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The Wii - Is the Magic Gone?
Computer And Video Games asks the tough question: is the Wii's magic gone? After the flurry of excitement around the launch, lackluster ports and a persistent inability for Nintendo to keep units on the shelves has made it hard for gamers to sustain their enthusiasm for the system. It doesn't help that most of the good games slated for this year won't be out for months. In some cases, there's doubt they'll even make it out this year: Reggie Fils-Aime appears to be backpedaling on Metroid Prime 3 by Christmas, which would be a shame. GigaGamez has additional commentary. Are you still as excited about the Wii as you were when it launched?
What have you done with the real Zonk!!!!!!?
Seriously, even as I like the Wii, I can see some "cracks in the armor". It's missing out on a lot of potential. Here are some things it needs:
a) Real calibration. Actually be able to tell it where your screen boundaries are located so that where you're pointing is a lot closer to where the dot is, enabling shooters that don't show your crosshairs. Preferably in the OS.
b) The Wiisaber. That alone will double sales.
c) Games that involves holstering the wiimote to one or more limbs. E.g. a dancing game or a bounty hunter type game where you have to hit a button on your arm to launch a rope. (I know Konami has a DDR like the former coming up, but sooner would have been nice.)
d) Online play.
Also, Zelda should have required you to pull back to load an arrow, so it's more realistic.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
So the fact that they are selling so fast Nintendo can't keep them in stock is used as proof that excitement is diminishing for the Wii? This reminds me of the alleged Yogi Berra saying about a certain resturant - "It's so crowded nobody goes there any more."
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
I'd say the excitement is still there.
Ask again when you can walk into any Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc and find them sitting on the shelves at any given time.
I was going to get a Wii but I keep reading on Slashdot that they aren't in stores so I haven't bothered. So you might say that Slashdot is responsible for the loss of interest in Wii.
Nintendo did an excellent job speeding out a few good, solid games when the Wii launched. IMO, these games weren't intended to have an incredible lifetime, indeed, they served their purpose; to create enough hype so that the Wii would still sell in the face of other systems during the holidays. Now, as with most of the other systems, we must wait for what I'm sure will be a solid game base to flourish.
You have to think about it - developers have just been exposed to a massively, paradigm-breaking gaming concept. Give them time. Just because the hype has settled down, doesn't mean the magic's gone.
Blerg.
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Obviously, you don't understand. Take the late, great Sega Dreamcast. Thousands of Dreamcast consoles were left sitting on shelves for months on end. It was such a magical time, that Sega went out of the console business. But, hell, they made up for the millions in financial losses with volume. Shenmue became such a must-have game that Sega just announced the release of Shenmue Balboa. In this, the seventeenth volume of the game series, Ryo Hazuki is a 65 year old hack boxer that fights a latter-day Mike Tyson.
There's no magic in the Wii anymore. There is too much demand. I'm waiting for the next system, the Nintendo Uus.
You hear that people? The magic is over! You can stop buying them up off the shelves so I could get one!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
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