Love It, Hate It, Play it on Nintendo's core audience

No one can dispute the fact that Nintendo is on top this console generation. The Wii is the hottest thing in gaming right now. It came out in 2006, and Nintendo is just now, three years later, able to meet demand for the console. The DS is popular, with over 100 million units shipped worldwide. These two consoles have brought a lot of new gamers into the fold-which is a good thing…right?

Maybe not, some gamers argue. Many gamers feel that Nintendo has forgotten about their core audience, those fans that grew up on a steady diet of excellent NES and SNES titles. These gamers, myself included, feel that in this console generation, Nintendo is more about making games for so-called "casual" gamers instead of creating titles that appeal to the group of people that has supported them for years.

This isn't a bad thing from a business standpoint. The casual gamers' market is a very lucrative one, and Nintendo is making copious amounts of money. They're actually making money on the sale of the Wii console ($6 per unit) itself-traditionally, console sales usually lose money, which is then made up in software sales. By making money on each console sold, Nintendo is in a very, very good position.

It seems like these days though, the only thing that appeals to Nintendo's core audience is its Virtual Console offerings-and even that hasn't appeased fans, who are still waiting for classic games like "Earthbound" and "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" to appear on the service. There's also speculation that with the release of the DSi, the successor to the DS Lite, Nintendo might announce a Virtual Handheld service which would allow DSi users to purchase old GameBoy and GameBoy Color titles for retro gaming on the go.

It appears as if Nintendo is trying to straddle the fence by mass-producing simplistic games for the casual market while trying to placate their core audience by selling them excellent games from their past. Doing this, Nintendo has failed to take advantage of everything their two consoles can offer, namely innovation.

Now don't get me wrong-I'm not saying the Wii isn't innovative. The Wii remote is a huge advance in the way games are played. But after games like "Metroid Prime 3: Corruption" and "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" (both titles originally slated for the GameCube, I might add), Nintendo hasn't really done anything with their motion-controlled console.

They've released games like "New Play Control! Pikmin" and "New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis", essentially re-packaged GameCube games with motion controls tacked on. Hurray?

I guess I'm just tired of Nintendo resting on the laurels of their old games. When was the last time you made a new intellectual property, Nintendo? I could be wrong, but I think it was "Pikmin", back in 2001.

New ideas and new games are what move the game industry forward. For their part, all Nintendo is doing is making overly-simplistic games and living off their back catalog. Maybe they should use some of the money they're making to finance some new ideas.

Sure, I want to see the latest Mario or Legend of Zelda game as bad as anyone else, but you know what I want even more? Something fresh, something new, something I haven't seen before. Nintendo has the capability and the ability to do just that-I just can't fathom why they haven't yet.