s GamePad — an answer to a question nobody was asking. Yes, you can think of good ideas for the GamePad. Yes, you can think of use cases for the GamePad. But with those thoughts consuming your processing power, you can’t see that the device’s primary effect will be to be an albatross around the neck of the Wii U.

“We came up with the gameplay first and then created characters that fit with the gameplay. That’s how Nintendo prefers to do things,” one of the Splatoon designers said of developing the company’s new game. And the game looks great, and that approach will definitely lead to a seamless integration of its mechanics and its world. That approach works on a game level. But that thinking doesn’t work when it comes to hardware, because hardware is an unforgiving business to be in, with a whole different set of pressures than game design.

I could point out the obvious: Nintendo didn’t shove all of its announcements into the presentation (it’s apparently picked up Tomonobu Itagaki’s Devil’s Third, which he was originally developing or THQ, as a Wii U exclusive — in a similar style of rescue as Platinum Games’ Bayonetta 2.) I could point out that there were no third party games, and discuss all of the implications that carries. I could point out that most of the Wii U games showcased had 2015 release dates, meaning Smash Bros. and Amiibo are really all the company has for 2014, which is going to mean a painful uphill fight for anything but eking out the dollars of any but the most die-hard Nintendo fans.

For all that news reports like to point out that the 3DS is selling worse than the DS, it was also the overall best-selling dedicated game hardware platform of 2013 and, more to the point, fits into a lot of lifestyles, smartphones be damned — a lot of people who like games feel like there’s room in their life for it, because it’s easy to pick up, put down, and it has different kinds of games. As long as you like playing games as more than a supermarket checkout distraction, it has appeal — no matter what other platforms you focus on. But the Wii U demands attention, as dedicated consoles always do. It demands dedication.

In the modern era, where Nintendo is competing not just with Sony and Microsoft, but with Steam, the attrition of its audience, and its own handheld platform, it’s no wonder that the Wii U is having a tough time. Everything from Xenoblade Chronicles X to Bayonetta 2 to Mario Maker and beyond looked intriguing and appealing in their showcase demos during the presentation.

Microsoft and Nintendo both had the pitch “we have a lot of games” this year. Microsoft, because it repeatedly alienated its audience with the Xbox One, hence the Halo revamp. Nintendo, because it is simply still that kind of company — when the other two are not.

The culture of games has been wracked with change over the last several years, and Nintendo is in a bubble. It’s a wonderfully inviting bubble if you care about the company’s output. Games have expanded so dramatically as a space in the last few years that no one company can claim to capture “the audience” — no one game, no matter how popular, can pretend that it appeals to anything but a splinter of the huge mass of people that plays video games right now, and every day some developer or publisher somewhere is working to further work another splinter away from the mass, because that’s how you get to be the next Riot Games.

But that very explosion into subcultures is what is hurting Nintendo now, because hardware doesn’t work that way. If it wants to stay in the dedicated console business, it has to find a way to pierce its bubble without letting its fans escape. And that will be a painful transition — if it’s even possible.(source:gamasutra)