Wii Don’t Want No Stinking MMOs

If you aren’t one, you probably know one: an MMO junkie; grinding your way to one last level or one more raid before you hit the hay. You’re the hardest of the hardcore, and you’ll let anyone within /shout–ing range know it. But what about your friends (if you still have any) that don’t understand? Those that don’t “get it”? Are they just not as obsessive as you, or have they yet to find their poison? Can the casual and the hardcore come together in one game, or will the twain never meet? To put it simply, where is the Wii of MMOs?

Some companies and ideas seem to lend themselves better to making an MMO that anybody could play. Nintendo’s one-two, Wii and DS combo has dethroned Sony’s and Microsoft’s console juggernauts. We all know how they did it: changing the rules by forging out a new market directed towards the “casual” gamer (and it worked, even if we were suspicious when Miyamoto first whipped out his Wii-mote and nunchuk). Game play over graphics. Their goal was to create a system that anybody could play, afford, and get as addicted to as Whitney Houston is to…[insert word].

So why, then, does Nintendo balk at the idea of taking a chunk out of the MMO market, too? A MMOG seems like the next logical step in making the Wii even more social and even more addictive. The past few years have been good for Nintendo, and the new direction that the company is taking may have been at first disconcerting to some (Americans) who were worried about the disappearance of the “hardcore” gamer, but since when has Nintendo been about the hardcore market? Mario is a plumber, not a space marine.
Perhaps MMOs are just a fad, and we’ll look like fools when Iwata-san takes his yen to the bank. But Nintendo also has a long history of bad business decisions- a long, long, history.

*Shudder*