Why Game Magazines Hate The Wii.
The more I read video game magazines, the more I want to cancel all my subscriptions. My letter to the editor went unnoticed, or maybe just purposely ignored. I am not a great writer and not even close to a professional journalist, but a I don’t make my life that way. However I have finally figured out why game magazines are trashing the Wii so much.
I was reading Game Informer when I encountered their review of Mario Strikers Charged. I did not look for it, I was just browsing the latest magazine and thought, hey I already played this game, lets see what they say. The more I read, the more I felt like this was not a fair review. Mario Strikers is such a fun game that both my wife and one of my friend’s wife wanted to kill us after a straight week of non stop playing. The online game play was smooth and easy to access, the action was fast paced and the controls right on point. The music, the graphics and replay had Nintendo written all over in a good way. So why did Game Informer hate it so much? simply because they hate the Wii.
The president of Nintendo of America said in E3 2007 that “This is an exciting time, the Wii is putting video games right along with music and movies as a form of entertainment for everyone.” While this is a bold statement, he does have something to back him up. The Wii is being embraced by gamers and non gamers alike. Woman and later age demographics are jumping at the Wii. Heck, my Mom, someone who raised a video game addict never wanted to pick up a controller before now wants a Wii.
So why do game magazines hate this? simple, they are not going to be very relevant anymore. Their readership will decrease as time goes on because of who they write for. My letter to the editor talked about how they had no right to say that games should be made for gamers only. Now I understand that pretty soon their lack of writing skills and depth will make them dinosaurs faster than news papers on the printed media world.
Game magazine writers try to be sarcastic and witty. Because of that I have always excused poor writing and lack of depth on not just their reviews but their articles. I have even at times felt that it would be cool to be part of their staff reviewing video games, but now I know that I did not miss much.
Martha Stewart and Jessica Alba are both Wii fans and have been open about talking about the awesome console. Maxim magazine and Rolling Stone have been writing good video game articles for a while now. Why buy a magazine that is at least not up front about what they are pushing by calling themselves a multi platform magazine. At least Nintendo Power is upfront about pushing just the stuff from one company. While the game magazines are trying to retain an audience of hardcore gamers that are more interested in reading things online than in printed media, other magazines are going to pick up the influx of new readers trying to find out about what the Wii has to offer.
I might be completely wrong, but before the end of the year the Wii is going to dominate the gaming market like the DS is already doing to the hand held. It is not all about pretty graphics, its about great game play and Nintendo became the innovator and took the step toward fun instead of being stuck on pixel pushing land which its already dominated by the PC. I cannot wait for Unreal Tournament 2k7 to come out and make Halo 3 as irrelevant as video game magazines are becoming at least for me.
