so playing Nintendo Land offers a strange new view on Nintendo’s catalog. It’s a pretend Nintendo; it’s Nintendo admitting to pretense. In the West we often forget just how traditionally Japanese Nintendo really is. This aesthetic choice might be seen as sloppy or arrogant in the United States, a failure to make a coherent collection of titles that explain the purpose of the Wii U through methodical demonstration. I take it as a gesture of humility. Nintendo is stepping back, acknowledging that things have changed. That it can no longer make assumptions about what games are or what they should be. And that its players shouldn’t either. This gesture of humility is a serious and profound one, in that it also refuses to accept the game industry’s standard assumptions about the present reality of games as mobile, social, and free-to-play. Instead, Nintendo presents a substantial, costly effort as its pack-in title, whose overall message amounts to, “we don’t know either.” (via Gamasutra – Features – Persuasive Games: Wii Can’t Go On, Wii’ll Go On)