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The Wii Launches in Japan
The Wii has launched in Japan, successfully and without many of the incidents associated with the PlayStation 3 launch. Joystiq's coverage of the Wii's painless Nippon birth has nothing but praise for the crowd control efforts of electronics outlets. The talk is entirely of sellouts and happy gamers. From the article: "Numerous methods of retail were used to launch the Wii, and these varied from store to store. Yodobashi kept its customers camped overnight in a parking lot, distributing numbered tickets to determine the order of entrance, before opening its doors at 7am. Bic Camera also opened at 7am, although most of the 650 people in line there didn't arrive until the first trains of the morning began to run at around 5am. Famitsu reports that the Tokyo Ikebukuro branch of Bic Camera sold out if its allocation of 1,200 units, while the Tokyo Yuuraku-cho arm of Bic Camera declared the console "sold out" at 5.41am when the 1,500th person arrived in the queue there." Kotaku has even more extensive coverage, with plenty of photos of the waiting lines.
The DS isn't popular simply because of the touch screen. It's because it took over from the GBA with better graphics (shocking, isn't it!! And contradictary to your argument as well) and GBA game releases dropped off afterwards. I'm no fan of any handheld, but from what I've been hearing, the PSP is selling quite well right now despite the popularity of the DS.
"uh... what? You don't mean that the games we have now are somehow deeper and more immersive than those we used to have on the SNES or on floppies do you? Cause that's a lie and you know it."
No, it's not a lie, but you seem to be lying to yourself if you're that hung up on the SNES. Sure, the games of 20 years ago are fun, I'm not disputing that, but don't pretend to live in a vacuum where bad games weren't far more common than good ones back then. The difference is that todays bad games are a hell of a lot better than the bad ones back then. And today's good games are also far more immersive and believable. There's entire genres that exist today that weren't possible back then. Look at stealth-action, for example. Nothing like that existed in the 80's or early 90's. Better graphics and processing power allows that.
Back then, you had to use your imagination to interpret what the screen was actually showing you. Were you in an epic battle with an ancient dragon at the bottom of a distant dungeon? Or were you a pixelated little cartoon character who hopped up and down when he attacked the pink blob which sort of looked like a dragon.. or maybe a lizard.. who knows.
At some point, a line was crossed somewhere and we didn't need to use imagination to translate the mess we saw onscreen into something interesting. We were now part of the game, and it was like being in a movie. The actions you carried out faithfully displayed on the screen. By adding decent physics, many additional actions are now possible without being explicitly programmed in by the developers. If you think that's a bad thing, then you need your head examined, because you're in denial and entering fanboy territory.
"No, all it means is better graphics and potentially better AI, not potentially better gameplay. A new input method, on the other hand, does translate to the possibility of gameplay changes, for the better or for the worse."
So you're saying that the new wiimote translates to the POSSIBILITY of gameplay changes, but at the same time you downplay that fact more power in a system only gives the POSSIBILITY of better gameplay (claiming the advantages I stated as not offering potententially better gameplay is just pure bullshit, admit it)
Exactly what are you arguing here? You sound very confused.