Still, let's not get too romantic: Nintendo's risk is not daring because the Wii U is good, necessarily. Many will lament what they will perceive as a step back for Nintendo compared to the "innovation" found in the Wii. They might be right. But the Wii U is serious in a way that Nintendo has never attempted. Even Nintendo may not have fully realized what it has done. It has domesticated the wildness of the present moment in video games, consumer electronics, the internet, and home entertainment by caging them out in the open. It's lurid and beautiful and repugnant and real, like watching Mickey Mouse smoke a joint in the alley behind Space Mountain.
We've all been assuming that games "growing up" means growing up in theme, tackling adult issues, achieving the aesthetic feats of literature and painting and film -- even if by "film" we usually mean "summer tent-pole movies."
But there are other ways to grow up. One involves embracing the uncertainty of one's own form and responding deliberately. That's what real art does, after all. It admits that it doesn't know what art is in theory, but only in practice. It gives the finger to its critics because it doesn't care if they like the results. Some among us keep asking for the Citizen Kane of games. Maybe Nintendo delivered something better, something weirder and more surprising -- particularly for a consumer electronics device. Not craft but soul, for once. Even Apple hasn't succeeded at that.