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Super Smash Brothers Wii, Featuring Solid Snake
mcc writes "In a surprise news conference this evening, Nintendo unexpectedly revealed Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii, and released a promo video of the title. Smash Bros. Brawl will feature online play; a Nintendog item that blocks your view of the playfield by jumping up on the screen and demanding to be petted; bizarre Dragonball Z style superattacks; your choice of traditional Gamecube or motion-sensing Revmote control; and new characters in the form of Samus (without the suit), Meta Knight, Kid Icarus (!), and... Konami's Solid Snake, complete with a cardboard box he hides in. The only bad news is despite earlier reports it would be a launch title, Smash Bros. Brawl will not be out until 2007."
I hope the Wii does well. This is not because I am a fan of the company (though they've done great work which has brought me much pleasure), but for a more pragmatic reason: I intend to buy one, and want lots of third-party support.
/., I think I will be able to scrape up the funds for a Wii and a game every couple months. The way things are heading, I will have a huge supply of desirable games to choose from.
This is excellent news for people like me, and presumably Nintendo itself, because:
a) SSB has become a marquee title for Nintendo, and it will be good to have this out in that first 6-months-to-a-year period
b) this gives everyone an early answer on the question of GC controllers. Namely, on games where it's appropriate, we CAN expect the option of using the GC controller.
Though my budget for games seems to be much smaller than a lot of the people on
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
"However, if it turns out that most games are better without the 'chucks, how would Nintendo fan boys justify spending another 200 bucks on a system that is no better than the gamecube they already have?"
My GameCube won't be able to play this new Smash Bros. game. I ultimately buy game systems to play games on.
I'm not entirely sure you can say Nintendo is really in the backseat. I mean, in the last few years, you can definitely say the majority of the vocal gaming community sided with Sony, whereas Nintendo and Microsoft were always regulated to 2nd or 3rd place in the opinions... But on the other hand, when you step away from the hardcore crowd, Nintendo is the ONLY company of the three to actually walk away with more money than they started with. You can argue Sony sold this, or there are x units more shipped, but from a purely financial perspective, Nintendo is still king.
And if you even ignore profit, Nintendo has a number of good reputations. It's known for products that simply don't break. I've heard plenty of stories of consoles and gameboys getting hit be vehicles, falling out windows, and even being frozen and they still work. Whereas I've had so many complaints of Playstations (1 and 2) breaking for no real reason.
So, maybe it's unfair really to compare Sony and Nintendo. Over the past few years, it's become perfectly clear Nintendo is different. It's not in the same race. It goes after different demographics with different technology with different goals in mind (In Nintendo's case, this sums up to saying trying to create products that can appeal to everyone but still turns a profit, whereas Sony's business model seems to be to aim for the already tech savvy no matter the cost.).