Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [93]
The Revolution, by contrast, was not trying to be the biggest or the baddest. In fact, its modest abilities led to one frustrated developer saying it was just a pair of Gamecubes duct-taped together. It used Intel’s Broadway chip, successor to its Gecko Gamecube chip that used 20 percent less power and ran 50 percent faster. Great for Nintendo, maybe not so great for someone who expected a 2006 console (running at 729 MHz) to be more powerful than a 2001 Xbox (733 MHz). It was designed to be small and sleek, no bigger than three DVD cases, and so efficient it didn’t need a cooling fan. This frustrated Nintendo’s third-party developers: the spectacular graphics that they made for the 360 and the PS3 had to be severely dumbed down to be ported to Nintendo’s new console. The end result was like watching a long R-rated movie on network television: time-compressed, edited for broadcast, pan-and-scanned, replete with cuts. Why bother?
Nintendo’s seasoned-technology mindset had never been so evident—or so daring. It was purposefully taking itself out of the arms race driving its competitors. Making money from selling hardware was part of Nintendo’s success story. Let the others price the bare-bones Xbox 360 at $300 and PS3 at $499—with gamers having to fork over another C-note if they want to actually get online with either. Nintendo would compete on price—$250. Saying good-bye to an easy couple of hundred million dollars each year, it announced that all online play would be free.
The entire console was Satoru Iwata’s Radar Scope, the one big decision that would decide his company’s fate. But this wasn’t a brash moment of putting the life savings on the number-four horse. First off, zigging where others zagged was Nintendo’s consistent strategy. If anything, the watered-down Gamecube was when Nintendo tried—and failed—to join the slam-dunk club. Once Iwata and Miyamoto saw the success of the DS, specifically its new operating system, they felt their new paradigm would find favor when it was released.
For this new paradigm they could thank the same man who Yamauchi had once cursed: Mario. Mario stopped Nintendo from being anything more than an entertainment company. But amusing people was now the mission statement, the decree of the new shogun. Not being the biggest or fastest, but having the best games. Invention is needed for new amusements, and while this year’s inventions would be copied by the rest of the industry, Nintendo would continually invent new ones for next year.
It took work to find the revolutionary for the new console. Nintendo had considered making the Revolution’s controller a touch pad. That would copy the DS, though. Motion-control, via a camera? Too complicated. One authentic-looking fake ad was for a Virtual Boy – ish helmet called the Nintendo On. The On was not that far from the truth.
The reveal—of the official name, at least—came on April 26, 2006, a few months before release. Nintendo’s new console was the . . . Wii. Huh? The letter “W” was an emoticon meaning “smile” in Japan, and the two lowercase “i”s represented two players standing next to each other. And “we” implied family gaming. The initial ad campaign would feature two friendly Japanese men traveling through America, Johnny Appleseeding Wii systems across the fifty states.
History repeated itself. Just as Donkey Kong was saddled with a name that was just too easy to mock, Nintendo picked a name that was a synonym for urine. It was small, underpowered, and came after the weak Gamecube. It was being released in America on November 19, two weeks before Japan (December 2). It smelled like not screening a movie for critics.
One final nail in the Wii’s coffin? Just like the Gamecube, the Wii was launching without a Mario game. (Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which had Mario in it, wasn’t ready.) Instead it had a forgettable string of tie-in movie games—Barnyard, Cars, Open Season. There were a lot of minigame collections as well, such