Thursday, July 03, 2008

The Nintendo Wii is popular because it is intuitive, compared to the old way of interacting with games, but is it really? How can you test such a thing, did Nintendo test this? What was the test audience age and background. All these things could influence the results of the research done. I would figure they did some decent research because there whole sales argument is based on it.

I have a Wii, and I love it. It is the best current console IMHO. Although last few weeks I witnessed something that made me think. In this age of Nintendo, I also own a DS. My oldest son, almost 3 years old, is allowed to play Super Mario 64 on it (no other game) and he adores it (again a testament of how great this game really is). He is also able to manoeuvre Yoshi/Mario/etc like a pro, very fast and accurate. What you must know is that I never explained the controls to him, he found them all out by himself, by trail and error. He got the hang of it pretty fast and so it must surely mean the controls are intuitive.

Games on the Wii, he just can't manage them (we play 'Wii Play'). VC games like the original Mario are no problem.

Are the Wii control schemes only logical from a certain age? If there are people with experiences like this I would sure like to know about them.

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