Over on Game|Life, Chris Kohler talks about Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and the difficulties that have been endured in not only readying Wii Music for the market, but in actually marketing it to consumers who don't get what it's all about.

"Anybody who has played it has responded very positively to it," said Miyamoto (pictured above, far right) to about a dozen members of the videogame press in a hotel conference room here Oct. 23. "One thing that I'm really struggling with is, what did we do in creating Wii Music that made it so difficult for people to understand until they actually get their hands on it?"

That question never did get answered.

And from a little further down in the article...

The goal was clear: If getting people to grok Wii Music truly means getting them to play it first, Nintendo has a massive Catch-22 situation on its hands. Short of mailing out free copies to every Wii owner, the best Nintendo could do was to lure journalists into an educational session hosted by Miyamoto in hopes of generating detailed reports about the product's features.

"I'm hoping that all of you will help get the word out that it really is a game that you need to play to understand," Miyamoto told the group.

It's an interesting problem which I've come to realize has a blatantly obvious solution, though it goes against Nintendo's own stance on such things...

They need to allow a free downloadable demo. Doing so, by allowing one or two songs (perhaps one Nintendo, one of the other more mainstream) and a small variety of instruments, they would be able to get the product into the hands of people, who could get to experience and decide upon it for themselves. On PS3 or Xbox 360, such a problem may never have been an issue.

Of course, the problem is thus: If they were to do that, would they really have any excuse not to do more demos? It could be a critical flaw in the armor they've maintained thus far, though a welcome one to many gamers.

Nintendo has upheld that they don't want to require demos of third-parties, but at the same time, they haven't allowed for any. They could follow Sony's example, and let them be included on a voluntary basis, but then people will begin to look to Nintendo themselves to lead the way, something they may not be willing to do-- especially given the already controversial limited storage space of the Wii.

Not to be a pessimist, but that may be their choice: Allow demos, or seal the fate of Wii Music.