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Wii Hardware Upgrade Won't Happen Soon
As high-definition graphics become more and more entrenched in this generation of game consoles, Nintendo has had to deal with constant speculation about a new version of the Wii that would increase its capabilities. Today, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime bluntly denied that a hardware revision was imminent, saying, "We are confident the Wii home entertainment console has a very long life in front of it." He added, "In terms of what the future holds, we've gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home consoles will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we'll do that when we've totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii. And we're nowhere near doing that yet."
Wii has a large userbase of casual gamers. There wouldn't really be anything that new for then. HD sure, but I know many people who really aren't that interested in it. I am, sure, I would love a Wii HD with Motion Capture Plus. But thats probably not the case for majority of people, especially girls who usually don't understand why their boyfriends/husbands want a huge HDTV.
The only thing Wii was missing was the better motion sensors, but it wasn't possible financially at that point, the technology was too costly for competing with better priced console. After that it would be just everything that more hardcore players would want, and that isn't Nintendo's largest market.
In terms of what the future holds, we've gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home consoles will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we'll do that when we've totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii.
Translation: We still have MOUNTAINS of shovel ware to sell!
>"when we've totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii. And we're nowhere near doing that yet."
exactly. they've only just come out with a black wii. then they will have a blue wii, yellow wii, green wii, then they still have to do the special edition pokemon pikachu wii, the clear see through wii, the smaller wii with a different disc loading mechanism, an even smaller wii with a new controller, then FINALLY they'll release the WII HD, after all our waiting, then 6 months later they'll release the wii 2 electric boogaloo
I just can't read far enough into what all these execs say when they talk about the "long life" of their consoles that remain entertaining for 2.5 years at best.
I think I disagree. Why upgrade, if the only difference is going to be better graphics? That doesn't make games any better. The weakest console, graphically, won this gen by a landslide. The weakest console, graphically, won last gen by a landslide. It's the games, not the hardware, that make a console enjoyable... and the games get BETTER throughout a console's lifespan.
If a new console cycle started, we would be in for two years of really bad games before developers got back on an even keel. The games would become ANOTHER 400% more expensive to create, and probably shorter. Is there any game you want that can't be made on current hardware?
I would love to get another five years out of ALL the current consoles.
Obviously you haven't played any of the numerous Wii games that are really good. Are there also a bunch of Wii games that are gimmicky and simple? Yes. But don't assume that just because there are some crappy games for a console, that said console is successful only because of a unique feature. No console does as well as the Wii has without GOOD games. I own a PS3, a top-of-the-line gaming PC, AND a Wii, so this isn't just some Nintendo fan boy sounding off. I'm pretty picky about what games I buy, and the Wii has a bunch that are lots of fun, and have actual replay value.
Good for Nintendo. I don't really care about flashy sequels and having to re-buy consoles/accessories/games or hope that the backward compatibility works (if there is one). I just want people to carry on making games for a console that almost everyone has played. It's good business sense to keep your customers on a stable platform and sell optional extras / games that enhance their original purchase's value without *forcing* them to upgrade and alienating them, not to mention keeping the online Wii stores alive - how many people who have never touched emulation have been playing emulated titles on Wii without even knowing? It's good gaming sense (what matters is the game and the price, not the number of / type of peripherals, graphics, sound...) and at the end of the day, the Wii is forefront on the general public's mind... not including persistent gamers, people would struggle to give the correct name of the current version of the Xbox / Playstation, and would probably name Wii first.
"Wii 2" isn't required. Wii already proved that state-of-the-art isn't required, just a little bit of fun and know-how and something a bit different. Whether you hate it or not, you've played Wii at least once and tried it. I know that I can't say the same about the Xbox (any version) / Playstation (any version past the original PS1) consoles, yet my PC is full of every genre of game. Give it another 5 years or so, then people will be making games that actually test the limits of the Wii to the extreme all the time, then a successor that has full backwards compatibility will sell like hot cakes. And, to be honest, everyone I know that owns a Wii would actually be happier with some bundled accessory that enhances the whole console rather than a whole new console... a "HD addon" or even some processing upgrade that the Wii can interface with (like the N64 memory expansion modules, or the SuperFX/DSP chips that were in SNES games - Nintendo know what they are doing when it comes to getting the most out of a huge investment, which is why they're pretty much the only one making a decent return on hardware alone, not just the software).
If it works, and it sells, and it makes money, don't ditch it for a sequel... enhance it a bit at a time, one expenditure at a time, and keep your customers happy without shoving them between major purchases and platforms. If only MS could follow the same suit...
According to MetaCritic, there are 26 Xbox games with 90+ ratings, 20 PS3 games with 90+ ratings, and 9 games on the Wii with 90+ ratings.
I don't see the value proposition in the Wii now that the more powerful and capable competition with better games have come down to a point where the price difference is largely irrelevant.
I have a wii, and I regret getting it so far. The Only thing I play on it is Guitar Hero, and I certainly don't need a wii for that. Wii sports gets boring rather quickly.
Then I have one of the Resident evil games. This one is fun enough, but the graphics suck balls so much it's unbelievable - mostly due to the low resolution. Most of the other games I see in the stores don't look even remotely interesting, and those that do usually have very bad reviews.
If you know of any good games, please tell me.
An HDMI cable. Every other device connected to the TV has one, but the Wii insists on converting to analogue and back again. I can't think of any reason why this would be terribly expensive or difficult to do. They wouldn't even need to support higher resolutions - just the same ones over HDMI.
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I think that Nintendo's going to go with a new paradigm for console releases: They'll follow the iPod route. Their next Wii will just be the new model of Wii, with improved features, and slightly changed styling, but fully backwards compatible.
They want your WIFE to want to upgrade.
No savvy console manufacturer confirms a hardware upgrade before it's just about to hit. Otherwise it'll hurt sales before the upgrade date.
Visiting slashdot? How's 4chan?
According to MetaCritic, there are 26 Xbox games with 90+ ratings, 20 PS3 games with 90+ ratings, and 9 games on the Wii with 90+ ratings.
I don't see the value proposition in the Wii now that the more powerful and capable competition with better games have come down to a point where the price difference is largely irrelevant.
Staying locked in your bubble won't allow you to understand where you're wrong.
But it's pretty obvious : "Metacritic", "more powerful and capable competition with better games".
You are stuck in your old values that the Wii is disrupting right since before its launch, and you use Metacritic to confort you, a site that compile reviews from site stuck exactly in these same old values.
Sorry, but the Wii just shattered the record of sales for a console in one month in the USA this december (3.81 millions Wii sold, PS2, previous record owner for home consoles, was at 2.69).
It more than exceeded the sales of PS3 and XB360 combined.
We thought exactly the same thing when my 14 year old son bought a Wii with his hard earned and saved money last Spring. It sat gathering dust almost all summer, with his younger sister and I most often playing it. We only had Smash Bros, Wii Sports and Wii Fit to play and did not bother buying any more games because it really wasn't all that fun.
Fast forward to Christmas Day and I bought the family Wii Sports Resort and the required MotionPlus add-ons. The Wii has been played almost every day since. Our favorites are, in order, Archery, Swordplay and Table Tennis. Tons of replayability.
However we also bought my son an XBox360 with Assassin's Creed2 and ModernWarfare2. The difference between the two is dramatic, and if it wasn't for Wii Sports Resort I would still say that purchasing the Wii was a waste of money. The XBox is just soooo much better and the lack of motion sensing controllers for it does not seem at all to detract from the gaming experience. (Of course I hate the controllers, preferring a keyboard/mouse myself)
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That's silly. Let's say you're going to get one console and the top twenty games for it. For the 360, the game 20 has a score of 90 (Bayonetta). For the PS3, game 20 has a score of 89 (WipEout HD Fury). For the Wii, game 20 has a score of 86 (Punch-Out!!). You're making a big deal out of literally a few points in a 100 point scale, even though each console has a largely different set of reviewers, judging the games by different standards.
What's more important is variety. Are you really going to get both Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? If you look at the 26 Xbox 360 games with 90+ ratings, about 10 of them are first-person shooters. Do you need that many shooters? In fact, if you pare down your 90+ list for each system by eliminating games that play similarly, you'll shorten the 360 and PS3 lists severely.
Speaking of paring down, the 9 games scoring 90+ on the Wii include both Metroid Prime 3 and Metroid Prime Trilogy. Trilogy includes corruption, so subtract 1 from the Wii's count. Oh but Trilogy is a pack of three 90+ games, sold for the price of 1, so add back 2.
Now with that correction, the Wii has 10 games with 90+ ratings. And that points out the problem of lasting value, totally unaccounted for by your metric. Game scores generally measure how good a game is while you're playing it, but completely ignore how long you'll be playing. There's no real difference between two games with a score of 90 where you'll play each for 10 hours and one game with a score of 90 that you'll play for 20 hours. Well, except the individual game has twice the value for what you pay yet counts half as much by your metric.
And that's the problem. What you're doing is similar to taking a bunch of objects, measuring their density, and summing the quantities. The result is meaningless. It will go up if you simply cut something in half. What you want to do is measure the mass, the actual entertainment value.
If you know of any good games, please tell me.
In no particular order...
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