A discussion took place yesterday that left me pondering the question 'What it will take for gamers to flock to Nintendo's upcoming Wii console'?
As we know the Wii is set to bring in new standards to the way we all play, and experience video gaming. Nintendo have of course turned the video gaming rule book upside down, shook it a little and then filtered out the results as to how gamers in the year 2006 will interact with their console.
Isn't this enough for your average video gaming fan?
Well a chat with a friend yesterday left me wondering…
The comment that was raised was 'I'm unsure whether to buy a Xbox 360 or a Wii, because as you know the Xbox 360 is going to have games such as 'Pro-Evolution Soccer' and other titles we may not see on the Wii. But if just Pro Evolution Soccer makes an appearance on Wii I'm definitely buying the console'.
Now the person I had this discussion with is a big Nintendo fan like myself, but as you can tell his mind is now swayed between Nintendo's next offering, or Microsoft's Xbox 360 which could, and will offer some major franchises that we may not see on the Wii. This is the sign of a gamer who has had a sour taste left in his mouth by Nintendo's previous home console the Gamecube.
The Gamecube was a machine that generally failed because it lacked third party support. This factor is extremely apparent when you look at some of the titles that are currently supporting the platform. With out Nintendo's endless array of Mario 'spin off' games to help it, the console would be pretty much dead in the water now. So what happened to all the big third party publishers and developers? They either left, or decided not to develop for the console, and instead concentrate on machines that were generating income. It's an obvious fact.
Nintendo needs as many third party publishers and developers on board as possible to make its console a success. Without these, no matter how fun and innovative the console is, if it doesn't have a wide choice of games for consumers to take advantage of, the console will eventually go the same way as the Gamecube. But the future of the company is currently looking bright, as of this moment Nintendo currently has some great third party developers on-board. Lets just hope they can get Konami to develop an iteration of it's Pro Evolution Soccer series,and other large developers to provide popular franchises for the Wii, so that my friend can get the console he so clearly needs.
Nice thoughts, though it might your argument by stating what franchises you expected on the GameCube that never made it, including games that had in fact made it and failed to meet expectations.
Still, very enjoyable.
Your right.
It’s a shame I didnt get a chance to go into more detail, sadly that was due to writing this prior to leaving late for work.
Anyhow thank you for your pointers : )
I agree. I’ve been saying this for a long time. For me, Resident Evil was one of the Cube’s third-party offerings I would consider as a system seller, albeit a rather stale franchise that only, finally, rejuvinated itself with RE4 (which came rather late in the Cube’s life). That alone wasn’t enough to push the system and I would’ve liked it had the Metal Gear Solid series was released for it too. Unfortunately for that series, Konami neglected a MGS2:Substance port when they were working on it for the Xbox and PC. While I was glad MGS:Twin Snakes was made (hadn’t played it before), I couldn’t help but feel that the Cube basically got a port of a PS1/PC game from six years ago that most people probably played already. Outside of visual upgrades, it didn’t feature anything substantial and didn’t even include the Integral missions. And let’s not forget Square-Enix, who I’d liked to think was going to provide some substantial JRPG in the same vein and complexitiy of a Final Fantasy game, if even that. Apparently not even close, we get Crystal Chronicles (not a bad game in principle, just not as deep, be it story or character, and ultimately hampered by the limits of the GBA). Hopefully the Wii sequel will fare better and with online.
What we need are system sellers for the Wii. While the PS3 is getting games like MGS4, the Wii gets Elebits. RE5 and DMC4 for them, hardly any confirmation for us (please let it not be Gun Survivor). Gears of War for 360, while Epic won’t even touch the Wii. No iD, no Valve, no Epic, etc. Considering the Wii has a better alternative than dual analog sticks for FPS games, you’d think it’d be showered with some great FPS titles. I can only wonder how Red Steel will turn out. Why couldn’t we get something like Black, Prey, Bioshock, Farcry, etc. Shame. Even SNK have only bothered to dig up past games for Metal Slug Anthology. Not a bad thing mind you but in context is the Wii suppose to only get an old 2D arcade compilation with some tweaked controls? Or some stale Tony Hawk game? Frankly, a big chunk of the interesting titles seems to be coming from Nintendo and a few others distributed amongst some third-party developers. There’s gotta be something bigger than this. How can these developers expect to create an audience that would buy the type of games they make if at best they’re sitting on their hands doing a “wait and see” approach or throwing simple, cheaply designed games? If every RPG maker make their best RPG franchises exclusively to the PS3 then wouldn’t that obviously corall a demographic under one roof. That might sound good to them but not someone who can’t get past a very expensive door. I hope Namco has a substantial Tales game in the works for the Wii ’cause I’m not holding my breath for something substantial from S-E (wished they made Kingdom Hearts for the Cube back then since everyone seems insistent on labeling it the “kiddy” system).
Okay, I’ll end my rant here. :D