Not too long ago I was speaking with a friend of mine who’s a game developer, responsible for creating some very big XBox/PS2/PC titles. I was telling him about my experiences with the Wii, and he blurted out in response “I’m not much of a Nintendo guy.” He could appreciate the platform from an intellectual standpoint, but it inspired little passion in him to develop new titles for the Wii first.

Cut to Chris Hecker’s now-infamous “The Wii is a piece of @#$%” rant at GDC, where he dismissed the platform as little more than “two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape.” Putting aside the obvious childishness of a profanity-laced tirade, his point was kind of interesting - that Nintendo’s focus on gaming as “fun” undercuts the continuous efforts by developers to make gaming an “art form.” (Come to think of it - and yes, I know it was supposed to be a “rant” - anybody who wants to be recognized as an “artist” doesn’t help their cause by saying a console “sucks a@#.” To his credit, he apologized the next day.)

In any case, it’s obvious that the Wii divides large swaths of the gaming community. Nintendo has the most loyal fan base around, but at the same time the gaming “elite” crinkle their collective noses at the very idea of developing titles for a platform with less graphic and CPU horsepower.

But, of course, there’s a massive contradiction in this POV. The chips and graphics engines powering today’s Wii only have less “oomph” compared to the other next-gen consoles. But not too many years ago, they would’ve been considered the technology gold standard. Were titles built to maximize the latest technology in 2001 incapable of being “art?” Or, to put it another way, when the next next-gen comes out in 2009/2010, do the best titles developed for today’s high-end platforms somehow get demoted from the status of “art?”

The obvious answer is “no.” That’s because “art” as it applies to gaming (or anything else, for that matter) isn’t merely about utilizing the shiniest and newest tools at your disposal to create richer environments, more subtle AI, more detailed worlds. It’s about creating something that connects with people at an emotional level. It’s about bringing new people into gaming and opening their eyes to the possibilities. When you’re doing all that, you’re building something that’s “fun,” too.

And, as we all know, great art withstands the test of time.

So some friendly advice to aesthetically ambitious game developers. When you see a quote like:

“The Wii has been a big hit in an Illinois retirement home, where the inmates are organizing Wii Bowling tournaments and showing up their grandkids.”

don’t recoil in abject horror. Embrace the Wii as a platform with its own rules, limitations - and surprises and opportunities. Great “art” can be developed anywhere, for any medium. And the happiest coincidence of all is that, now that the Wii is the world’s fastest-selling next-gen console, producing great games for the Wii - games that can ascend to the level of “art” - can make you lots more money, too.

And what’s not to love about that?

I played my first game of Pong on a beaten-up coin-op unit in a somewhat seedy Mexican restaurant in West Hollywood, California. I was around eight years old, and thought it was about the coolest thing I ever saw. I kept begging my parents for another quarter so I could keep playing, my burrito-and-enchilada combo plate growing cold as I tried to master moving the blip. 

They usually said no, because they noticed something that took me a few more years for me to come to terms with: I wasn't very good. It was soon apparent even to me that I lacked the fundamental hand-eye coordination needed to succeed in the world of videogames. But the fact that the loose quarters in my pocket disappeared into the slots at an alarming rate didn't deter me. When I was old enough to walk the mile or so by myself to Westwood Village (as a side note, that was when I was around nine or ten - would parents let kids that young do that today?) I'd make a beeline to the Westworld Video Arcade, around the corner from the great Fox Village movie theater. The colors, the sounds, the action was a powerful magnet to a young boy. But while my friends would post good scores and stretch their videogame allowance, my experiences usually amounted to about one minutes' worth of blind, frustrating fury. 

It was around that time I began begging my father for an Atari 2600. My dad was particularly proud of the fact that he wasn't an early adopter - my sister and I used to joke (well, at the time we weren't laughing) that we were the last family in the neighborhood to get cable, a VCR and a microwave - so he wasn't about to shell out for a videogame console. Instead, I discovered another type of videogame at the computer lab at Emerson Junior High School. A boy named Ken Kawahara (patiently) showed me how to program and play a Star Trek-style game and a horse racing game. We'd go in after school and play for a few minutes before I walked home. But, as with the coin-op games, my interest in these games far outpaced my ability to master them.

At last, when I was 14 or so, my parents broke down and got me that 2600. But by then, I was more mature and the reality of these games never seemed to quite live up to the hype. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that the last generation of 2600 games were horrendous - bad graphics, terrible gameplay, and not a whole lot of fun. I played my 2600 avidly for several months, but my interest waned and it soon lay dormant on top of the turntable in our stereo cabinet.

Then, when I was 15, I was in an automotive accident that claimed my left arm, above the elbow. I needed to focus my energies and interests on other things - videogames weren't much of a priority. But one day, not long after the accident and bored out of my mind (we were still in the "no cable" phase of my father's stubbornness) I pulled out my old 2600.

This is where you, the reader, might expect me to talk about how videogames helped my physical recovery, leading to a lifelong love of videogames that continues to this day. Cue the violins. But the hard truth is, I was physically unable to play. Even the joystick for the 2600, with its one oversized red button, required a two-handed dexterity that was impossible to replicate with one hand (try pushing a joystick down while reaching up with a finger to press the button, and you'll see what I mean.)

Videogames quickly faded from any meaningful role in my life. A couple of years later the first NES was released, with its decidedly two-handed controller (directionals on the left, buttons on the right.) Sure, I'd watch my friends play, and even take a frustrating crack at it myself now and then, but with only a passing interest.

I only started thinking about games again when two close friends of mine joined Activision in the mid-1990s. Purchasing a console was still a non-starter for me, but I began to follow the ups and downs of the industry, believing in its potential and fascinated by the technology. And when I joined IBM, I got the opportunity to think about gaming from some very different perspectives - its influence on business and society, what it means to the future of technology, and more.

But that, of course, is very different from the simple pleasure and purpose of gaming - entertainment. And as the games have grown more complex, so have the controllers - more buttons, more joysticks, more inputs to master. Sure, there've been periodic - and much appreciated - attempts by some to build one-handed controllers, but they've looked clunky and hard to use (imagine trying to play Madden on one of those.) So, from a communications standpoint, I've been in the position of talking about consoles I've never played.

When I heard about the Wii (then code-named "Revolution"), I was intrigued. A legitimate game console I could actually play? I didn't believe it could really work as well as they claimed.  But when I got my hand on it for the first time, it was a revelation. It was as if Nintendo built a console just for me.

And that's my story. Closing in on my 40th birthday, I'm playing videogames again - for the first time in more than 25 years. Sure, it's not perfect. Games also requiring the Nunchuk controller are basically non-starters for me (so much for Zelda!) And I worry that the gamemakers, so accustomed to producing titles requiring multi-button, multi-stick inputs will increasingly depend on the Nunchuk as an excuse for not taking full advantage of the immersive controller. Nonetheless, I'm playing with my kids, and I'm having fun. I'll never be a particularly good gamer - unfortunately my hand-eye coordination hasn't improved much since that very first game of Pong - but it doesn't really matter. I no longer have to wonder whether I'll be able to game tomorrow - because now, I can play today.

Nintendo says that it will replace 3.2 million wrist straps on its game controllers, in response to a rash of reports of controllers flying out of people’s hands during vigorous use.

This is a textbook case of something that on its surface seems like bad PR really being a home run. If you’re Nintendo, trying to hammer home the differentiated value of your console, can you do much better than admitting Wii users are being TOO enthusiastic with their controllers?

Several years ago, IBM launched a “wild postings” ad campaign in support of its Linux initiatives, where one of our agencies surreptitiously tagged (and I mean “tagged” in the pre-Web 2.0 context!) sidewalks with its “Peace-Love-Linux” slogan. The City of San Francisco had an absolute fit, and IBM was ordered to pay a small fine, plus clean-up costs. It was perceived as a PR debacle for the company.

But was it? The whole point of the campaign was to establish “street cred” with developers, that IBM was a champion of Linux, which at the time was considered an upstart, anti-establishment challenger to Microsoft. Developers who championed Linux were considered rebels (how times have changed!). So what could establish your rebel bonafides more than a government agency - “the Man” - coming down hard on you for expressing support for Linux? That fine was the best $100,000 IBM has ever spent.

The only way this could be better for Nintendo is if Congress launches an investigation into the company for encouraging kids and senior citizens to jump around in front of their TVs.

A perception seems to be developing that since the Nintendo Wii isn’t focused on exploiting the top end of the CPU power scale, it’s somehow underpowered compared to its next-gen competitors. Stories like this one often seem to position Wii as being all about “fun,” while XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 are all about “realism.” But as with many assumptions, it takes a fact and draws the wrong conclusion.

The “Broadway” chip inside Wii is a custom-built Power Architecture-based processor using Silicon-on-Insulator technology at 90 nanometers, and is built at our state-of-the art fab in East Fishkill (the same fab where our chips for XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 are made.) Some sophisticated advancements enable “Broadway” to deliver much higher performance while achieving a 20 percent reduction in power usage from earlier Nintendo processors.

Nintendo and IBM have collaborated for many years, going back to 1999 when IBM designed and built the chip for the first GameCube. Nintendo came to IBM with a very clear understanding of what they wanted to accomplish when they created the technical specs for Wii, and IBM worked with them to build a chip that met those objectives precisely. Many of the traits that make Wii as interactive and fun as it is are directly related to what’s inside the box.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo each have their own vision for the next generation of video games, and developed their technology in keeping with that vision. We’re insanely proud that we could work with all three of them, and help define the future of gaming. And if we’re asked which of our next-gen chips we “prefer,” the answer is simple: we love all our children equally!

Technorati tags: Wii, Nintendo, IBM