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Nintendo's Sale Dominance Gets Noticed
Via Kotaku, a Wall Street Journal report on Nintendo's continued dominance of the game charts. The piece rehashes the February NPD numbers and discusses the role the Wii and DS have had in revitalizing a company the WSJ refers to as an 'also-ran'. "To take better advantage of the Wii's growth, EA moved quickly to ramp up game production for the system, acquiring Headgate Studios, a developer in Utah focused entirely on making titles for Nintendo hardware, and shifting resources in other EA development groups to Nintendo projects. The company released four titles for the Wii in March, including a version of its Tiger Woods golf game in which players swing the Wii controller like a club. EA is also working on a line of consumer guides for the Nintendo DS that will be aimed at older players in Japan."
So.. when will there be any new games released for the Wii? Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime, Super Smash Brothers are all without release dates, with a few of these rumored not until 2008. I believe the analogy of the Wii just being two GameCube's duct-taped together is looking more true every day.
Price is a clear indicator of quality. Wii is cheap as shit cause it's a piece of shit.
I've Karma to burn so I'll chip in I found out my local toys r us actually had a PS3 and Wii sat next to each other and despite what everyone says everyone was hulked around the PS3 (mostly going £500! we can't afford that yet.)
So what don't I like about the Wii? Well firstly after watching the Wii demo it looks like we are going back to Playstation (as in 1) level of graphics, which as a gamer is off-putting and is quite noticeable, its something when your little sister goes "eugh that's worse than singstar". I'm not saying that graphics are everything (HL2 not as pretty as Doom3 but much better game) but when I'm looking at a console I want something that can be at least as pretty as my current console (at this time a PS2.) Anything worse will put me off it
Games that are always fun, now I'll admit I played Wii sports and for ten minutes it was fun. But actually having hand eye co-ordination I worked out the easy way to use the controller stopped waving my arms around and won against any competitor (there were three.) Providing something challenging is fun for me, mini games and things like Sports can be fun for a while just like Buzz The Big Quiz is great fun the first ten times you play it, then you understand the game and most of the challenge goes away, sure if you get Buzz the Music quiz you'll start having a little more fun. Now sure I go through games like this far more quickly than the average person but people will get there and once they do the game loses all enjoy ability, in other words mini-games are fun for a while but get old.
Nintendo's game library is currently poor and I don't think its going to get substantially better, I've been around asking Wii players their favourite game (this was pre Paper Mario Release) basically I was told Wii Sports was great, (Zelda fans loved Zelda), the Sonic game was ok but Paper Mario is going to be awesome. That's four good games in how many months out of how many titles, the 'dud' PS3/xbox360 games were still raved about in some quarters by PS3ers/Xbox360ers. With companies like EA jumping on the bandwagon I don't hold much hope that things will get better for at least a year or two.
The Wiimote, I hate this, just words can explain. The reason for my dislike is because the Wiimote is a gimmick, its something to get people going "wow that looks really cool!" if the Wiimote had been released for the gamecube (ignoring technical issues) would the gamecube have sold as many units? What makes this worse is the few (i'll admit few) Wii gamers I've met have told me they use the classic controller for most of the games because its better. So after choosing a console because of a certain type of controller and then you don't use that controller. Oh and the fact there's three different controllers for the thing and you'll inevitably need all three.
Lastly it appears Wii's live in the same world as Ipods now, it doesn't matter how good/poor it is, how expensive it is people like it because its 'cool'. Like Apple fanboys the Wii as developed its fanboys into attacking anyone who disagrees with them or suggests the Wii isn't the best thing since sliced bread. I've even seen one forum poster post something like "I've had my Wii for 3 months and have to ask, is this it? What games do I need to get to really have fun?" instead of suggesting other Wii games they attacked the guy/girl for daring to suggest the Wii wasn't incredible, I can't like any technology which has that sort of fanboyism behind it.
Before you accuse me of being a PS3 fan boy, I own a PS2 I love my PS2 but I'm undecided at this point which console I'm going for. From playing a few friends PS3's I can see that I'll have a lot of fun with such a unit, but there's no way I'm paying £425 for one, it's not worth that. When GTA comes out I'll make my choice, heck I might be wrong about the Wii and get one. Until either the Xbox360 gets a games library which isn't identical to my PC's, the PS3 sells at a normal price or the Wii can start churning out some good graphical quality and fun games, then I'm undecided.