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Wii 'Popularity Bubble' to Burst?
A combination of industry and developer observations has prompted Tech.co.uk to wonder if the Wii's overwhelming popularity is due to end sometime soon. This is based on a report from Japanese business newspaper The Nikkei, which published an article recently entitled 'Software Houses Miscalculate Audience, Demand For Wii'. "The report goes on to discuss the likelihood that many Wiis are gathering dust in owners' cupboards, citing one software house president as saying, 'People bought it out of curiosity, and it's likely a lot of them haven't used it.' Given that September saw Wii sales fall sharply in Japan for the second consecutive month, it seems reasonable to speculate that the bubble inflated by the novelty factor is starting to deflate, but writing Nintendo off at any stage is a perilous course to steer." Is this just worrying, or is there validity to this?
from Japan to the US. I still can't get one in a major metro area of WI. And I can see at least 5 games that I want to play.
Meh, a real sig would take too long, and I have an MMORPG to play with....
This statement is very poorly timed and thus most likely completely inaccurate. 1. Christmas season starts soon. Christmas = high sales period. 2. Wii has 3 extremely popular games being released between now and february.
I don't know anyone that has a Wii that is gathering dust, and that includes the one at my Mother's house.
Games for -all- consoles tend to be a bit lacking this year, as far as I'm concerned, but the Wii has definitely kept up with the others in terms of game count. If anything, they should be asking if the PS3s are gathering dust. There's hardly any good games yet, and the ones that ARE out came out later than their 360 counterparts. Gamers aren't known for their patience at the time of a game's release... They buy what's available.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It also 'seems reasonable' to speculate that everyone who bought one still plays it every night...
They should have added "It 'seems reasonable' that the company the 'software house president' works for isn't selling as many games as they would like because their particular games suck balls."
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I know my credibility on this issue is near zero around these parts, as I've not been afraid to state all along that the Wii is over-hyped, but I agree with the fundamental tennet of this argument; many Wiis are not getting used because there is very little on them worth playing for more than about 10 minutes at a time. Looking at the "new releases" reviews on the average game-site (IGN is my personal preference, but your mileage may vary), it's easy to see that games coming out for the Wii mainly fall into 3 categories; "party" games (or extended tech demos, as I tend to think of them), rushed and nasty cross-platform ports and virtual console games (whose quality varies from the stellar to the derisory - but which many games will have been emulating for free for years).
The first category are ok on occasions when you have friends over, but are no use at all the rest of the time. A brief glance at gamerankings will show just how badly Wii ports of cross-platform games tend to fare. And virtual console games... well... great... but I don't want to spend all my time on my new console playing games that came out a decade ago.
There are a tiny number of other titles which actually have some gameplay value. Zelda is ok... slightly above average for its genre. Metroid Prime 3 is pretty good, although I still have problems with the backtrackeriffic gameplay style of Metroid games. Resident Evil 4 remains one of the only two cross platform games to actually be enhanced through being on the Wii (the other being Rayman Raving Rabbids, which falls into the "insipid party games" category anyway).
I know what people are going to say at this point; the Wii isn't for me, it's for the casual crowd. Thing is, I suspect that over time, even the average Joe will realise that, cheap though the Wii is, the limited use it eventually gets still means its horrible value for money.
Right now, Nintendo have things pretty easy. They had an unprecedented hype-machine for the launch of the console and some excellent initial sales. However, it seems to me that for those of us in the UK, the comparison to Gordon Brown's political honeymoon as Prime Minister are most appropriate; there comes a point at which people realise there's no substance there and the wheels fall off spectacularly. Happily for Nintendo, Sony continue to shoot themselves in the foot at every opportunity. They have an excellent machine out there, which, despite the high price-tag, is significantly more future-proof than any of its competitors (especially with the Blu-Ray drive, which is looking like a better and better idea). However, because they've mismanaged their relationships with developers and insisted on pushing their horribly broken and unnecessary motion-sensing controller, they've yet to attract a significantly better range of games than the Wii (although at least the PS3 has slightly more in the way of "substantial" games).
My instinct still stays that when all the dust settles, the slow-but-steady pace set by the 360, with no gimmicks, few headline-grabbing features, but an increasingly solid and well-rounded games lineup will win the day.
Well, that's what I thought about the Dreamcast too. I mean, who cares if it only sold a fraction of what the PS2 was selling? Mine will still work, right? And Sega will surely keep making games for it, right?
Well, I'm proud to say, I was partially right there. My Dreamcast still works flawlessly. Hasn't had a new game made for it for a damn long time now, though.
Seriously, the prices of developping a new game are insane these days. Actually, make it: for a decade or so now, and it's only getting worse. So they need a certain market size just to recoup the costs.
And no matter what game you make for a console, not every single owner of that console will buy it. Doesn't matter what game it is. Even Hallo 3, not every XBox owner on the planet bought it. And that was a major success. You have to hedge your bets a bit for the case when it's a lot less of a success. I.e., you have to have a bit of a safety margin there.
So if a bubble bursts, it can be bad news. But, hey, your own console will keep working.
And before someone pipes up with "But Nintendo itself will keep making games for it"... well, so much good that did to the popularity of the N64, eh?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Then what on earth do you mean by FPS, if it doesn't mean "a game with a first person perspective, in which one's primary interface with the world is, in fact, shooting"? Sure Metroid isn't Doom, it's not Quake, nor is it Halo[1..3]. So you actually have objectives, and have to, god forbid, explore. So what? Does that disqualify it as an FPS?
There are lives at stake here!
Its first person perspective, and you shoot stuff constantly. That makes it an FPS. It has puzzle elements added, but its still an FPS.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Some purists might argue that it does. The main point of the Prime series (and all Metroid series really) was to explore and find power-ups that allowed you to get farther into the "dungeons". In contrast the primary goal of most FPS games is to make it from point A to point B by killing or otherwise eliminating anything that gets in your way, possibly with conditions attached such as ensuring that some object is either protected or destroyed. I think one of the key features that sets Prime apart from other more traditional FPS titles is the need to use the various Visors and jump upgrades which effectively make the game play closer to a platformer such as Mario Sunshine. The fairly constant switch to third person when performing certain jumps and using the morph ball also serves to distance Prime from a FPS.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Heh.. I know I am still waiting for games I'm interested in. For now though, I've been picking up gamecube games to hold me over. The Wii is a great game system, its just that game studios didn't think it would take off, so most of the games are the Mario varity.
That said, it looks like some good ones are coming up; manhunt, tomb raider: aniv., RE: chronicals, etc. hopefully RE: 5 will appear on the wii as well.
Tell me about it - I owned a Wii pretty much as soon as they arrived in the UK - bought a bunch of games, and realized I only liked Wii sports. Zelda - got bored after about 20 minutes of wandering around a dull village with a horse. Tiger Woods golf - one round was enough. Then I bought a PS3 with Resistance Fall of Man - played that all the way through - great! In fact, I didn't play the Wii again after buying the PS3 (after playing games in High-def, you don't want to go back to 480p!) I sold the Wii with all the games, plus extra controllers, store credits etc for 120 pounds, just glad to get rid of it. Yeah, the wiimote is a great controller, but the system's hardware is very "last gen", and the games are just, well, shallow...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
If they wanted people to go online with it they should have put a fucking ethernet jack on it. sorry, just bitter, my wireless router sucks.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
History has shown that once a console gains market dominance it's all but over bar the fat lady singing for the competition. Sure they may be able to eke out a borderline existence but no console has ever had a heartwarming come from behind Disney style win once a clear leader was established.
The NES bitch slapped all comers. The Playstation surprised everybody, destroyed Sega and did Japanese fetish like things to Nintendo. The PS2 laughed like a bad guy in an anime at the competition before crushing them all.
Despite all this the current crop of "games journalists" seem to be adamant about how Sony will execute an amazing come from behind win. "It's has the hardware that gives me wet dreams." "It's a Playstation and therefore is sent from heaven to save us from actual gameplay." "It's bigger than the first generation XBox controller." "Zero Punctuation owns one so they must be the shit."
I believe that Sony has fluffed this generation in a way that rivals the mistakes made by Osborne or Apple in the early 90s. They took a name that was the pretty much the definition of sex in the nerd world and turned it into the equivalent of COBOL for masses. Unless a Y2K event happens in the near future, Sony will be pan handling for change soon.
As for the 360, MS has never made hardware this complex before and it shows. It is less reliable than a business person who honestly believes that ties make you more professional and successful. Consoles are supposed to be something that gets about as much attention as a VCR. You plug in in under 2 feet of cables and the charming photos that Aunt May sent you last Christmas and it just works. Not something that requires raised floors and dedicated air conditioning to survive the harsh environment of the average consumer's home.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
<rant>
I believe that even after game producers remove their collective heads from their asses that the Wii is still destined to fail, for two reasons. First and foremost, we have well-established, risk-averse publishers. The big houses have found a niche that they know will sell sans innovation (think "pop-gaming"). Why experiment with the Wii's controller when the graphics fall far short of Advanced Console Theta? When we can co-brand games with other mass-media? When our development staff knows nothing beyond button mashing? Why experiment when we can repeat the mold with guaranteed profit?
Initially the WiiMote was hyped to break the mold. It could bring 1992's VR hype (see: the evil Sys Admin in hackers) to the masses! Look at the market, though. Developers approach the WiiMote superficially, grafting functionality onto their games instead of incorporating it into the experience. Face it: most games treat the Wiimote as a gimmick. What's worse, consumers are beginning to hold the same belief as developers--the only thing the WiiMote is good for is gimmick after gimmick. That's why this console, for all of its potential, is withering on the branch. It could be said that the market lacks an "entrepreneurial spirit"--the vision of change, and the inclination to do it.
So, where are the entrepreneurs? Written out of Nintendo's business strategy, it seems. Nintendo caters solely to the massive, stagnating atmosphere of the past 5 or so years. In a seemingly schizophrenic move, Nintendo priced the Wii development kit at $2000, but they refuse to license it to anyone without prior success in the market. WTF? Likewise, Nintendo built an innovate console, but they didn't innovate their market for content. Presenting a novel platform to a stagnant environment accomplishes nothing except stagnating the platform. That's why Wii games are, and will continue to be, the same, lifeless crap as on every other system.
If Nintendo wants their 'Revolution' to be successful, they must dedicate themselves to the cause. They should encourage variety and competition. Likewise, the developers who play the "Wii Game" should have an "innovate, or die" mentality.
Why? More innovation forces developers to investigate every nook and cranny of the system, to push it beyond what the console developers originally expected. Leave no feature unexamined, because that could give your competitor an edge.
How do you accomplish this? Invite new players--entrepreneurs-- with new projects and new ideas to the market. Entrepreneurs don't have the opportunity to rest on their laurels, because that bed of flowers hasn't been made. Their incentive is intrinsic to their goal. in addition they may force the big players to shift as well.
And if the big guys don't shift? So what? The new developers provide your content.
Companies like Microsoft encourage this form of development. They give away an XBox360 development kit (XNA Game Studio), and XBox Live gives indie game developers a market for their games. XBox Live flourishes (even if it flourishes with crap), while the Wii Shopping Channel rots. Furthermore, every developer tied to MS is one less available for Nintendo. Their "potential content network" dwindles daily.
As a budding entrepreneur who is highly interested in game development--particularly on the Wii--I'm pissed they're excluding me. But what really pisses me off is knowing that, when I finally make my case for the Wii, the market may have passed it by for Game Iteration X++ only on Advanced Console Theta.
</rant>