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Will the Wii Work?
Today BusinessWeek is running an article asking Will Nintendo's Wii Strategy Score? With the Tokyo Game Show this week, they run down the trials facing Nintendo's little-box-that-could both here in the States, and in Japan. From the article: "Few expect truly dedicated gamers to choose the Wii over the PS3 or Xbox. And ultimately, the advantage may go to Sony. Yuta Sakurai, an analyst at Nomura Securities in Tokyo, expects the PS3 to sell 71 million units by 2011, compared with 40 million units for the Wii. Microsoft, meanwhile, is planning a stripped-down version of the Xbox without a hard-disk drive and other accessories that will cost about $250 in Japan, where the U.S. software maker has endured disappointing results."
I'm a 23 year old PC gamer. The only consoles I own are PS1, SNES, and NES. I do all my gaming on my PC (Wintel). My room mate got a PS2, which I never play, and while the 360 looks killer, I won't buy it for the price.
A $250 Wii? HELL YES! The price point alone is what does it for me. That and the new controller just makes it a lot more interesting then the same old systems with new graphics.
I think this will work really well for them. This will be the christmas present to buy for years to come.
I live with 7 other people, and we have a shared food fund, which overflows into a house fund, and I'm totally going to lobby that we purchase a Nintendo Wii with it. I have only ever purchased (or my household purchased) an NES, a Gameboy, and a Game Gear (with its whopping 14-second battery life), and yet I am called to this glorious machine.
My four-point argument for the Nintendo Wii:
1. Legend of Zelda with sword-swinging.
2. Metroid Prime with controls that rival PC controls. (Oooooh! A slogan: "Metroid Prime: get inside Samus")
3. 4gb flash memory for under $50.
4. $250
I however do not really like any of the Mario Kart sequels nearly as much as the original. So yes, Nintendo can break my heart. Will they? I hope not. I don't even think it probable.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I'm a PC gammer. I've been a PC gammer for almost 20 years now. And I have never owned a gaming console.
That said, the Wii is the first console I've actually considered buying. If the first 6 months look good for it, and someone makes a light-saber game that works with the Wii-mote, I just might buy my very first console.
What I am not interested in is a $3,000 system, which is what the PS3 or XBox is to me. $400-600 for the console. $1,4000-1,800 to replace my 48" projection with a similar sized HD projection. $200 for a few games and a controller, and $200 for new HD or Blue ray movies to take advantage of the HD tv and player.
For $250 I can hit the ground running with the Wii. Another $200 for a few games and a controller and I'll be pretty set for entertainment for the year.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Somewhere along the line "dedicated gamer" seems to have been hijacked (by the media presumably?) to mean something like "compulsive graphics whore who will brainlessly follow whatever the newest trend is." Maybe it happened back when FPSs became the big thing when every "dedicated gamer" seemed to be upgrading their graphics card every other week in order to be able to play the latest game. Regardless of when it came about however i don't think that interpretation has ever fit me, and i like to consider myself a dedicated gamer, though perhaps one who has somewhat lapsed in recent years as i've had to learn how to balance gaming, a social life and a career. There may may be a few people out there that fit that negative stereotype but i really hope that the gamers who are actually _dedicated_ to their hobby are actually intelligent and thoughtfull people who will put more thought into their purchasing decisions than that. But perhaps i'm beeing hopelessly optimistic.
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Wii. Wiimote. Lucas Arts. Jedi. Lightsaber. Game.
It's coming. And it will mean Wii will be the platform to beat. The Lucasfilm presentation at Comic-Con showed some of the other aspects of coming Lucas Arts games, like the Euphoria system which allows for truly unpredictable NPCs, and introduces a little bit of volition in the Player Character as well. The demo only made sense when you thought of it in the context of the Wii and its Wiimote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjlFTihRwAk
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I'd consider Green Eggs and Ham the superior book. I hate Jane Austen.
The Dragon Boat was a bit silly, yes. The age of the hero- who cares? Its the gameplay that matters, and the gameplay was damn fun (except for the sailing parts).
You say to stop assuming people mean gore when they say mature. I've never seen any other definition put forth by those wanting it to be more "mature" other than blood and guts. Please tell me how changing the age and graphics style of Zelda would have made it more fun- because I honestly can't see it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
All the Wii controller does is replace the two thumbsticks of the X-Box with a controller which you can either move or tilt.
Uhhhh no. The Wiimote + Nunchaku has a thumbstick + move and tilt on the wiimote + move and tilt on the nunchaku + mouse/lightgun-type functionality via the sensor bar. You can be moving the nunchaku up (say to raise your shield in zelda) while using the thumbstick to move your character, while moving the wiimote in 3D space (say to slash your sword), while pressing a button on the wiimote (say to activate a power up for your sword slash). That's more freedom than just two thumb sticks.
If nothing else, the Wiimote will be able to simulate a mouse-like interface far better than a gamepad. But there are many possibilities beyond that - the much heralded rumor that LucasArts will make a lightsaber fighting game where you use the wiimote as your saber, for example.
One thing that I thought of that would be an interesting use of this controller setup for FPSes is if they use the nunchaku to control movement, and the wiimote for weapons... you use the wiimote to aim and fire, and the nunchaku thumbstick could be your directional movement, with it's buttons being crouch/jump/etc, AND the degree to which you tilt the nunchaku could make your character lean over to look around a corner, lean back to try and dodge (a la that scene in the matrix where neo leans over backwards to dodge bullets), etc.
However, this all assumes the controller works well. I haven't played one yet, nor have many people that aren't developers, so few people really know if it works as advertised. If it doesn't work well, or is annoying to use for longer than 30 minutes, I doubt the wii will be a success.
The only difference is that you need to wave your arms around like somebody doing Tai Chi with a sever muscle disorder in order to manipulate your on-screen character.
This is misinformation. IGN has a video from Leipzig of an IGN staffer playing several games, and he barely has to move his arms to do all game functions on a variety of games. I'm sure Wario Ware and Sports will require more wild motions, but that's because of the kind of games those are - party games have always required you to do dumb stuff. Mario Party had a warning on it about repetative motion, for example.
Most people I know with PSPs are techies that use them to play movies they downloaded from the net, or emulators.
Most people I know with DSes play games on them... mostly casual type stuff liek tetris or nintendogs, also.
The PSP is a slick looking device, but it doesn't seem appeal very much to people who don't know/want to be bothered with homebrew/emulation. The official PS1 game download service thing might change that though. More games would also help - or if they could convince rockstar to not release LCS and VCS for the PS2 for $30 less than the PSP price, that would help too.