Poll: Team ICO or Nintendo?

[Zetona]

Given all the bruised feelings after Team ICO's narrow loss to Maxis in Round One of March Mayhem, I speculated that even if Team ICO had won and moved on to Round Two, they could not stand up to one of the most important companies in gaming. I want to test this theory. Vote, my fellow Escapists.

EDIT: 20 minutes in and perhaps my hypothesis will be proved wrong. Then again, there are only ten votes thus far.
EDIT 2: Now we're an hour in, and the poll is skewing more and more towards Team ICO. But there have been 14 votes, while the MM polls get maybe 1000 each. Vote, people!
EDIT 3: Now nearly 2 hours in, and Nintendo is catching back up. They were down 11-4 earlier, and now it's 11-9. How I wish more people would vote...
EDIT 4: 3 hours in and the poll has stagnated. Still at 11-9.
EDIT 5: 14 hours in, and Nintendo has the lead.

I really have no preference at the moment. Nintendo has made some great products, but it's been over a year since they've released a new Wii game aimed at their core audience (New Play Control doesn't count). As for Team ICO: I recently dusted off my PS2 and bought Shadow of the Colossus, but I haven't gotten very far yet. So I'm neutral on this one.

 

[Vlane]

When it comes to innovation Team ICO wins but Nintendo makes a lot more money.

 

[Yooz]

Team Ico.

 

[9of9]

I have never met a Nintendo game I've wanted to play.

I have never met a Team Ico I've not wanted to play.

 

[songnar]

SotC was, indeed, one of the greatest games ever made.

 

[Amplify]

As a die hard Nintendo fan of around 19 years now, I'm going to have to go with:


Team ICO.

 

[Same River New Water]

When it comes to innovation Team ICO wins

Only if we're talking about the past few years. Actually, no, not even then - even if they don't turn out to be a lot of fun, the Wii and games like Wii Fit are the most innovative things to hit the games industry for fifteen years (since Nintendo introduced the analog stick). Hey, my Wii and Wii Fit board are gathering dust too, but that doesn't mean they're not innovative. And that's not to mention the DS, which is both innovative and wildly popular. The DS alone should get your vote for bringing girls back into gaming.

I have never met a Nintendo game I've wanted to play.

I have never met a Team Ico I've not wanted to play.

Greetings, alien! Please teach us humans your strange and wonderful extraterrestrial ways.

Seriously, if this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZpD0btOZx8] doesn't make your heart beat faster you're missing a heart.

No disrespect to ICO, but Nintendo has been the main creative force driving the games industry for twenty years or more. A few games, no matter how outstanding, can't compare to that.

 

[9of9]

Greetings, alien! Please teach us humans your strange and wonderful extraterrestrial ways.

Seriously, if this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZpD0btOZx8] doesn't make your heart beat faster you're missing a heart.

No disrespect to ICO, but Nintendo has been the main creative force driving the games industry for twenty years or more. A few games, no matter how outstanding, can't compare to that.

Agh, it's true, my green-skinned ways do not understand the joys of Neen-ten-dough and Mah-ree-oh. Frustrating platformers with bright colours, no storyline and no artistic merit seem like a very gaudy waste of time to me. If there's one aspect of gaming culture that has always remained a complete mystery to me is everyone's automatic, inate love of Nintendo.

I feel almost as if, having only had a PC and no consoles as a kid I missed out on some crucial brain-programming necessary to develop in that direction.

 

[Zetona]

Greetings, alien! Please teach us humans your strange and wonderful extraterrestrial ways.

Seriously, if this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZpD0btOZx8] doesn't make your heart beat faster you're missing a heart.

No disrespect to ICO, but Nintendo has been the main creative force driving the games industry for twenty years or more. A few games, no matter how outstanding, can't compare to that.

Agh, it's true, my green-skinned ways do not understand the joys of Neen-ten-dough and Mah-ree-oh. Frustrating platformers with bright colours, no storyline and no artistic merit seem like a very gaudy waste of time to me. If there's one aspect of gaming culture that has always remained a complete mystery to me is everyone's automatic, inate love of Nintendo.

I feel almost as if, having only had a PC and no consoles as a kid I missed out on some crucial brain-programming necessary to develop in that direction.

You bring up a very good point: When we're playing the latest Nintendo game, are we actually having fun, or are we just saying we are? I actually have enjoyed some of the Nintendo games that I've played recently, namely Mario Kart DS, New Super Mario Bros., and Super Paper Mario. But my limited experience with games like Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, and Super Mario Galaxy is at best mixed.

 

[Aqualung]

Oh, crap.. I can't pick.. D: My favourite games are Shadow of the Colossus and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

...Damn you! Pass.

 

[JediMB]

Nintendo, simply for the sheer number of excellent titles they've put out over the last 25 years.

Team ICO do good work, though. Shadow of the Colossus needs a sequel.

 

[Zetona]

Given the results thus far, the transitive property of inequality states that Maxis will beat Nintendo come Round 2.

 

[hopeneverdies]

Well I've never had the pleasure of playing any of Team ICO's masterpieces, so I have to go with Nintendo

 

[irishdelinquent]

When it comes to innovation Team ICO wins

Ummmm, what?

-Shigeru Miyamoto created Donkey Kong by reprogramming old Radar Scope machines.
-Does the name Gunpei Yokoi ring a bell? No? Well how about the D-pad? Invented by that genius, as a staff member of Nintendo.
-If that isn't enough, Metroid is the first side-scrolling game that let you go left.

Plus, I don't really seem how Team ICO's games are all that innovative. Yeah, having a game where you only fight bosses is a cool idea, but it's not that innovative.

 

[Zetona]

The irony is that if you had said Sony or Nintendo, the votes would swing dramatically the other way, despite the widening to Sony brings a ton of other amazing developers.

Nintendo is part of the poll, so I'm not sure what your point is here.

EDIT: Never mind, I understand now. Disregard my above statement.
EDIT2: Mulling it over, and now your logic doesn't make sense.

 

[Same River New Water]

No disrespect to ICO, but Nintendo has been the main creative force driving the games industry for twenty years or more. A few games, no matter how outstanding, can't compare to that.

And of course they're the main creative force, for while companies like Sony were busy making games like Gran Turismo, God of War, the Eyetoy games, and Shadow of the Collosus, Nintendo is always releasing new IPs, never simply rereleasing the same franchises over and over.

The name on the box might not change, but the gameplay does. To take their most conservative IP: compare Super Mario Galaxy to Super Mario Bros. That's not rereleasing anything in terms of game mechanics, that's just reusing a familiar name. In the meantime, Nintendo was also releasing unique games like Pikmin, Advance Wars, Pokemon, Mario Kart (it might be old now, but it was revolutionary once), WarioWare, Metroid Prime (arguably the first FPS/platformer/adventure hybrid), etc. etc. Their biggest failures have come about from trying to be too inventive, as with the Virtual Boy debacle.

Gran Turismo and God of War are not particularly innovative games, and Shadow of the Colossus is more impressive than truly new. They're all very good games, but the basic structure of each of them is conservative. Gran Turismo is basically the same as other racing games. God of War is an excellent beat-em-up, but beat-em-ups are one of the oldest genres of games, going back before Gauntlet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(arcade_game)] - or for a more recent example, X-Men Legends. Shadow of the Colossus is amazing, it's true, but its basic structure is broadly similar to a series of Zelda-style boss battles strung together. In terms of new gameplay experiences, none of them come close to Wii Sports. Remember we're talking about the company that basically invented the platformer genre and popularised the home console; having the enemies be bigger than the player in an adventure game is small potatoes by comparison.

Again, I'm not talking about quality, I'm talking about innovation.

Let's look at hardware. Nintendo invented the D-pad; that's why Sony, Microsoft and Sega D-pads are never simple crosses, because Nintendo has patented the D-pad cross. Nintendo 64 was the first console to have an analog thumbstick; the Playstation launched without a thumbstick and began selling them months later. The Gamecube controller was the first to have analog triggers; now they all do. The Wii's motion control was announced, and a few months later Sony controllers had tilt controls rushed in. On the portables, the PSP was essentially the same as a Game Boy with a better screen and a console-style thumbstick added; the DS incorporated new features from handheld devices outside the game industry, such as PDAs.

 

[Thoraxe_The_Impaler]

I's a tough choice but recently nintendo has disappointed me, and even though they only made two games, team ico knows how to make games. My vote goes to ico.

You know most of the people on the forums said team ico was better, i think it's cause most of the people that voted for maxis were casual gamers who don't care enough to post their oppinion

 

[ohellynot]

although nintendo have made many classics and are one of the most well known and respected gaming compamies out there. shadow of the colossus, and team ICO has won