Wii– Easy Bake Oven Powered technological marvel

Nin­tendo brought technology,innovation and fun into one neat lit­tle pack­age in Novem­ber of 2006 and have changed the way games are played. With it’s intu­itive inter­face and sim­plis­tic game play the Wii cap­tured new demo­graph­ics of casual gamers and made believ­ers out of the so called hard­core gamers with fun first and third party titles. I ini­tially was not sold on the Wii and it’s kid­die graph­ics but like many I was swayed by Wii sports and soon I too owned Nintendo’s newest console.

I have owned nearly every Nin­tendo home sys­tem and it has been a sta­ple in my fam­ily since the days of clean­ing car­tridges with cot­ton swabs and alco­hol were the norm. I had high hopes for the Wii but along the way some­thing odd hap­pened. Nin­tendo dropped the ball and the hard to find con­sole soon became the one most read­ily avail­able. Once the buzz died down Nin­tendo went back to the draw­ing board and cre­ated Wii fit which helped move more units along with a new motion con­trol add on as well. Nin­tendo was back in the game and was sell­ing sys­tems like hotcakes.

Recently though it seems Nin­tendo has applied all their cre­ative ener­gies into pro­mot­ing the DS plat­form which while inno­v­a­tive in it’s own right, holds a large chunk of portable gam­ing at it’s mercy and the Wii seems to have floun­dered. With lim­ited first party offer­ings and barely any third party games of note it seems the big “N” has lost touch with con­sole own­ers result­ing in a 21% drop in sales for the Wii. Now don’t get me wrong Nin­tendo has still had great sales but their “skirt” is show­ing and the allure and cute­ness of the Wii is wear­ing things.

As a gamer it sad­dens me to see Nin­tendo not putting the Wii front and cen­ter given its dom­i­nat­ing posi­tion in the home con­sole wars. Nin­tendo has the tech, fran­chises and tal­ent to make great games whether they are 1st or 3rd party offer­ings. Let’s break down the right,wrong and ridicu­lous things Nin­tendo has done with the Wii

Right

• Price– Nin­tendo has done a great job pric­ing the Wii competively
• Pack In Game-Including Wii sports as your flag­ship title was a no brainer
• Wire­less
• Back­ward com­pat­i­bil­ity with Game­Cube titles
• Vir­tual Console

Wrong

• Ter­ri­ble com­mu­nity– Between friend codes and crappy mul­ti­player it seems the Wii is no match XBL or even PS-Home
• 1st party titles are released spo­rad­i­cally which kills any inter­est in the system.
• Poor con­trol inte­gra­tion with var­i­ous franchises
• No mar­quee third party titles. Tat­sunoko vs.. Cap­com while good did not sell units

Wiidicu­lous

• No 5.1 sound
• No high res­o­lu­tion graph­ics. Sure a Mii will look shitty in 720p but what about visu­ally appeal­ing games like Mario Galaxy 2 and the upcom­ing Metroid:Other M

In no way am I shit­ting on the Wii but I am dis­ap­pointed in the fact that Nin­tendo is not really try­ing to compete.Sure, Microsoft and Sony are copy­ing Nin­tendo but they are also right­ing the many wrongs that Nin­tendo has. I hope Nin­tendo real­izes that it has had such a huge impact on gam­ing and cre­ated a new fun and phys­i­cally inter­ac­tive medium but with­out proper sup­port all those inno­va­tions will be for nothing.

What are your thoughts on the Wii and do you see Nin­tendo dom­i­nat­ing the home con­sole mar­ket once more?

Rich

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