In my last post I left with the thought that Nintendo is about to usher in a paradigm shift in gaming, of course I never told you what that was. That was the point of this post.

What Nintendo has done with the likes of the DS and the Wii is to take gamers back to when gaming was fun. Nintendo has bought playability back to games. If you've ever played the Wii you'll understand what I'm getting at. But the DS has done the same thing for portable players as well.

The PSP is a fine console if you want portable, snazzy graphic with a modicum of  playability. But in all essence it's a PS1 in a small footprint. The DS has never had delusions of grandure, in fact they went in the opposite direction. They left fancy graphics and sound and went for hardcore playability. As such, games like Burnout Legends, while fun and swanky on the PSP, are superfun on the DS because it's easier to control with simpler gameplay.

Where Nintendo differ from the other companies however is in their ability to play older games for older systems. In the DS' case you can play Gameboy Advance titles using the GBA socket on the front of the machine. With the Wii, there's controller ports on the top of the console so you can hook up GameCube controllers. You can then insert a GC disc into the Wii and play all your old games. That's not even to mention the 20 years of Nintendo gaming you can download on the Wii via the online games zone.

Once again, Nintendo sacrificed graphics and sound to offer fun and simplicity. As such gaming has become more enjoyable. By comparison the Wii and the DS are inferior systems to the other platforms and yet the Wii in it's 9 months on the market is already selling more consoles than the XBox 360 during the year long advantage it had. Why?

The games are more fun and in games like Zelda much more epic. But ultimately it's the control system of the Wii that makes it such a great platform.

My mum doesn't play games. My mum is so far away from a gamer that it's not funny. Yet my mum picked up the Wii controller, and with little more than telling her what buttons to press she was bowling like a pro and whipping everyone's butts at tennis. This is the power of the Wii. Anyone can play it. You don't need to press 11 billion buttons just to perform a punch, you simply swing the Wiimote and Knunchuck  to effect punches.

Sony tried to imitate this with their PS3 controller but completely lost the plot with it. All they had was a standard PS1/2 controller with wireless and a accelerometer. They've advanced nothing and achieved just as little although they did ensure people played a premium for their cockup.

And this leads me to another point. The Wii is around $800 cheaper than the most high end PS3 and around $300 cheaper than the high end XBox and yet the Wii is actually two systems in one, three if you count online playing of old school Nintendo and Sega games.

While it's easy to pass off the Wii as a kid's toy, it misses the point because adults are more than ready to play it. It's now back to the stage where the adults are kicking off the kids so that they can play. In essence in moving forward, Nintendo went backwards and the gaming world is much better for it. When hardout gaming people don't notice the great graphics. If you've got 20 people shooting at you do you really notice the shadows and clouds moving in realistic ways? If you're running a track at 300Kph do you really notice the backgrounds? If not then why bother with flashy graphics? Why not spend the time making the game more playable and intensive with epic storylines or expansive areas? Why have games like Grand Theft Auto or Driver where you're limited in where you can drive? Why not have the ability to drive from say New York to California? It's not like they can't make these games, it's because they don't want to eat into their profits to make these sorts of games. The industry wants you to keep buying the rehashed, flashier versions of the same game you bought three years ago with nothing extra really added.

Nintendo proved that flashy graphics and sound don't make for great platforms. They proved that what really sells is games that people can enjoy playing. They proved that there can be invention left in gaming. Now all that is required is for the rest of the industry to cotton onto this and progress where Nintendo started.