I've read the article and there's a bit more to it than Kishi's quote, but he gets the gist of it across. Now, I will respond.

To wit: The current direction of the gaming industry is to cater increasingly to a specific group of people, which alienates everyone else and will ultimately prove harmful as genres continue to become overspecialized (thus appealing to a smaller and smaller core group). Nintendo is trying to move outside that shrinking hardcore constituency using hardware innovation. In other words, the company is defining its own terms of success -- especially since games for Nintendo systems cost far less to develop than those on competing systems, meaning developers and publishers can make a healthy profit with fewer sales, thus freeing them to go after less clearly-defined audiences.

This is, I think, exactly why the fanboy press is so baffled by Nintendo's continued existence as a first-party hardware creator. The company increasingly refuses to cater to them. And I guess that's why I tend to gravitate toward its creations, too; at some point I think I fell outside the "primary hardcore" circle of the Venn diagram. I still can't muster up an ounce of enthusiasm for God of War, but Trauma Center looks pretty rad. (Hopefully admitting that fact won't get me fired.)

Bullocks to that. This controller is ITSELF like a new genre, in that we will see a broad spectrum of innovative, yet weird titles at first, then we will see a kind of "rennaisance" as developers finally get the formula down. After that the standards will sink in and things will immediately become stale. Was the bongo controller innovative? Well, there's been bemani games before, but it was the first controller of its type to require you to clap, and it was the first to be used for something other than a bemani game. But seriously, how many games can you make for a controller like that? It's just not suitable for every type of game. You could TRY to make a baseball game for it, but you'd be met with marginal if any success.

So really, Nintendo has put a PHYSICAL limitation on the type of gameplay experience you'll get to have. They'll be forced to release an add on just to accomodate traditional types of games (and people whose arms get sore), making the main controller moot.

Innovative gameplay my foot! It's the way in which the developer uses the controller that makes it innovative, not the hardware itself! Sure, anything that hasn't been done before is innovative, but let's look at Dance Dance Revolution for a minute, shall we? The controller idea had been used before. It's just a simplified version of Nintendo's very own Power Pad. However, it was Konami's bemani gameplay coupled with the controller that made it an innovation. Now let's examine the games Pump It Up! and Techno Motion. Both games used a new style of controller (in PIU!'s case, it was a 5 direction pad using the diagonals and center, and in TM's case, it used a 9 direction pad), but the games themselves were immediately seen as knockoffs, and rightly so. They use the exact same style of play. Thus, they are not innovative. This is even why further bemani series (Drum Mania, Guitar Freaks, Keyboardmania, and games like Donkey Konga and Taiko no Tatsujin) failed to generate as much fervor. While the controller was completely new and innovative, the games were all exactly the same.

Nintendo's original controller was so well received because it was simple, but it accomodated any type of game you wanted to play, except for pong clones, but people were sick of those at that point anyway. Actually, what we SHOULD be talking about is the paddle controller. One knob and one button was all you got. Sounds limiting, doesn't it? Well, developers naturally overcame that and produced a pretty good selection of games (including Warlords, which is one of the best games ever). However, there's only so far you can go with an interface like that. It's great for games that only require a limited field of 2D movement, but beyond that it's horrible. The reason that the "gamepad" style of controller was so succesful is because it was ACCOMODATING. It was much better for a much wider variety of games.

Unfortunately, that's not why it's going to be unpopular. It's going to be unpopular because "NintenDUMB is for teh f4gz!!!!!!!11". Oh society... When will you learn...