Is the Wii being Gamecube'd?
Nintendo's Wii is sitting firm atop a pedestal of greatness at the moment. Killer sales through the launch, an undoubted victory over Sony and the grasp of both hardcore and casual gamers alike have the Wii looking very good right now. But how long will the Wii greatness last?
If you look at this year and the future releases scheduled for the system, it doesn't look so good. Of course Nintendo will be releasing a few games, but only 3 of them are the AAA Nintendo titles that we have all grown to love, and they are all sequels. Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 and Super Smash Bros Brawl. Everything else is hit or miss and most of them are ports [From last gen systems]. While we know that the ports will be different when moving to Wii due to the controls, that doesn't necessarily mean a good thing.
The only game people are playing on the Wii regularly right now, and the overall reason for the Wii's gigantic success is Wii Sports. Wii Play is going to be coming in a couple weeks and will carry the momentum for a few months but what is next? Where is Wii Sports 2? Where are all of the "Casual" games that will draw in the grandparents and non-gamers? It's not going to be Mario, Metroid or Smash Bros. In the past, these games catered to casual gamers but after many iterations of each, they have become quite complicated. I know my Grandma can not play a game in "3d" or anything with more than 2 buttons.
Let's go over the negative similarities between the Cube and the Wii:
-Both have no online play or any sort of plan to include online play [Pokemon doesn't count and neither does Phantasy Star]
-Both don't play DVD's [I don't see this as a big issue]
-They are not and never were the leader in graphics and technology
-They both have the exact same 1st party support [Mario, Metroid, Smash Bros, Mario Party]
-They both have useless features
----Gamecube: GBA to Cube connectivity and a handle
----Wii: News and Weather Channels
-Both are on the cheap end of their current generations when it comes to price
When it comes down to it, software is the life source of any videogame system. One of the major reasons why the Playstation was such a giant success is because Sony secured exclusives and helped create and usher in original content on a regular basis. They have gotten away from that and now they are struggling as well. In terms of 3rd party support, Nintendo is weak as it stands right now. I am hoping their will be a lot of surprise announcements in the near future to help generate more excitement, because I feel that the high that Nintendo is on right now is going to be short lived.
I worry about the novelty of their new console and the serious lack of games that are on the horizon. [most of the AAA Nintendo titles don't even have concrete release dates]. Will the Wii prevail from it's unconventional approach or will it be Gamecube'd into a sea of mediocrity?
4 comments:
The Japanese Wii plays DVD (from what I heard) plus almost everyone has a DVD player, so there is no point in having a DVD player unless you want to pay more.
This year games are going to go online including third party games.
All the next-gen consoles would have their first party franchises (Socom for Play Station, Halo for Xbox and the Mario , etc for Nintendo)
The news and the weather channel aren't useless (for the wii) in my opinion because games can use this features such as Animal Crossing.
I agree with the fact that Nintendo Wii is cheaper but that did that so it can be available for everyone plus Nintendo can make easy profits from it. Look at Sony PS3, they couldn't make enough units and they are losing money for every PS3 they sell.
still you would have to agree that upcoming releases for the wii are NOT good.
PS3 has always got FF en MGS, GT and more but for Wii it is getting a bit empty
I dunno, I think Nintendo is hungry again. I guarantee they are working on some big things that haven't been announced yet. There's only so much they can do though, to make 2nd/3rd parties develop unique games.
Personally, I think the Wii is lightyears ahead of the Cube as far as online play.
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