No one seems to give too much of a damn about Nintendo’s latest console

As a kid growing up I used to love playing video games. I wasn’t obsessive about the games like you see with so many young kids today; I probably played as much as anyone else in my age group. However, as I got older I began to learn more about the video game companies. Who were the people behind these games? Who made the Mario series? What about the Madden games? Who was behind the wildly popular WCW/nWo video games? By the way, I used to consistently watch wrestling (again, probably not any more than anyone else in my age group – we all loved Stone Cold and The Rock back in the 1990s). Those two items – video games and wrestling – were two pieces of pop culture that I “knew” and that I felt comfortable investing in. So I invested in WWE and THQ stock back in 2008, too.

A quick side note: today, I’m only invested in two stocks – Sirius XM and WWE. They’re both reliable and WWE’s dividend is fantastic, not to mention that the stock has doubled in value over the last year (and… I happened to purchase before it doubled, too). Oh, and I sold my THQ stock at a profit before the company went under.

Getting back to the point, one of the things that I knew well as a young kid and that I researched quite a bit as I got older was the video game industry and, in particular, the Nintendo company. No matter what people may think, the Nintendo gaming consoles were the superior, global home console up until the GameCube was released (and floundered). They beat the Genesis and the first PlayStation as well as a long line of one-shot consoles that could never really compete. And yet, when I began investing – even after Nintendo had its major success and reclaimed the “King of the Consoles” crown with the Wii, I couldn’t bring myself to invest in the company.

And I still can’t bring myself to invest in the company because of blunders like the Wii U.

There are a bunch of people out there who are writing about how Nintendo should scrap the entire Wii U platform and focus on a truly next generation system. Others are writing that Nintendo should just give up on hardware and become a dominant software company on the Sony and Microsoft systems (which I think is a silly, dumb idea). And there’s never a shortage of anti-Nintendo writers who are heralding the end of the company once and for all (they get proven wrong every few years).

I don’t think I fall easily into any one of those categories. First, I’m just a guy with a blog – not someone who gets paid to write about technology or gaming systems. Second, I base my entire opinion on not investing in Nintendo solely on my own personal impressions of their ability to meet the demands of the video game market. Third, I’ve always been a fan of Nintendo and as long as they exist I’ll probably remain a fan (even though my video gaming has dropped from 2 – 3 hours each day as a kid to 2 – 3 hours every 6 months today).

With that information as a base, the title of this entry remains: What to do about Nintendo’s Wii U blunder?

I’m not going to suggest that they should scrap the system completely. However, I do think that it would make a lot of sense to drop the dual screen peripheral requirement for the most intense and hardcore games. In other words, when the latest Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed, Madden, NBA 2K, etc. are being developed and released for the next generation consoles (Wii U, X-Box 1, and PlayStation 4), the developers should have the option of making a game that doesn’t require the use of the second screen in the game pad. I don’t know if it is easy or economically viable for third party developers to do that right now, but it seems to me that part of the Wii U blunder is the gigantic game pad with a second screen that hasn’t ignited the video gaming world like the Wii Remote did in the last decade. And speaking of the Wii Remote, I don’t think that Nintendo ever really understood why it was such a draw for hardcore and old school gamers. It wasn’t that any of us old school video gamers or any of the hardcore gamers were excited about swinging our arms around like a looney tune – nope. The draw of the Wii Remote is that there were only two or three buttons that you could push to perform an action – not the nearly dozen or so that you had to deal with on the PlayStation controller.

Nintendo missed that point completely and it shows with the silly second screen in the huge Wii U game pad.

The other thing that I would do if I were Nintendo is I’d really focus on the next generation console and make it everything that their competition is and more. Yes, it’s time for Nintendo to start making a home theater-capable console. That means that the next Nintendo console has to be able to play the latest home movie technology whether it’s still Blu-Ray movies or something more advanced. And the console needs to be able to easily perform the same multimedia streaming/tasks that the Microsoft and Sony platforms can perform. If that type of functionality is paired with a blazing fast system that can handle the latest graphics and includes a powerful, yet easy-to-use internet shop, then I think Nintendo has a winner on its hands.

The final requirement that I would have for Nintendo’s next system is full backward functionality with the Wii and Wii U. Further, that backwards functionality should include the ability to transfer the digital ownership rights of any game purchased in the Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles. That would be the type of ground-breaking, customer-centric focus that would set Nintendo apart (again) from the pack and ultimately lead it to long-term success…

…and potentially lead me to invest in the company!

I was sitting at my desk reviewing my personal finances (which is a nightly ritual for me) and I was thinking about how I used to use both Microsoft Money and Intuit’s Quicken software. These days I don’t use anything besides some spreadsheets that I created and, frankly, they work great! But as I was going over my finances I started to think about the old Mint.com account that I opened up about a year ago before shutting it down.

Some months ago I remembered hearing that Mint.com was purchased by Intuit, which I thought was a real shame since Mint.com had a great user interface and was very user-friendly. Intuit doesn’t have the best record on either of those issues. Anyway, as I was thinking about this stuff I pulled up the New York Times website and wouldn’t you know that there was an interview with the creator of Mint.com (who is now a Vice President at Intuit) right there on the front page? It was a good interview, too! For example, I found out things like this…

Q. Are there parts of corporate culture that you find strange?

A. The corporate campus seems so quiet. A start-up is overflowing with energy. Here it’s a little more subdued. They’ve got these high, very depressing cubicles.

If I wanted a new computer or had some I.T. issue at Mint, I just walked to the tech ops team and they would get me set up in a couple of minutes. At Intuit, being a big company, you call the help desk, and the help desk has been outsourced to some foreign country — I can’t place the accent. They really have no idea of where you are or what your needs are. It’s the standard phone service when you get sent to a foreign country, but this is an internal help desk. It’s a real pain. I expressed this to one of my Quicken colleagues and he said, “Yeah, we just never call the help desk. Don’t bother, here’s who you need to call to skirt around the system…” I thought, that’s sort of dumb in a bureaucratic way.

But at the same time, a big company has processes with much more rigor than what we ever had in a start-up. They have great specialization when it comes to retail, packaging, search engine marketing or affiliate programs. And the financial rigor of a big company is phenomenal in terms of projections, making sure everything is on track on a weekly basis, or reporting your numbers — they’re very, very good at that sort of thing.

I found that interesting, but I also like reading about corporate culture. The interview – linked above – is a short read and one that I think you’ll enjoy if you’re interested in the internet and technology or just how entrepreneurs are integrated into established organizations.

Sure, no individual needs to use both of these programs at the same time. However, as I own my own business, I used Quicken for the business and Money for my personal finance needs and it worked great for years. Then, earlier this year Quicken essentially stopped supporting my version of the software and told me that I had to update (i.e. purchase an upgrade) in order to keep using their program. Not happening.

Instead, I looked into Money and realized that I could easily manage my business accounts under a separate listing and thus moved everything over to that program and uninstalled Quicken. It was somewhat sad to see the program go, but it was the best financial decision. So if you’re keeping score – Quicken is now gone from my system.

Oh, and bear in mind that this is all going on during the same time period where I’ve essentially decided that I want to strip my computer of all non-essential software and remove myself from superfluous websites. Frankly, since I started this stripping down process, my computer runs smoother and I have an incredible amount of room to store pictures, music, and documents. It’s great! But I digress…

During the last few years I’ve also created a series of spreadsheets that monitors and tracks my every expense down to the penny. Some people would consider that level of personal financial management to be a bit overboard, but at 28 years old (and saddled with $98,000 in student loan debt), I think it is absolutely critical to know where my money is and what it is doing. Also, my use of a certain spreadsheet to plan for upcoming expenses has allowed me to have $0 in credit card/consumer debt while increasing the total dollar amount of other, “good” expenses like donations and money put into savings accounts and the stock market. Money provided tremendous assistance in getting me to the point where I could create my own financial spreadsheets and have them actually mean something. However, last week I removed Microsoft Money Plus from my system.

As I started this post with – this one should have hurt, but it didn’t…at all. Somewhere along the line, Microsoft stopped supporting their Money series to the level that they support, say, and Office suite. I guess that the increasing sales of Office and other Microsoft products necessitated a shift in focus away from personal finance. Plus, with great free personal finance websites popping up (like Mint.com, which was actually purchased by Quicken), I imagine that the powers that be at Microsoft didn’t think that there was a lot of future profit potential in the Money line.

So, the latest software to get removed from my system is Microsoft Money Plus. I wonder which program will be next…

What happened to AIM? Could it be that the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (with their built-in messaging systems) have rendered AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger useless? Maybe the fact that text/picture messages and Blackberries are ubiquitous in today’s society also hinders AIM’s growth. Seems logical.

Granted, I understand that I first started using AIM over ten years ago (probably closer to 15 years ago) when I was a young teenager. Since I’m in my late 20’s these days, I guess that most of the people that I talked to on AIM are either now on my text message list or are a Facebook friend. It would appear that I don’t need AIM any more, actually, since I rarely sign on anyway.

And as I’ve written on JerseySmarts.com a few times already, I’ve been very interested in paring down the software that sits dormant on my laptop. In the last month I’ve removed a bunch of this unneeded software that has been taking up precious disk space. A week or two ago I uninstalled Google Chrome because I rarely used it (plus I’ve already become so accustomed to Mozilla Firefox) and earlier today I uninstalled Yahoo! Messenger since I haven’t used it in over a year. When looking around my computer, I found the old “AOL Instant Messenger” program which was replaced with AOL’s current AIM program…so I removed the old program since I hadn’t used it since the spring of 2006. Also, I purchased a discounted copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, which prompted me to uninstall OpenOffice.org from Sun Microsystems. Could AIM be next on the list of programs to be deleted? I’m not sure.

I think that I’d like to keep at least one of each of the major programs (one instant messenger program, one major non-Microsoft browser, one major office productivity suite, etc), so AIM may stay around on that fact alone. But the truth remains that even if the program does stay on my computer it’ll probably be a rarely used piece of software.

Isn’t it amazing how the internet and electronic communication have changed?

I downloaded Chrome the other day and I’ve been using it here and there and while it definitely loads quicker than Mozilla FireFox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, I’m not sure if it is as durable as those two products – especially FireFox.

I’m not entirely sure if I’m looking to make the switch from using FireFox as my main browser to using Chrome, but if there is a significant, prolonged difference in speed and loading times between the two, then I’d consider it. One of the benefits that FireFox has going for it is that you can add extensions and plug-ins, which is always helpful. Plus, it is completely open source so if you know what you’re doing you can go in and play with the source code (which I tried once).

Anyway, looking for advice. Thanks!

That’s a crazy amount of Wii’s in a short amount of time!

These numbers, compared to the paltry 360,000 PlayStation 3 consoles sold show a very interesting story. With all of the horsepower and all of the hoopla around the PS3 debut, the system just isn’t that appealing to the gaming masses. But wait, you say. What about all of these people dying over PS3s and what about the fact that they’re sold out? Well, the biggest use of PS3s right now is NOT in people’s home – it’s reselling them. EBay is packed with PS3 packages and the game is sold out in the stores for this reason – people are buying the consoles simply to turn around and sell them.

While this is also happening with Wii, there are many more stories about how much fun the Nintendo system is – which means that people are buying the system and playing it, not reselling it. In any event, the recent surge of Wii sales shows the huge confusion that Microsoft and Sony have about video gamers.

Yes, there are gamers out there who will buy the PS3 and the XBox 360 because of the high definition graphics and the ability to watch high definition DVDs. And yes, there are people who will buy XBox 360 because of their enormous game library and who will buy PS3 just because it’s a PS3. But when you listen to what the marketing guys from Microsoft and Sony are saying to try to sell these systems, they’re completely confused.

Recently, one Sony employee said that the PS3 is on track to become so much more than a gaming machine. Well, that’s the problem! We don’t want to buy a video game system to do our daily e-mailing on – we want a video game machine that is a lot of FUN to play! Hell, we’ll even take graphics that aren’t that great if the game is fun! Don’t believe that? Go to any old-school arcade and tell me that you don’t love playing The Simpsons video game from the mid 1990’s. Or sit down with any PS2, GameCube, or XBox and tell me that playing a good Mortal Kombat or Sonic the Hedgehog or Final Fantasy game isn’t sweet.

That’s what gamers want – FUN! You can keep your “home entertainment centers” – we already have a desktop or laptop PC!

XBox 360 is holding its own in terms of popularity despite the recent launches and abundant press for the other two next-generation gaming systems, according to the Compete.com blog. XBox was not left behind as demand spiked for the newer systems, and both the 360 and the Wii have recently passed PS3.

Interesting information, huh? Click on the link above to check out Compete.com’s numbers analysis.

Each system has their drawing points. The XBox 360 has a library of games that far surpasses the competition, while the PlayStation 3 has a built-in high-definition DVD player and a vast collection of PSOne and PlayStation 2 games that are playable on the new system. The Wii, though, is priced at $250 – less than half of the competition – and sports and extremely simplified controller with high-tech motion sensors.

So do you go for the price of the Nintendo Wii, the power of the PlayStation 3, or the library of the XBox 360? For me, I’m not really sure. I’m a Final Fantasy fan, which means that I should probably focus on getting that PS 3, but I’m not looking to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a game system…which leads me to the Wii. But I also want a system with a large number of titles to choose from – hello XBox 360. Of course the XBox 360 runs us right back into that cost dilemma.

It seems like the Wii is the way to go, and given recent media reports, there is more excitement for the Wii than there is for the PS 3 launch. However, I spent a good deal of money putting together a powerful, high definition TV and surround sound setup in my apartment, so why not get a gaming system that utilizes all of these goodies?

But the thing that will probably keep me from jumping into the console wars and buying a next generation system right now (aside from price) is the fact that I really don’t get around to playing video games too often any more. I began playing Square-Enix’s Kingdom Hearts about a month ago and played it for 2 days before I just didn’t have the time to settle in with it. One of the fraternity guys who I advise was at my apartment the other day and said that he’s playing the new Final Fantasy 12 and that another one of the guys beat it in 65 hours.

Sixty-five hours?! Man…if I had an extra 65 hours in my week, I don’t know what I’d do. Actually, that’s a lie. I’d sleep more!

Getting back on track, though, I don’t think that I’m going to get a new system just yet. I want to see what Black Friday has to offer this year (it sucked in 2004 and was so-so in 2005). If there are great sales on games and accessories for these systems, then I’ll probably look into getting one. If not, then I’ll probably just wait until the new year to even think about getting one of these things!