Casual Games

The book I read to research this post was The Casual Revolution by Jesper Juul which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The launch of the nintendo wii has revolutionized the console games market. Many people take their wii to their friends or parents or grandparents house & they all play a game on the wii & in a lot of cases they are all addicted to it. The wii is much more interactive than any other games console or computer although now sony & microsoft are trying to compete ie microsoft have introduced the kinect for the xbox 360. The wii has inferior graphics compared to the xbox 360 & playstation 3 but is by far the biggest selling console. Many people who haven’t played games since pac mac came out are quite happy to play games on the wii. Another phenomena is casual games which are games which can often be played for a short duration & are often fairly easy. Bejewelled is a good example of a casual game, you have to match 3 of the same, it’s a puzzle game which doesn’t have fancy graphics but was a surprise hit. Some games like mario kart let you have a quick race & you can specify how many laps you want to do. In the westernised world more people play console play console games than don’t play them. These people are often parents who may have an hour to spare & don’t want to be playing a hard game for hours & hours. There will always be games that appeal to the hardcore gamer & many console & computer magazines seem to favour these games but in a world where a game budget can be $15 million which means a game has to sell a million units before it can make a profit they can’t ignore casual gamers. A good example is grand theft auto: san andreas where you can explore the virtual world instead of playing the game.

The Gamecube

The book I read to research this post was The Rough Guide to Videogames by Kate Berens & Geoff Howard which is an excellent book and which I got from the library.

Despite its limited capabilities the gamecube gave the xbox a run for its money. The xbox came out around the same time. It used a 1.6 gb small proprietary disc. There were some excellent games ie resident evil 4, available for it and it looked like something that was fun to use. Most of the games on the gamecube especially when it first came out were family games. It marked a change of direction for nintendo instead of competing with sony head on as they had with the rather unsuccessful N64 which should have been more popular than it was. It was superior to the psone and saturn in processing power and had almost indestructible cartridges which loaded straight away. This was continued with the wii which though lacking graphically was more fun to play with than the xbox360 and PS3.

 

Wii Fitness

The book I have read to research this post is Wii Fitness For Dummies by Bill Loguidice and Christina T Loguidice  and I’d say it’s a good book but I would only get it if you have at least two of the three games that are covered in the book. The three games are:

1 Wii Fit Plus

2 Wii EA Sports Active and

3 Jillian Michaels Personal Trainer 2010.

Apparently Jillian Michaels 2010 is a big improvement on 2009. All three games use the Wii Fit Board and the Wii EA Sports Active uses resistance bands as well. My favourite Wii fitness device which is not covered in this book is the Cyberbike which retails for approx £100 in the UK.

One thing I forgot to mention in the Wii blog yesterday is that there is a form of avatar called a Mii which you can purchase on one of the Wii channels. It’s a kind of customisable picture that represents you and you mainly use it for online gaming.

I notice someone has left a message saying that I should use bold and itallics and H tags. I think my posts are too short for H tags but I will use the other two. If anyone wants to leave a message I do enjoy getting feedback.

Wii

Nintendo started out selling game cards which were later adopted by the yakuza in their gambling dens. In the 1970’s they started making game consoles. Later the NES became very successful as well as the gameboy. The Wii is backward compatible with the gamecube and some Wii games require the gamecube controller if they do they have a gamecube symbol on the box. I did read somewhere that in the UK the Wii has sold more than all the PS3s and Xbox360s combined. The two top Wii games are probably Wiifit and Wiisports. You can store things like photos on an SD card and display them on a Wii in addition it’s a full featured internet machine and nintendo has channels which are a kind of website but are only compatible with the Wii. You can download games onto a Wii and also you can download games onto a DS via a Wii. The graphics on the Wii are not as good as the PS3 or the Xbox360 but it’s much more interactive. I read “Wii for Dummies” by Kyle Orland and it is a pretty good book.