Halo 3, “nothing new” says Reggie Fils-Aime
Posted October 3, 2007
A couple days ago about a week after the mega hyped Halo 3 release, Reggie Fils-Aime (President and Chief Operating Officer of Nintendo of America) made a few comments regarding Halo 3 that caused some fanboy sparks :
“…in the end, quite similar: first-person shooter experience, multi-player capable online. Tell me what’s new?..”
And he continues on to state “Nintendo has no need to counter the launch of Halo 3 in any way.” Interesting comments considering Halo 3 launch day sales reached $170 million within 24h
ours. But then again, I’m not surprised and journalists love to feed off of comments by the opposing party. I was actually looking forward to hearing what Jack Tretton(CEO of Sony of America) had to say, but oh well.
Normally I would agree about there being nothing special about the Halo franchise, but $170 million within 24hours says maybe there is. I myself am particularly interested in 4 player online co-op and how you can freeze the game and look around. Recording the game-play is also a nice touch. Plus, there’s an awful lot of people that’s going to be playing it and I kinda feel left out.
So will Halo 3 drive consoles sales of the Xbox 360? I think it will. It may even be enough to hold the Wii’s inevitable dominance off for just a little bit longer. So with the holiday seasons just around the corner, what exactly does Nintendo have to combat this titanic release? Well, even with flooded market of crappy titles shipping out every week, there’s actually a few big ones heading out for battle later on this year.
Actually, Metroid Prime 3 : Corruption is already out in the US for a few weeks now but won’t hit the rest of the world until the end of this month. This is a good thing too, cause it finally provided hope that the Nintendo Wii can have decent games that aren’t ports from older consoles. I’ll shall have to post my review of it in the upcoming weeks. The other two games, Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros Brawl are obviously going to be the big hitters for Nintendo this winter. But will it match the super hyped Halo 3 sales? This I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see how Nintendo market these upcoming titles in the near future. I was a bit surprised to see how subtle the Metroid Prime 3 marketing was, well at least to the rest of the gaming world. Considering Mario is the mascot face of Nintendo, I’m expecting to see him everywhere this christmas. And the fact that Super Smash Bros Melee was the best selling game on the Game Cube, I would expect some large epical (is that even a word) marketing campaign for that game too.
But then again, Nintendo is weird. They do weird things. So who knows how this going to turn out.
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I don’t think Nintendo needs to combat Halo 3. You’re looking at two entirely different markets. Moreover, the Wii is serving as a supplementary console and isn’t involved in the true battle between Sony and Microsoft.
That being said, Nintendo cannot combat Halo 3. Halo 3 is the only system seller remaining, after Sony lost all exclusive rights to GTA. Sure, you can call the Mario a system seller, but it will remain a classic among a massive group of fans; it will not cause players to cross boundaries - Halo, GTA will.
Now, for Reggie to say that Halo 3 offers nothing new, this just means that he obviously has not looked into the game and comes off as a foolish executive biased towards his own product. What Bungie and Microsoft have done with this franchise - from the MASSIVE online realm (never seen before in the industry) to the integrative functionality of Bungie.net, online stat tracking, and the like - is beyond anything Nintendo could EVER hope to do.
I respect Nintendo, but Reggie should not comment on Halo, because Microsoft - with this particular game - is moving the industry in the appropriate direction. Why does Reggie say there’s nothing revolutionary here? Because he knows the industry - in the long run - is going all online. And when that happens, Nintendo will be shit (excuse my language) out of luck. He knows it. Nintendo knows it.
Gotta keep your eye on the big picture. And motion-sensing control schemes are not the future of gaming. Almost a year after the Wii’s launch and the market has not seen one viable third-party title. That’s your proof.
Well I do agree that online gamming is potentially the future of gaming. But Reggie is right about that it’s really nothing new. This kinda of stuff has existed for years on the PC and is still going strong even now. But is Nintendo far behind the online market? Yes, very.
About the future of motions sensitive control, i think it can possibly be the future of gaming. Try Metroid Prime 3 and you will see why.
[...] But we can all wish….It’s interesting how these comments from Reggie contrast with his previous comments on Halo, and Kaplan’s comments on the gaming industry. Yet even though he is complimenting the other [...]
don’t bash on the motion-control. does there have to be one future for gaming? Maybe nintendo is starting a new branch of gaming. Look at history.
Scientists thought the world revolved around the sun, and the world laughed at them and reticuled them. thats what’s happening here. nintendo is pioneering a new idea, and everyone scoffs at them, so calm down, there’s room left for both futures. ITS NOT A COMPETITION. Play it cool, have fun, play video games.