This generation, videogame console manufacturers somewhat literally went for broke when they entered the new interactive entertainment technology arms race.
I said this as far back as October,and pointed this as my only problem with the wii.If sony and microsoft's profit's fall way below that of nintendo's in the coming years,they might not see the essence of really spending bilions on the next gen consoles.
Then micro and sony will give us xbox360/1.5 and ps3.5 with fancy controllers
The Wii's success is based on three things; gimmick, price, and marketing, that is why soccer mom's and grandma's are playing the thing. It's not the quality of it's vast library of games or it's technological bells and whistles, it's like that damn whack-a-mole game at Chucky Cheese Pizza. I'm a 36 year old gamer who has owned them all including the Wii and once the novelty wore off from the few good games it did have, I got rid of it. I love Nintendo and I'm happy they are successful, I just hope they use this opportunity to step up their technology and make GOOD games again.
The Wii has a different audience of people. Casual gamers and non-gamers who don't care about technology or HD graphics. Many people who grew up on games like me, want to move into the next generation of consoles that provide better graphics, hardware, and media interactivity. Face it, we live in the digital age, where digital sound and HD graphics are here. People are adopting HDTVs and home theatre systems quickly. With games like Uncharted and others like it recreating the movie-like experience, only interactive, video games are replacing movies and major forms of entertainment as the mainstay. Yes the Wii has it's audience, and more power to them, but most of those people don't buy many games and don't contribute to a long system lifespan. Consoles like PS3 and 360 cater to all of us who grew up on games over the last 25 years and there will always be a market for them. Casual and non-gamers may make up the majority of the public, but it's the core players that drive the industry and it's economics.
If the "Wii mentality" wins out in the gaming industry, then they will have lost one customer here. I am one of those customers looking for that quantum leap in technology in the next generation of gaming, eagerly awaiting true photo-realistic cinematic gaming. The Wii doesn't even come close to delivering that.
It's good for Nintendo that they hit a success like they did with the Wii, but I hope that Sony and Microsoft do NOT alienate customers like me and bring out a PS3.5 or XBox 540 and call it "next gen".
Here's to hoping that Nintendo takes the boatload of cash they made off of the Wii and bring out a REAL next-gen system.
and if the Wii mentality doesn't stick around then the video game industry will have lost customer in me. I'm sick of people assuming that good graphics and good sound make a game. We've been playing video games the same way since they were invented. Yeah sure we've added more buttons and different functionalities... but it's always the same button pressing. At least the Wii has changed the way we play. It's something the industry has desperately needed.
And I've been playing video games since Atari. I just understand that GAMEplay is more important to GAMES than how they look.
it's more of a movelty toy, and can be fun for all types. i use mine as something to do when we have friends round! once the conversation starts turning stale, bang, on goes the wii, and everyone is laughing again playing wii sports! and the missus is sort of into gaming if we play on the wii!!
god, i hope that gaming does'nt follow the same path! i've always loved the leap in technology from system to system! and if sony or microsoft go down the same route with their next consoles, then i'll be through with gaming.....i can't use a keyboard and mouse, so pc gaming won't replace it for me!
Wow so much hate so much hate. Did we really need 3 monster systems this gen like last gen? Is it completely necessary to always have the most powerful system each time around. Its all about the experiance and I do appreciate whats being done by sony and msoft this gen. They deleivered next gen visuals and experiances only capable of being done on their respective systems. Its just you know Kinda nice to see an evolution other then power. We do get more complex gameplay and abilities to do with the new systems but what would have been the point for all three to go in the same path?
I just dont understand how visuals are so important to some people. I might admire some scenes that wow they look amazing but if your still all caught up in the graphics after playing the game more then a week somethings wrong. CoD4 I turned it on and was wow graphics are real nice but after that I was more just sucked in at how great the gameplay was and the graphics were more of an afterthought. Did I get sucked in because of the graphics? No but its all part of a package.
I jsut dont get why some poeple have such a deep seated hate for the wii. Oh its doing well oh boo who blah blah blah. Who cares the other systems are doing well and its not always the generation leader that decides the course for next consoles. Most take a lot from the original xbox and that didnt sell anywhere near as amazing as the ps2 but look at that we have hard drives and fully develped online systems in place this gen(ok wii doesnt but internal memory and its meger wifi are a response to the success to live)
Its all about competition and the competition privides better results then if everyone was happy to just do the same thing. We have rumble in no small part because of Nintendo and look how much poeple have grown attached to that now? I like what Nintendo has done, because poeple are gonna have to be more creative next gen and we might see somehting truely evolutionary next gen. Though all this about big leap in power may or may not happen next gen. The market is and will always be there so someone could decide to just not try to reinvent the wheel and just go all out powerful. Maybe not, but it has all yet to be seen.
Besides if we keep going down the path of power and expenses you will see a lot of companies do what they are starting to do now rely on names andestablished gameplay elements in order to assure themselves of profit. If costs keep rising this could potentially just get worse or not you dont really know. I like risk on companies parts, because sometimes you get a truely spectacular game because of it.
Im just tired of all this wii sucks, wii is a gimick crap. People act like every game out for it is like that but you know beleive what you want because you will miss out on some good software. I didnt realize that the Wii has gone into so many homes and stabbed peoples mothers to acheive such hate.
I sincerely hope you're not calling what I said above "Wii-hate". I said nothing spiteful whatsoever. I simply explained that I as a gamer, want my games to look and feel different from the games of the last generation. Yes, Wii games feel different, the Wiimote is a triumph of interactivity, but the games look only marginally better than the previous gen and I don't feel like shelling out 250 more greens for games that only feel a bit different. Not to mention that the bulk of the Wii's library caters only to casuals and non-gamers. I need more substance in my games than just fancy interactivity. Yes, the Wii has it's standard core games like Mario Galaxy and Zelda, but those are normal games that follow every Nintendo console inevitably. I'm not a fanboy who is loyal to one company as I have both a 360 and a PS3. My PS3 usually wins out over games that I buy that are cross platform mostly because I prefer the controller. It's what I'm familiar with, but adds a touch of interactivity in it's motion sensing controls which most games have yet to take advantage of. Some games, however, have taken brilliant advantage of it. Games like Ratchet & Clank Future where they use the SIXAXIS controls in minigames and such and keep the motion sensing controls away from the main meat of the game so it's not frustrating. I have my 360 to keep in contact with friends, and for the exclusive games that it receives like Tenchu Z and Blue Dragon. I bought my 61" 1080p HDTV before I had either system and I want the systems that take advantage of my investment. The Wii, while it has great interactivity, the games don't really look substantially better than yesteryear, and actually look somewhat washed out on a large screen HDTV. I do say a "large" screen HDTV, though. On a smaller widescreen TV, say a 42" it doesn't look nearly as bad.
Again, it comes down to the types of games the Wii offers also. About 90% of it's software library is targeted at an audience that either rarely plays games or generally doesn't play games at all. Yes, as I said above, there's the standard Nintendo staples, Metroid, Mario Galaxy, and so on with the inevitable sequels from previous consoles following as well. Mario Kart and StarFox, I'm sure will surface at some point in the Wii's lifespan. Those games are all great and I'm sure Nintendo fans appreciate them. It's just that most of those games have gotten stale in this one gamer's opinion. Can you really say that Mario Galaxy is all THAT different from Super Mario 64 10 years go? Mario Sunshine on the GameCube was virtually identical in play style, only with smoothed out controls and 128-bit graphics. And I know there's a lot of FPS fans here, but I still think that after series creator Gunpei Yokoi died, and Nintendo handed Metroid over to a western developer, the series became ruined. The key fun that I enjoyed in Metroid as a little guy was the platforming and looking for various holes and tunnels to go through. Something that hasn't made the glory translation into the FPS genre in my opinion. Metroid, at least for me, was more about exploration than running and gunning. And Star Fox is, well, Star Fox. I've enjoyed most of the games since the days of the SNES except for StarFox Adventures which was more of a Mario Sunshine clone than anything else.
Now Nintendo fans may scoff at me and they're free to do so, but the point that I'm trying to make is that most of us core and hard-core gamers are accustomed to moving onto new hardware every 5-7 years and seeing visual and audio quality improving as well as immersiveness of controls. In these respects, minus the controls, we feel like we're being held back by the Wii. It's not so much that people hate the Wii, it's just that it doesn't appeal to the core as Microsoft and Sony do. I don't hate the Wii, I respect it for whom it appeals to and the market share that it's garnered, but it will not be the "death knell" of modern high tech consoles as we know it. There are simply too many core gamers who spend their hard earned cash on the newest and greatest games several times a month on games. The core gamers go to a store, most often looking for games to buy. Casuals and non-gamers usually only find themselves carousing around a store like Best Buy or a Walmart and might end up in the electronics section after it having been a few months. They'll look through the selection of Wii games and something with fancy box art might catch their eye. They'll think about it, look at the back of the box, and decide it might be worth a go. And this is a phenomenon I've witnessed many a time. Casual gamers simply do not buy a lot of games, whereas core gamers buy new games all the time. It's the core gamers who really drive the economics of the gaming industry. Nintendo is relying more on numbers these days with the Wii to make it's money. Not a bad approach. There are a lot of casuals out there, and maybe the sheer number of casual game sales might equal the smaller core gamer sales, I can't say. I'm not a market analyst, just a dedicated core gamer who watches what goes on around him, and consistently moves forward with every new generation.
Does anyone else find it funny that many of the ppl who dislike the Wii speak of its success as if consumers as a whole are morons? I don't see that same condescension when it comes to other consumer goods...
Ture but it happens with anything that becomes real big hit mainstream. So many people like to pretend they are not mainstream which is why you know poeple complain when certain bands do so well, tv shows movies because only idiots could contribute to the success of those things.
Though it is something to stay with the wii, people like to cling to their arguments against consoles as if they are gettin blown by the competition for their arguments.
Good point, it's not a Wii-unique phenomenon as much as it is a phenomenon surrounding things w/ mass appeal. I tend to lose sight of the big picture while on N4G =)
The problem is that if both the industry and gamers continue to think this way, they'll be creating the worst kind of self-fulfilling prophecy with companies continuing to chase a Phantom Nintendo that doesn't exist, while the real one has very little to do with casual by definition.
Nintendo has no reason to pack a good punch of power on their consoles as they're media retarded. On the other hand, Microsoft, and especially Sony, have reasons to pack a lot of power in their consoles, and that is multimedia entertainment. Since Sony wants to sell expensive TVs, formats, and high resolution movies, their next console is going to have the power to at least output the maximum resolution available on TVs, and Microsoft won't be too far behind. Nintendo's Wii 2 will be another piece of lack of tech for the mentally retarded.
wii's manufacturer isnt that good enough
this year has been though for all 3 consoles
I said this as far back as October,and pointed this as my only problem with the wii.If sony and microsoft's profit's fall way below that of nintendo's in the coming years,they might not see the essence of really spending bilions on the next gen consoles.
Then micro and sony will give us xbox360/1.5 and ps3.5 with fancy controllers
The Wii's success is based on three things; gimmick, price, and marketing, that is why soccer mom's and grandma's are playing the thing. It's not the quality of it's vast library of games or it's technological bells and whistles, it's like that damn whack-a-mole game at Chucky Cheese Pizza. I'm a 36 year old gamer who has owned them all including the Wii and once the novelty wore off from the few good games it did have, I got rid of it. I love Nintendo and I'm happy they are successful, I just hope they use this opportunity to step up their technology and make GOOD games again.
Whack-a-mole is fun but I sure wouldn't buy one.
The Wii has a different audience of people. Casual gamers and non-gamers who don't care about technology or HD graphics. Many people who grew up on games like me, want to move into the next generation of consoles that provide better graphics, hardware, and media interactivity. Face it, we live in the digital age, where digital sound and HD graphics are here. People are adopting HDTVs and home theatre systems quickly. With games like Uncharted and others like it recreating the movie-like experience, only interactive, video games are replacing movies and major forms of entertainment as the mainstay. Yes the Wii has it's audience, and more power to them, but most of those people don't buy many games and don't contribute to a long system lifespan. Consoles like PS3 and 360 cater to all of us who grew up on games over the last 25 years and there will always be a market for them. Casual and non-gamers may make up the majority of the public, but it's the core players that drive the industry and it's economics.