I should have been a bit more specific, when referring to platformers, I really meant 2D platformers and when you look around on the DS there really isn't much new in that direction, you got Megamans, Sonics, Marios, Castlevanias and Kirbies, but nothing new beside maybe some lackluster movie tie-ins. On the big consoles 2D platformers are even more dead, there you get pretty much nothing and even the "new" stuff like Alien Hominid, is basically just an old game in a new skin (i.e. MetalSlug).
When it comes to 3D platformers you are right, there is a bit more happening in that genre, but I never really got all that interesting in 3D platformers beside Mario64, since they more often then not turn into a boring item-collect/puzzle kind of thing instead of a compact fun jump'n run. The joy with platformers for me is that they have obvious goals and always something to do, with the 3D ones more often then not I end up running in circles for hours, since I have to find some item/switch/trigger that lets me continue to where actually the gameplay happens. And another issue that really annoys me with them is the double-jump, the single most stupid invention ever. Mario64 did it right, it had tons of different jumps, but all of them obeyed to the laws of physics (well, to a small degree), while in almost everything else you can jump again when already in the air. That already annoyed when I saw it in Ghost'n Ghouls and didn't get better over the years.
### There are quite a few turn based strategy games: Advance wars (GBA, DS), fire emblem(GBA, GC and Wii),
One thing to keep in mind is that Advance Wars and Fire Emblem are *old*, they started in 1988 and 1990. So there are literally right out of the "good old times". I think this is one of the biggest issues today, those games that provide old-school gameplay are often right from those good old days, they just managed to somehow survive sequel by sequel till today.
I for example love platformers, but if all there is available is yet another Castlevania, yet another Mario and maybe yet another Metroid it just starts to get a little bit boring, I simply had enough of those games for the last 20 or so years and I would welcome to finally see new heroes, enemies, universes and such.
No doubt, good games are still around, but what I often miss these days are the experimental games, those that don't really fall into any genre and instead just are what they are, back in the day of the C64 and Amiga there where plenty of them, today on the other side to many games just try way to hard to fit into genre clichés. Games these days are often void of personality and more often then not I end up thinking about games in terms of 'yet-another-FPS', 'yet-another-RTS', etc. instead of thinking about them as uniq games.
Its kind of the same thing that bothers me with Hollywood movies or TV series, sure technically they might be well done and I am sure a lot of craftsmanship went into them, but often that craftsmanship annoys more then it helps. Shaky cameras can be great for some things, but when every second movies/series does them they start to get annoying very quickly. The effect ends up not helping what the production is trying to do, but the effect stands out on its own, its the trendy thing to do and so everybody does it. In games its basically the same, somebody comes up with a nice new genre (say GTAs open city environment), and a few years later you have ten games that all do the freaking same thing. I wouldn't mind sequels much, but when not only the sequel is repeating past gameplay but half a dozens other games as well, it really becomes annoying and boring. Especially because those new games often don't expand on the gameplay, they simply repeat it. This gets especially scary when games end up looking so much alike that I no longer can tell them apart (Quake4 looks like Doom, Saints Row like GTA, etc.).
This all wouldn't be so bad if it would be because we already tried everything and are kind of running out of ideas now, but the sad part is that there are still tons of ideas floating around that nobody ever tried or didn't try in quite a lot of years.
Some might argue that XboxLive and similar services allow experimental games again and to a certain degree they are right, but more often then not those services are abused for rereleasing old classic over and over again instead of actually new games, Nintendos Virtual Console being the worst offender in that direction.
### For many people, the concept is just too complex. Hopefully, compilers will improve to the point where many things can be parallelized without the coder having to know very much
As long as we are using C or C++ I doubt that will happen, those languages are just not build with multi-threading in mind and thus aren't easily to parallelize, other languages like functional ones on the other side make the job really easy. When you don't have side effects to worry about, executing things in parallel becomes rather easy and straight forward. So I hope that switching to multi-core will also mean that we will finally switch to more advanced languages, its really time, but so far using them didn't provide much different in the end, with multi-core on the other side they could really have some huge advantages, not only will they lead to better code, but also to faster code.
Till that happens multi-cores should still be quite beneficial, I currently have 120 processes running, while many of them just idle most of the time, its not that unusual to have two or more processes that want all the CPU they can get, good thing when you then actually have two CPU cores to give them.
### Citations will help verify a source, but that's of little use if a article is biased. Some Wikipedia articles most certainly are biased.
*Every* source is biased, there is no such thing as an unbiased perfectly valid truth. The good thing about Wikipedia is that you have right next to the article the discussion page where you can instantly see where people disagree about an article, you also can dig around the history of the article when you really care who might have tampered with what things. I can do neither of that with a normal book or a normal internet page. Wikipedia is among the few sources where you got the peer review right next to the article.
Wikipedia might not stop bias, but it makes it very hard to hide.
### Kindly point us to a statistical study showing a causative relationship between watching violent TV or playing violent videogames results in real-life violence
Thats the wrong question to ask and the wrong study to do. If you only look for real-world violence caused by games with a direct link, you of course won't find it. Life is complex, there isn't a "play video game" -> "kill people" cause and effect relation ship, especially not when you also have violent movies, a violent real world neighborhood and dozens of other factors. Neither of this however means that games or media in general doesn't have an effect on you, actually it would be stupid to assume that just because you didn't find a direct link between games violence -> real world one.
To give a little drastic example: Why do you think the Americans are currently fighting in Irak? Why did they vote again for Bush after he started all that mess in the first place? Do you think media, propaganda and such had anything to do with that?
### but chooses that their minimum requirement is that said indie at least has demonstrated once that he can actually develop a game,
Many have, many have done so in their parents basement.
### and that the business setup is a bit more stable than a parent's basement.
Parents basement is actually a lot more stable then a real business, since the risk of getting thrown out when you can no longer pay the rent is much smaller, its of course simply a hell of a lot cheaper. You really don't need more then a single person to develop a game that can be sold via the VirtualConsole for $5 or $10, which is exactly what should happen, but doesn't. Testing out little cool ideas in 50 dollar games just isn't fun, neither for the developers not the players.
Those things are reasonable demands for professional development studios, but not for single-man/small-scale indie developers, which however are exactly kind of people the Wii need. "Home offices do not meet this requirement." just screams "We don't want you, go away", being open about new ideas and inviting to new developers looks different.
Flash will give you only access to a very small number of functions that the Wiimote provides, i.e. buttons, dpad, pointing, but no accelerometer, no nunchuck, which kind of makes the whole thing rather uninteresting for new innovative Wii games. You also lack 3d graphics, except those that you can emulate with Flash itself. Its of course still better then nothing, but no replacement for a devkit or a proper virtual machine.
### I mean you probaly going to get about the same performance as under PS3 Linux
PS3 Linux doesn't give access to the GPU, but it does gives access to the SPEs, which provide quite a ton of horsepower, enough for some realtime raytracing or for implementing a renderer for OpenGL. Its of course not enough for the next AAA title, but more then enough for homebrew development.
### dismissing the Xbox is a failure simply because it did not outsell the PS2.
I am not dismissing the XBox, I like it, but its certainly not the console that ruled the last generation. The point simply was: early sales for *all* consoles where very similar, sales after five years on the other side where very much apart. In turn, early hype for Wii might mean nothing in a few years.
### I understand it's impossible for independent developers to get a Wii devkit for much the same reason that it's impossible for people to get a Wii - more demand than Nintendo has had for years.
Sorry, thats bullshit. The reason why you can't buy a devkit is because Nintendo won't sell it to you, not because they can't produce them in reasonable numbers, which would be trivial given that the demand for devkits is a few orders of magnitude lower the that for normal Wiis. Just look around at WarioWorld.com, I don't see there a "Sorry, we would like to sell you a devkit, but are out of stock", but instead you get a little nice list of pre-requirements which are basically impossible to fullfill for a normal person.
### I think Nintendo's aware that getting independent developers is important to the ongoing success of their platform
Why is it then that they have announced no plans for anything in that direction? No games channel for newly created Wii games, no showcase games like FlOw or something like that. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
### While it's true the Xbox never turned a profit, calling it "a flop" seems a bit much
The PS3 is selling much better in relation to the Wii then the XBox did to the PS2, same with the PSP vs DS, yet people call both the PSP and PS3 a flop. The XBox certainly did its job for Microsoft, but it sold a lot less then the PS2 did.
### And where'd you see that statistic? Some people publishing video game stats online are far more credible than others.
Might have been Digg or Slashdot a few days/weeks ago, can't really remember.
### The main problem with lack of experimentation is definitely not on nintendos side,
Ten years ago I would have agreed, but after the N64 they have slowed down a lot. Sure, they did expand the video game market with their non-games (BrainAge, Nintendogs and such) lately, but when it comes to 'normal' games they really didn't have much impact at all, they even completly missed the online-bandwagon. The interesting innovations are happening elsewhere these days, Nintendo is just really good as making money from old ideas.
### Actually gettig the devkits is not a problem they can be bought,
They can't be bought. I can not go over to Warioworld.com and order on, instead that page basically just say "Go away, we don't want small developers". Getting stuff published is of course another issue, but when you can't even start developing then you don't really have to think about publishing. This is especially disappointing since the Wii has everything you would need to get started, USB, network, SD-Card support, all they would need to do is allow a way to execute binaries, OpenSource devkits are already available for the Gamecube and could be reused for the Wii.
A while ago I saw a little statistic about early selling numbers for consoles, all of them performed pretty much the same, the Wii got a few percent more then the rest, but nothing all that significant. Point is, many of the consoled flopped later (XBox, Gamecube), while some others dominated their generation (PS2), the early numbers gave *NO* hint at all at the what would happen a few years later.
### Shooters havent changed since the early days of Castle Wolfenstein 3d, you still run around and frag... seriously things have changed
There have been some good developments in the genre, like DeusEx or OperationFlashpoint, sadly most games just continue to pure primitive fragging. The packaging got nicer over the years, the gameplay however really isn't far away from Wolfenstein.
### but if you expect fro a console to be an entirely open platform forget it,
I don't expect consoles to be an entirely open platform, but I do expect Nintendo to give me a way to develop for the system, currently they simply don't. Unless you have large publiher backing you up and already are in the business for a few years they simply won't sell you a devkit and they don't provide anything like XNA either. So you are stuck, you can't develop for the Wii, while you can get started with developing for both PS3 and XBox360 without much problems.
Your argumentation is a good 20 years to late, back in the early days of the NES that might have been the case, but DS and Wii get tons of pure crap, there is no quality control in place to stop those games from release:
### If you want to talk about requiring wealth to make a game then it's those two systems that require it.
Developing for the PS3 is free, it allows you to install Linux right out of the box without any hacks. Developing for the XBox360 cost $99 a year with XNA. Developing for the Wii is *impossible* for independent developers, Nintendo won't give you a devkit, end of story.
I am not talking about developing a top notch game that makes the most of the hardware, there a Wii game will of course be cheaper, I am talking about doing small scale development for the platform (see GeometryWars, FlOw, Folding@Home, etc.). PS3 and XBox360 allow that for anybody who wants to, Wii doesn't, its 100% closed for normal people. Getting a game developed that way is of course a different stories, but Microsoft and Sony do provide entry points for aspiring developers, they also already have publish small games, Nintendo so far has done nothing in that direction.
Zeldas core hasn't changed since the early days of the NES, you are still fighting Ganon, you still have the same items and Zelda:TP was by far the most uninspired game of the whole series and yes I did play them all (ignoring the CD-i ones). Paper Mario a new concept? Sorry, did you miss the other two PaperMarios and the other three MarioRPGs, a few changes in the fighting system don't make a new game? TraumaCenter is a port of a DS game. Kororinpa is one of already way to many 'roll a ball' games on the Wii. Elebits and Rayman Raving Rabbits are new, but also rather shallow.
I am not claiming that PS3 and XBox360 are somewhat miracles of innovative game design, I am bored as everybody by yet-another-FPS, but I am kind of sick and tired hearing of how fresh an innovative the Wii is when beside Wii Sports there really isn't much worth to talk about, ports, sequels, rehashes and very little else, oh and of course VC games...
When the Wii was announced Nintendo talked a lot about how the idea was more important then the money and such, but so far the Wii is still a very proprietary platform, locking out all the people with interesting ideas and only leaving the large publishing houses with their big money, which they make with the Wii thanks to crap ports and shovelware. Maybe I am spoiled of the C64 and Amiga days were the platform where still open and everybody could try their luck and thus the number of innovative games was huge (many of the genres from back in the day are totally forgotten today and could use a revival). I don't see any of that on the Wii today, no hints, no announcement, just a big silence, even more weird, I do see it, at least in parts, on the Xbox360 and PS3 (XNA, FlOw, Linux, GeometryWars, Folding@Home, etc.).
There have been over 10 Zeldas, five MarioRPG games and three WarioWare games before the Wii even launched, oh, and Mario, MetroidPrime and SmashBros aren't exactly new either.
### But the numbers seem to show there's more of me than you.
Last time I looked the XBox360 still had a 4mio lead to the Wii.
The issue is that the Wiimote can only detect orientation when it is not moving, as soon as it is moving it gets impossible to figure out what acceleration is caused by gravity/orientation and which by movement and this is a huge issue when it comes to mapping motion more or less 1:1 into the game.
Another issue is that the Wiimotes accelerometer can only detect orientation in two axis, not three, with the Wiimote itself this issue can be somewhat solved by using the IR sensor and sensorbar, but for the Nunchuk this is a huge issue, since it makes some proposed control schemes rather awkward, since you have to tilt the controller instead of point it to the left/right.
### The Wii will come out with some legendary games
What makes you think that way? I waited for Nintendo do come up with anything legendary since the end of the N64 (Mario64, Zelda:OoT), but never got any, I am still waiting and can't see anything that looks interesting on the release list for the Wii, sure Mario or Metroid might be ok, but ultimately they are rehashes of past games.
### Not only that, as online play becomes functional for games
Nintendo does not want full online play, just look at the totally broken friend code system. Real online play will never happen on the Wii unless Nintendo does a turn by 180 degrees in their handling of it. Just look at the DS, online is there, but you only have a handful of games supporting it, none of them however in any interesting way due to friend codes.
### I picked up Need For Speed: Carbon the other day
I gave up on that series back when it turned from simulation into a simple arcade racer, back then some ten years ago.
### All excellent single player titles worth playing.
Sorry, but that just isn't right. Those are ok games, but they are not excellent, those are not the games that make me buy a console, those games are fillers that I might buy when nothing else is around. How many people do you hear raving about Godfather or Tiger Woods on PS2? None. Why? Because nobody cares about those games when you have a God of War and similar high quality stuff around.
Not long ago I was running Gnus with spamassassin, I however gave up on it, since it simply was no longer manageable, to much spam, to much mail, and no way to properly handle it. Gmail provides me with better spam filtering, *much* better text search (killer feature), is faster, has special handling for new/unread mail, can display conversations with all mails readable at once instead of a separate mail and thread window and a bunch of other nice stuff. Gmail is by no means perfect, I do miss real threading, a working "Open in New Tab", a more powerful filter and a few other features, but full text searching and spam filtering that just work without me doing anything are the killer features that made me switch. And while I would like to switch back, I just don't see it happening, mail app development has stagnated ten years ago and I just don't see it getting back into motion again.
SuperPaperMario is a port, Zelda:TP is port, Galaxy, SmashBros and Metroid3 don't look like they couldn't have been done on the Gamecube either. Now neither SuperPaperMario nor Zelda:TP are crap ports, but neither are they the games that make me buy a Wii. Beside Wii Sports and a few other simple games with Wii in the name Nintendo has very little in the pipeline that really looks to be developed from the ground up for the Wii. So I am not really sure if the Wii can live on first-party titles alone in the long run. Back when the N64 was out Nintendos first-party titles were among the best of that generation, on the Wii so far they look more like little gimmicks.
I like the idea of the Wiimote, but so far I see neither on the first-party nor on the third-party side the kind of titles that will let the Wii survive for another five years.
Given how long Stalker was in development I kind of doubt that they had everything well planed from the beginning, normally of course you would keep foreign data very well separated from your own and only use in very early in engine prototyping to begin with, but then in all those years things might have gotten a bit wild and uncoordinated and things ended up where they didn't belong.
Slashdot Mirror
### Like Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank.
I should have been a bit more specific, when referring to platformers, I really meant 2D platformers and when you look around on the DS there really isn't much new in that direction, you got Megamans, Sonics, Marios, Castlevanias and Kirbies, but nothing new beside maybe some lackluster movie tie-ins. On the big consoles 2D platformers are even more dead, there you get pretty much nothing and even the "new" stuff like Alien Hominid, is basically just an old game in a new skin (i.e. MetalSlug).
When it comes to 3D platformers you are right, there is a bit more happening in that genre, but I never really got all that interesting in 3D platformers beside Mario64, since they more often then not turn into a boring item-collect/puzzle kind of thing instead of a compact fun jump'n run. The joy with platformers for me is that they have obvious goals and always something to do, with the 3D ones more often then not I end up running in circles for hours, since I have to find some item/switch/trigger that lets me continue to where actually the gameplay happens. And another issue that really annoys me with them is the double-jump, the single most stupid invention ever. Mario64 did it right, it had tons of different jumps, but all of them obeyed to the laws of physics (well, to a small degree), while in almost everything else you can jump again when already in the air. That already annoyed when I saw it in Ghost'n Ghouls and didn't get better over the years.
### There are quite a few turn based strategy games: Advance wars (GBA, DS), fire emblem(GBA, GC and Wii),
One thing to keep in mind is that Advance Wars and Fire Emblem are *old*, they started in 1988 and 1990. So there are literally right out of the "good old times". I think this is one of the biggest issues today, those games that provide old-school gameplay are often right from those good old days, they just managed to somehow survive sequel by sequel till today.
I for example love platformers, but if all there is available is yet another Castlevania, yet another Mario and maybe yet another Metroid it just starts to get a little bit boring, I simply had enough of those games for the last 20 or so years and I would welcome to finally see new heroes, enemies, universes and such.
No doubt, good games are still around, but what I often miss these days are the experimental games, those that don't really fall into any genre and instead just are what they are, back in the day of the C64 and Amiga there where plenty of them, today on the other side to many games just try way to hard to fit into genre clichés. Games these days are often void of personality and more often then not I end up thinking about games in terms of 'yet-another-FPS', 'yet-another-RTS', etc. instead of thinking about them as uniq games.
Its kind of the same thing that bothers me with Hollywood movies or TV series, sure technically they might be well done and I am sure a lot of craftsmanship went into them, but often that craftsmanship annoys more then it helps. Shaky cameras can be great for some things, but when every second movies/series does them they start to get annoying very quickly. The effect ends up not helping what the production is trying to do, but the effect stands out on its own, its the trendy thing to do and so everybody does it. In games its basically the same, somebody comes up with a nice new genre (say GTAs open city environment), and a few years later you have ten games that all do the freaking same thing. I wouldn't mind sequels much, but when not only the sequel is repeating past gameplay but half a dozens other games as well, it really becomes annoying and boring. Especially because those new games often don't expand on the gameplay, they simply repeat it. This gets especially scary when games end up looking so much alike that I no longer can tell them apart (Quake4 looks like Doom, Saints Row like GTA, etc.).
This all wouldn't be so bad if it would be because we already tried everything and are kind of running out of ideas now, but the sad part is that there are still tons of ideas floating around that nobody ever tried or didn't try in quite a lot of years.
Some might argue that XboxLive and similar services allow experimental games again and to a certain degree they are right, but more often then not those services are abused for rereleasing old classic over and over again instead of actually new games, Nintendos Virtual Console being the worst offender in that direction.
### For many people, the concept is just too complex. Hopefully, compilers will improve to the point where many things can be parallelized without the coder having to know very much
As long as we are using C or C++ I doubt that will happen, those languages are just not build with multi-threading in mind and thus aren't easily to parallelize, other languages like functional ones on the other side make the job really easy. When you don't have side effects to worry about, executing things in parallel becomes rather easy and straight forward. So I hope that switching to multi-core will also mean that we will finally switch to more advanced languages, its really time, but so far using them didn't provide much different in the end, with multi-core on the other side they could really have some huge advantages, not only will they lead to better code, but also to faster code.
Till that happens multi-cores should still be quite beneficial, I currently have 120 processes running, while many of them just idle most of the time, its not that unusual to have two or more processes that want all the CPU they can get, good thing when you then actually have two CPU cores to give them.
### Citations will help verify a source, but that's of little use if a article is biased. Some Wikipedia articles most certainly are biased.
*Every* source is biased, there is no such thing as an unbiased perfectly valid truth. The good thing about Wikipedia is that you have right next to the article the discussion page where you can instantly see where people disagree about an article, you also can dig around the history of the article when you really care who might have tampered with what things. I can do neither of that with a normal book or a normal internet page. Wikipedia is among the few sources where you got the peer review right next to the article.
Wikipedia might not stop bias, but it makes it very hard to hide.
### Kindly point us to a statistical study showing a causative relationship between watching violent TV or playing violent videogames results in real-life violence
Thats the wrong question to ask and the wrong study to do. If you only look for real-world violence caused by games with a direct link, you of course won't find it. Life is complex, there isn't a "play video game" -> "kill people" cause and effect relation ship, especially not when you also have violent movies, a violent real world neighborhood and dozens of other factors. Neither of this however means that games or media in general doesn't have an effect on you, actually it would be stupid to assume that just because you didn't find a direct link between games violence -> real world one.
To give a little drastic example: Why do you think the Americans are currently fighting in Irak? Why did they vote again for Bush after he started all that mess in the first place? Do you think media, propaganda and such had anything to do with that?
### but chooses that their minimum requirement is that said indie at least has demonstrated once that he can actually develop a game,
Many have, many have done so in their parents basement.
### and that the business setup is a bit more stable than a parent's basement.
Parents basement is actually a lot more stable then a real business, since the risk of getting thrown out when you can no longer pay the rent is much smaller, its of course simply a hell of a lot cheaper. You really don't need more then a single person to develop a game that can be sold via the VirtualConsole for $5 or $10, which is exactly what should happen, but doesn't. Testing out little cool ideas in 50 dollar games just isn't fun, neither for the developers not the players.
### What's exclusive about that?
Those things are reasonable demands for professional development studios, but not for single-man/small-scale indie developers, which however are exactly kind of people the Wii need. "Home offices do not meet this requirement." just screams "We don't want you, go away", being open about new ideas and inviting to new developers looks different.
Flash will give you only access to a very small number of functions that the Wiimote provides, i.e. buttons, dpad, pointing, but no accelerometer, no nunchuck, which kind of makes the whole thing rather uninteresting for new innovative Wii games. You also lack 3d graphics, except those that you can emulate with Flash itself. Its of course still better then nothing, but no replacement for a devkit or a proper virtual machine.
### I mean you probaly going to get about the same performance as under PS3 Linux
PS3 Linux doesn't give access to the GPU, but it does gives access to the SPEs, which provide quite a ton of horsepower, enough for some realtime raytracing or for implementing a renderer for OpenGL. Its of course not enough for the next AAA title, but more then enough for homebrew development.
### dismissing the Xbox is a failure simply because it did not outsell the PS2.
I am not dismissing the XBox, I like it, but its certainly not the console that ruled the last generation. The point simply was: early sales for *all* consoles where very similar, sales after five years on the other side where very much apart. In turn, early hype for Wii might mean nothing in a few years.
### I understand it's impossible for independent developers to get a Wii devkit for much the same reason that it's impossible for people to get a Wii - more demand than Nintendo has had for years.
Sorry, thats bullshit. The reason why you can't buy a devkit is because Nintendo won't sell it to you, not because they can't produce them in reasonable numbers, which would be trivial given that the demand for devkits is a few orders of magnitude lower the that for normal Wiis. Just look around at WarioWorld.com, I don't see there a "Sorry, we would like to sell you a devkit, but are out of stock", but instead you get a little nice list of pre-requirements which are basically impossible to fullfill for a normal person.
### I think Nintendo's aware that getting independent developers is important to the ongoing success of their platform
Why is it then that they have announced no plans for anything in that direction? No games channel for newly created Wii games, no showcase games like FlOw or something like that. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
### It's the only system where I've seen games ship that are completely unplayable.
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Which games would that be? At least judging from the ratings the PSP has a lot less low quality games then the DS:
http://pingus.seul.org/~grumbel/tmp/psp_vs_nds_me
### While it's true the Xbox never turned a profit, calling it "a flop" seems a bit much
The PS3 is selling much better in relation to the Wii then the XBox did to the PS2, same with the PSP vs DS, yet people call both the PSP and PS3 a flop. The XBox certainly did its job for Microsoft, but it sold a lot less then the PS2 did.
### And where'd you see that statistic? Some people publishing video game stats online are far more credible than others.
Might have been Digg or Slashdot a few days/weeks ago, can't really remember.
### The main problem with lack of experimentation is definitely not on nintendos side,
Ten years ago I would have agreed, but after the N64 they have slowed down a lot. Sure, they did expand the video game market with their non-games (BrainAge, Nintendogs and such) lately, but when it comes to 'normal' games they really didn't have much impact at all, they even completly missed the online-bandwagon. The interesting innovations are happening elsewhere these days, Nintendo is just really good as making money from old ideas.
### Actually gettig the devkits is not a problem they can be bought,
They can't be bought. I can not go over to Warioworld.com and order on, instead that page basically just say "Go away, we don't want small developers". Getting stuff published is of course another issue, but when you can't even start developing then you don't really have to think about publishing. This is especially disappointing since the Wii has everything you would need to get started, USB, network, SD-Card support, all they would need to do is allow a way to execute binaries, OpenSource devkits are already available for the Gamecube and could be reused for the Wii.
A while ago I saw a little statistic about early selling numbers for consoles, all of them performed pretty much the same, the Wii got a few percent more then the rest, but nothing all that significant. Point is, many of the consoled flopped later (XBox, Gamecube), while some others dominated their generation (PS2), the early numbers gave *NO* hint at all at the what would happen a few years later.
### Shooters havent changed since the early days of Castle Wolfenstein 3d, you still run around and frag... seriously things have changed
There have been some good developments in the genre, like DeusEx or OperationFlashpoint, sadly most games just continue to pure primitive fragging. The packaging got nicer over the years, the gameplay however really isn't far away from Wolfenstein.
### but if you expect fro a console to be an entirely open platform forget it,
I don't expect consoles to be an entirely open platform, but I do expect Nintendo to give me a way to develop for the system, currently they simply don't. Unless you have large publiher backing you up and already are in the business for a few years they simply won't sell you a devkit and they don't provide anything like XNA either. So you are stuck, you can't develop for the Wii, while you can get started with developing for both PS3 and XBox360 without much problems.
### Nintendo licenses to guarantee quality.
Your argumentation is a good 20 years to late, back in the early days of the NES that might have been the case, but DS and Wii get tons of pure crap, there is no quality control in place to stop those games from release:
http://www.metacritic.com/games/ds/scores/
http://www.metacritic.com/games/wii/scores/
### If you want to talk about requiring wealth to make a game then it's those two systems that require it.
Developing for the PS3 is free, it allows you to install Linux right out of the box without any hacks. Developing for the XBox360 cost $99 a year with XNA. Developing for the Wii is *impossible* for independent developers, Nintendo won't give you a devkit, end of story.
I am not talking about developing a top notch game that makes the most of the hardware, there a Wii game will of course be cheaper, I am talking about doing small scale development for the platform (see GeometryWars, FlOw, Folding@Home, etc.). PS3 and XBox360 allow that for anybody who wants to, Wii doesn't, its 100% closed for normal people. Getting a game developed that way is of course a different stories, but Microsoft and Sony do provide entry points for aspiring developers, they also already have publish small games, Nintendo so far has done nothing in that direction.
Zeldas core hasn't changed since the early days of the NES, you are still fighting Ganon, you still have the same items and Zelda:TP was by far the most uninspired game of the whole series and yes I did play them all (ignoring the CD-i ones). Paper Mario a new concept? Sorry, did you miss the other two PaperMarios and the other three MarioRPGs, a few changes in the fighting system don't make a new game? TraumaCenter is a port of a DS game. Kororinpa is one of already way to many 'roll a ball' games on the Wii. Elebits and Rayman Raving Rabbits are new, but also rather shallow.
I am not claiming that PS3 and XBox360 are somewhat miracles of innovative game design, I am bored as everybody by yet-another-FPS, but I am kind of sick and tired hearing of how fresh an innovative the Wii is when beside Wii Sports there really isn't much worth to talk about, ports, sequels, rehashes and very little else, oh and of course VC games...
When the Wii was announced Nintendo talked a lot about how the idea was more important then the money and such, but so far the Wii is still a very proprietary platform, locking out all the people with interesting ideas and only leaving the large publishing houses with their big money, which they make with the Wii thanks to crap ports and shovelware. Maybe I am spoiled of the C64 and Amiga days were the platform where still open and everybody could try their luck and thus the number of innovative games was huge (many of the genres from back in the day are totally forgotten today and could use a revival). I don't see any of that on the Wii today, no hints, no announcement, just a big silence, even more weird, I do see it, at least in parts, on the Xbox360 and PS3 (XNA, FlOw, Linux, GeometryWars, Folding@Home, etc.).
### But, the Wii offers something new.
There have been over 10 Zeldas, five MarioRPG games and three WarioWare games before the Wii even launched, oh, and Mario, MetroidPrime and SmashBros aren't exactly new either.
### But the numbers seem to show there's more of me than you.
Last time I looked the XBox360 still had a 4mio lead to the Wii.
The issue is that the Wiimote can only detect orientation when it is not moving, as soon as it is moving it gets impossible to figure out what acceleration is caused by gravity/orientation and which by movement and this is a huge issue when it comes to mapping motion more or less 1:1 into the game.
Another issue is that the Wiimotes accelerometer can only detect orientation in two axis, not three, with the Wiimote itself this issue can be somewhat solved by using the IR sensor and sensorbar, but for the Nunchuk this is a huge issue, since it makes some proposed control schemes rather awkward, since you have to tilt the controller instead of point it to the left/right.
### The Wii will come out with some legendary games
What makes you think that way? I waited for Nintendo do come up with anything legendary since the end of the N64 (Mario64, Zelda:OoT), but never got any, I am still waiting and can't see anything that looks interesting on the release list for the Wii, sure Mario or Metroid might be ok, but ultimately they are rehashes of past games.
### Not only that, as online play becomes functional for games
Nintendo does not want full online play, just look at the totally broken friend code system. Real online play will never happen on the Wii unless Nintendo does a turn by 180 degrees in their handling of it. Just look at the DS, online is there, but you only have a handful of games supporting it, none of them however in any interesting way due to friend codes.
### I picked up Need For Speed: Carbon the other day
I gave up on that series back when it turned from simulation into a simple arcade racer, back then some ten years ago.
### All excellent single player titles worth playing.
Sorry, but that just isn't right. Those are ok games, but they are not excellent, those are not the games that make me buy a console, those games are fillers that I might buy when nothing else is around. How many people do you hear raving about Godfather or Tiger Woods on PS2? None. Why? Because nobody cares about those games when you have a God of War and similar high quality stuff around.
Not long ago I was running Gnus with spamassassin, I however gave up on it, since it simply was no longer manageable, to much spam, to much mail, and no way to properly handle it. Gmail provides me with better spam filtering, *much* better text search (killer feature), is faster, has special handling for new/unread mail, can display conversations with all mails readable at once instead of a separate mail and thread window and a bunch of other nice stuff. Gmail is by no means perfect, I do miss real threading, a working "Open in New Tab", a more powerful filter and a few other features, but full text searching and spam filtering that just work without me doing anything are the killer features that made me switch. And while I would like to switch back, I just don't see it happening, mail app development has stagnated ten years ago and I just don't see it getting back into motion again.
SuperPaperMario is a port, Zelda:TP is port, Galaxy, SmashBros and Metroid3 don't look like they couldn't have been done on the Gamecube either. Now neither SuperPaperMario nor Zelda:TP are crap ports, but neither are they the games that make me buy a Wii. Beside Wii Sports and a few other simple games with Wii in the name Nintendo has very little in the pipeline that really looks to be developed from the ground up for the Wii. So I am not really sure if the Wii can live on first-party titles alone in the long run. Back when the N64 was out Nintendos first-party titles were among the best of that generation, on the Wii so far they look more like little gimmicks.
I like the idea of the Wiimote, but so far I see neither on the first-party nor on the third-party side the kind of titles that will let the Wii survive for another five years.
Given how long Stalker was in development I kind of doubt that they had everything well planed from the beginning, normally of course you would keep foreign data very well separated from your own and only use in very early in engine prototyping to begin with, but then in all those years things might have gotten a bit wild and uncoordinated and things ended up where they didn't belong.