I swear I didn't write this Wii article...

[Thund3rball]

I think I must be the only person on the planet who actually uses his Wii almost every day. Or is it just the trendy thing to say 'Oh, my Wii is collecting dust!' or something? Is that the new slang the kids use? Did they replace 'cool' with 'My Wii is collecting dust'? Or is it some kind of strange new internet meme from 4ch that I'm just not getting?

Hey I'm not hatin' on the Wii, it's just that EVERYBODY I know (in my circle of friends, family and coworkers) that busted a gut over grabbing one of these things at xmas time hasn't touched it for ages. Some bought 360s since, others are back to their PC and other than Fudge I don't know anyone that's bought a PS3 lately. This is strictly my observation. I could care less how cool it sounds or which console is better blah blah. As I said I haven't touched my PS2 for sometime but will probably sit down for some God Of War 2 when it's price drops

 

[FudgeNuggets]

People that post on forums with overclocked PC's don't represent the average consumer, Oni.

I know many people with the Wii, and they play it on a daily basis. There isn't a time when I visit a friend's house when their Wii is not on. In short, the people that actually play their Wii don't spend their time posting about it on the internet.

deception``

Hey you know me and how I roll just outside the GTA. I drop at least a dime a week on clothes, it's nothing but Dom Perignon and La Corannas at da club and Bentleys in my garage

 

[rainless]

People that post on forums with overclocked PC's don't represent the average consumer, Oni.

I know many people with the Wii, and they play it on a daily basis. There isn't a time when I visit a friend's house when their Wii is not on. In short, the people that actually play their Wii don't spend their time posting about it on the internet.

deception``

Where the hell is YOUR Wii Mr. "I play it all the time over my friend's house?"



Well I know where my Wii is... Sold it to this nice Korean/French gentleman in Paris. (Smart money says his kid hasn't touched it in months.)

 

[OC Noob]

I think I must be the only person on the planet who actually uses his Wii almost every day. Or is it just the trendy thing to say 'Oh, my Wii is collecting dust!' or something? Is that the new slang the kids use? Did they replace 'cool' with 'My Wii is collecting dust'? Or is it some kind of strange new internet meme from 4ch that I'm just not getting?

Its a first year library lull. Seems like all consoles have them. If it makes you feel better my kids still use it a few days a week. They might more if it weren't for soccer/gymnastics and of course the fo da devil Webkinz.

 

[deception``]

Where the hell is YOUR Wii Mr. "I play it all the time over my friend's house?"



Well I know where my Wii is... Sold it to this nice Korean/French gentleman in Paris. (Smart money says his kid hasn't touched it in months.)

Don't own a Wii yet; I only have a 360 for the time being. But I don't spend a lot less time posting on the forums since I have some good games to play when I am at home. Currently I'm approaching hour 50 of Blue Dragon

deception``

 

[xb1az3x]

I think I must be the only person on the planet who actually uses his Wii almost every day. Or is it just the trendy thing to say 'Oh, my Wii is collecting dust!' or something? Is that the new slang the kids use? Did they replace 'cool' with 'My Wii is collecting dust'? Or is it some kind of strange new internet meme from 4ch that I'm just not getting?

You're not alone! I play mine all the time. Between taking my time finishing Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, and Mario Strikers I am having a blast with it. Honestly I think it is turning into a trend to be another cool person who owns your Wii but don't play it because its got all "kiddie games". I'm not ripping anyone here by saying that either, I honestly think it is a trend.

The list of Wii games shows a lot of third party games coming out late this year and into next year so I think thats a good sign for those worried about playing too many "kiddie games". The one I am waiting for is Sadness, sadly there has been no new news about it for a long time.

 

[Burninate]

It was the same thing with the 360 last year. Everyone bought one because it was the only next gen console at the time. Then there were no really good games until Oblivion and Gears of War came out (about 10-12 months after launch). Everyone was talking about how it was just sitting there collecting dust and all. Just wait until Smash Brothers and the new Super Mario game come out. The Wii will be the new Xbox 360 at that point, but without all the red lighting.

 

[rainless]

It was the same thing with the 360 last year. Everyone bought one because it was the only next gen console at the time. Then there were no really good games until Oblivion and Gears of War came out (about 10-12 months after launch). Everyone was talking about how it was just sitting there collecting dust and all. Just wait until Smash Brothers and the new Super Mario game come out. The Wii will be the new Xbox 360 at that point, but without all the red lighting.

You're missing the whooooooooooooooole point. The Wii will NEVER be "the new Xbox 360" because they aren't even trying to cultivate any third party connections. How many first party games has Microsoft come out with in the past two years? Maybe a handful. Now how many third party games? A ship full.

So you can't just say "it's the same" because it's not, and it won't be, and it'll be because that's Nintendo's "business strategy."

 

[Burninate]

You're missing the whooooooooooooooole point. The Wii will NEVER be "the new Xbox 360" because they aren't even trying to cultivate any third party connections. How many first party games has Microsoft come out with in the past two years? Maybe a handful. Now how many third party games? A ship full.

So you can't just say "it's the same" because it's not, and it won't be, and it'll be because that's Nintendo's "business strategy."

Agreed, but Nintendo does hold quite a few more first party licenses than Microsoft. Microsoft has Halo and..... Halo. Nintendo has Mario (and the whole Mario Universe including Donkey Kong, Princess Peach, Wario, etc), Metroid, Zelda, Pokemon, Star Fox, and you get the idea. While Xbox has quite a few more third party games, Nintendo has a lot more licenses, giving them quite a few more first party games (3 to 4 a year usually) while Microsoft has 1 every 3 years. I didn't mean to imply that the Wii will literally be the new Xbox 360 in terms of developer support, I was just giving analogy to the lull in games and that the void will be filled with a first party game every 3 or 4 months consistantly.

 

[Krome]

As soon as my friends found out that I got a Wii, they are all saying "why didn't you bring your Wii" when I go visit them. I need to get the special bag for the Wii, I wonder if it has a pocket for the sensor bar?

 

[YellowDart]

One of my best buddies got a Wii for xmas too. He's the type who'd play the ultra-rainbow-happytime games, though... so I'm sure his isn't collecting dust.

My wife's cousin sold his recently. He was an assistant manager at GameStop last holiday season, so he had easy access to them. Bought one, and I'm almost positive he never played it after he got tired of zelda and that sports game.

I'm glad I didn't end up dropping the money for one though. I'd be in the same boat as my wife's cousin. I'd love to see Nintendo get their act together w/ the 3rd party support and online deal, but that's just not their thing. Dare to be different, I guess.

 

[OC Noob]

Agreed, but Nintendo does hold quite a few more first party licenses than Microsoft. Microsoft has Halo and..... Halo. Nintendo has Mario (and the whole Mario Universe including Donkey Kong, Princess Peach, Wario, etc), Metroid, Zelda, Pokemon, Star Fox, and you get the idea. While Xbox has quite a few more third party games, Nintendo has a lot more licenses, giving them quite a few more first party games (3 to 4 a year usually) while Microsoft has 1 every 3 years. I didn't mean to imply that the Wii will literally be the new Xbox 360 in terms of developer support, I was just giving analogy to the lull in games and that the void will be filled with a first party game every 3 or 4 months consistantly.

MS has Halo, Forza, whatever Rare is working on at the time (Banjo), Fable and who knows what else. What they have to do to compensate and do fairly well this time around is get the 3rd party exclusives.

Nobody can compete with Nintendo 1st party support and nobody could compete period if the had half the 3rd party exclusives that MS and Sony have or in Sony's case had.

EDIT: forgot Mystwalker with Blue Dragon and that other jRPG. not bad, but its still no Nintendo.

 

[funnyperson1]

I have Paper Mario and Madden for my Wii, it was sitting collecting dust until I was gifted Madden (which is pretty fun once you get past the shoddy graphics) because I forgot to bring paper Mario back to college.

Of course most any time someone comes over, we end up playing Wii sports.

I'll play through a couple franchise seasons of Madden, beat Paper Mario, and then look forward to getting Metroid Prime and Mario Galaxy whenever it comes out. I would play a lot more but my sources of entertainment far outnumber the actual time I have considering the work I have to do.

 

[Burninate]

... I would play a lot more but my sources of entertainment far outnumber the actual time I have considering the work I have to do.

Same here, I have full time work and full time+ school But, I was a little disappointed in Super Paper Mario. I was such a huge fan of Super Mario RPG and the first 2 Paper Marios that Super Paper Mario just wasn't nearly as much fun. I liked the turn based boss battles. The boss battles in SPM were just way too easy. Oh well.... here's to hoping they do actually release a proper sequal to Mario RPG some day.

 

[rainless]

Agreed, but Nintendo does hold quite a few more first party licenses than Microsoft. Microsoft has Halo and..... Halo. Nintendo has Mario (and the whole Mario Universe including Donkey Kong, Princess Peach, Wario, etc), Metroid, Zelda, Pokemon, Star Fox, and you get the idea. While Xbox has quite a few more third party games, Nintendo has a lot more licenses, giving them quite a few more first party games (3 to 4 a year usually) while Microsoft has 1 every 3 years. I didn't mean to imply that the Wii will literally be the new Xbox 360 in terms of developer support, I was just giving analogy to the lull in games and that the void will be filled with a first party game every 3 or 4 months consistantly.

One good game every 3 or 4 months? THAT'S HORRIBLE!

The SNES would never have been a serious challenger to the Genesis with only one decent game every three or four months. They would've been blown off the planet. And the SNES was key to Nintendo's continued existence. There were plenty of companies that had a decent run with their first system and later filed for bankruptcy (*cough*Atari*cough*).

There's no reason to believe that the Wii will be any more viable than the Gamecube was (it could possible have fewer overall releases) unless Nintendo "smartens up".

Microsoft doesn't really need anymore than Halo. First party titles usually just help show the light in terms of hardware development (most third party companies never have a better understanding of hardware than the company that made the system.) God of War was probably the extreme example of that.

 

[funnyperson1]

Same here, I have full time work and full time+ school But, I was a little disappointed in Super Paper Mario. I was such a huge fan of Super Mario RPG and the first 2 Paper Marios that Super Paper Mario just wasn't nearly as much fun. I liked the turn based boss battles. The boss battles in SPM were just way too easy. Oh well.... here's to hoping they do actually release a proper sequal to Mario RPG some day.

I never played any of those games, because I was never into RPGs. Only "RPGS" I have played are DiabloII and Fable, both of which were great games, I guess Deus Ex is sort of an RPG as well.

I thought Paper Mario was a lot of fun, they really made good use of the Wii remote, and the strategy/puzzles are fun.

I can't wait for Mario Galaxies though as that is more my type of game, SMB3 and Mario64 are two of the greatest games of all time imho.

I do think that rainless has a point in saying that Nintendo needs more 3rd party games, but I don't think they're in dire straits. They are still making ridiculous amounts of money, and unlike MS and Sony, they can do this just by selling hardware.

Even if they end up selling only 30 million Wiis overall, they're making like $100 profit on each unit, and most people will at least buy one other game.

As an engineering student with a part time job I don't really have that much time to play games, and even if there are just 6-10 exceptional games over the Wii's lifespan, that will be enough for me.

I have a regular Xbox and the only games I really played through are PGR2, Halo1/2, NCAA06, Madden06, Fight Night Round 2, and Fable. To be honest, that was enough to keep me occupied (well that and XBMC streaming movies from my computer).

I see myself getting Mario Galaxies, Mario Strikers Charged, Metroid Prime Corruption, the next iteration of Fight Night and any other great games that come along.

 

[Springbok]

Nintendo is using the exact same strategy they've been using since the NES, create first party AAA titles to sell hardware, all the third party producers follow the hardware base. Complain and fight it all you want, cry about the gaps between games, whine about the inferior hardware, people aren't going to buy 360s just because you think they should.

 

[Burninate]

I know that 3 or 4 games a year doesn't sound like much.... and well.... it isn't. But, they're exclusive games that are usually AAA titles. Meaning that if you don't want to miss out on them, you better have a Wii or reliable access to one at the very least. Cross-platforming is a much more common practice now-a-days and the Wii, with its inferior hardware, only loses out on this as it can't possible have a better version of any games that's cross platformed with the 360 and PS3 as well. I don't think that anyone will dispute that the NES and SNES were the king of their respective generation. 3rd party support was easier as they only had to make the game for one system and no one really had to make a shotty cross-platformed title with one system losing out (Mortal Kombat for the SNES being one of the few exceptions that comes to mind). Nintendo knows its new system has much less capability than the 360 or the PS3, and the price reflects that. Knowing this, they are betting that people will buy their system not for terrible ports, but for awesome 1st party games. And in the end, it's essentially a monopoly on those 1st party games. Nintendo, knowing everyone is buying the system for these first party games, stands to make a killing, as pretty much everyone buys them when they come out. From a developer stand point, ports are easy money. With more than one dominate system now and developement costs per game as high as they've ever been, developers' best option to reach the widest audience possible is to cross-platform. And making a port (A good one) that requires extra development to compensate for the control scheme on the Wii and one that will suffer performance issues from the Wii's lack of techinical capability, just isn't worth it and almost certainly won't sell. I think most people buying the Wii knows this. That's why there were so many people saying, "It's about gameplay, not graphics," when the Wii came out.

 

[rainless]

Nintendo is using the exact same strategy they've been using since the NES, create first party AAA titles to sell hardware, all the third party producers follow the hardware base. Complain and fight it all you want, cry about the gaps between games, whine about the inferior hardware, people aren't going to buy 360s just because you think they should.

Aww... Isn't that cute. Mario sent a rep

People ALREADY bought the 360, and a hell of a lot of its games, and it had very little (though not "nothing") to do with me. Software titles sold Xbox360 vs. Wii=You don't know what you're talking about.

I know that 3 or 4 games a year doesn't sound like much.... and well.... it isn't. But, they're exclusive games that are usually AAA titles. Meaning that if you don't want to miss out on them, you better have a Wii or reliable access to one at the very least. Cross-platforming is a much more common practice now-a-days and the Wii, with its inferior hardware, only loses out on this as it can't possible have a better version of any games that's cross platformed with the 360 and PS3 as well. I don't think that anyone will dispute that the NES and SNES were the king of their respective generation. 3rd party support was easier as they only had to make the game for one system and no one really had to make a shotty cross-platformed title with one system losing out (Mortal Kombat for the SNES being one of the few exceptions that comes to mind). .

You have an extremely short-term memory:

There was mortal kombat, street fighter 2, the NBA Jam series, the madden series, (hell almost every EA game was released on both systems), Samurai Shodown, Primal Rage, etc... etc... There were more cross platform games between the SNES and Genesis then currently exist on the next gen platforms.

I repeat: The NES and SNES would not have been the successes they were without third party support and Nintendo will never... evvvvvvvver... achieve that level of success again without it.

It might be "about the gameplay" but it's currently "about the gameplay without the games." And I predicted this would happen because it's been a trend over at Nintendo HQ. What they're failing to take into account with Super Happy Mario Funtime Link is that a lot of their adult players have moved on to more adult games and, like a number of people who've posted in this thread, don't want to play with rainbows and turtles.

That was the extremely HARSH lesson Nintendo learned with Mortal Kombat on the SNES. That little snafu turned into a total eclipse and was directly responsible for Nintendo getting their heads out of their asses for the very last time.

Something truly weird happened between the SNES and what was supposed to be the Ultra64 and eventually wound up being the N64. Last generation the Gamecube was actually technologically superior to the PS2, but they simply couldn't overcome the PS2s third party titles and more adult oriented releases (instead relying on Mario and a vaccuum cleaner... which didn't quite workout.) This console generation they've decided that even THAT was a little bit too close to "reality."

I do believe that some 3rd party games could be better on the Wii... because of it's unique user interface. If Nintendo actually put their backs into support and development they could have some AMAZING sports games. But so far the reality of Madden hasn't lived up to the promise. And the out-of-nowhere developers that made the DS famous are nowhere to be seen.

What Nintendo should've been doing is taking everything they were able to accomplish on the DS to the next level.

 

[Burninate]

I don't want to quote your whole wall in this post, Rainless All very valid points. The main difference in the Genesis Vs SNES generation and now in reference to third party is support is that the SNES and Genesis were very comparable in terms of capabilities. The Wii can't compete on the level of graphics with the other 2 systems this time around, effectively making cross-platforming worthless as all titles produced on the 360 and PS3 are going to look WAY better than the Wii version. Too many people judge a game by its looks and won't even touch the Wii version if they have one of the other 2 systems, no matter how much work the developer puts into making the game have awesome Wii-friendly controls. I'm fairly sure developers know this to be the case and don't bother taking the time to really invest in R&D to make a "fun" game that won't sell due to its lack of eye candy. I know many may feel that Nintendo is "failing" due to its lack of third party support. And most are going to say a "failure" is having fewer games on the system. That's not accurate at all. If Nintendo had third party support, they would still release the same amount of first party games per year: 3 to 4. And they've already sold the consoles with some extremely good marketing right off the bat. All they need to do now is keep releasing 3 to 4 games a year and watch the money come in (as they have already started to see quite a healthy profit from the system). In contrast, Microsoft has WAY more games, but has actually lost quite a bit of money (in the billions, I believe? and not just due to hardware failure). I read somewhere that MS actually lost money on the original Xbox overall (over a billion $), but were just trying to dethrone Sony as the gaming giant in preperation for this generation when they could really clean up. Nintendo is playing an extremely smart game this time around and that is exactly what they meant when they said they don't really have any competition this time around. The goal of a company, as I understand it, is to turn a profit, not have the most games available on its system at any cost. Even though Nintendo is disenfranchising some of its customer base, they're still making a HUGE profit, and that's what matters.