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228 Comments
- kabifff, on 11/20/2008, -10/+119Whom. Who abandoned WHOM?
- Visual77, on 11/20/2008, -3/+77I don't think I could disagree with this article more. Older Nintendo games were about progression, a clear start and end, objectives, accomplishments. Kiddie or not, Wii Music doesn't have the sense of moving through a game like Super Mario Bros or Metroid or Link to the Past or Pokemon. Being childish is not Nintendo's problem, being minigame collections is the problem. Brawl was fantastic, Galaxy was fantastic, Corruption was fantastic, so was Twilight Princess, Excite Truck, Trauma Center, Zack and Wiki, etc., but these kind of games are getting more and more rare for the Wii.
The lack of traditional games is what drove me to my 360 and PS3. I don't give a rats ass about art style or maturity. I love Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. I love Mario Kart Wii. I don't love something that I can't zone out on, alone, for 4-6 hours, and after I'm done, feel like I made no real 'progress' because there is no concept of 'progress'. Once you start the game, you've already got all options available to you, and it's just those few things repeatedly, with others, that brings enjoyment.
I miss games like Final Fantasy, Megaman, Maniac Mansion, Metroid, Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Road Rash, etc.
It has nothing to do with an E or an M rating, it has everything to do with a traditional gaming mentality versus a casual experience meant to be enjoyed in brief spurts in a social setting. - MattFromSeattle, on 11/18/2008, -16/+78Really good editorial and I agree with it. I love the Wii because it's given my wife some games to play with me and the kids, something she's never wanted to do with the 360 or PS3. Nintendo just makes fun games. Are they cutting edge or realistic? No. But they don't have to be, they're just fun.
- coheedcollapse, on 11/20/2008, -3/+46Honestly, I love kids games. I will play Viva Pinata to no end on the 360. I will play the family-friendly LittleBigPlanet until my fingers bleed. I played Animal Crossing on the Gamecube for weeks. Unfortunately, Nintendo isn't making kid-oriented games, they're making games that pander to people who don't play games. They're sacrificing quality, which was the greatest thing about their past consoles, for gimmicky crap. There has not been a game released for the console in the past year that has held my attention for more than an hour. That's saying a lot coming from someone who can play Garry's Mod for 5 hours straight without a break.
- jermm, on 11/19/2008, -2/+31Last year had Galaxy, maybe not best game from 2007 (Orange Box for me...), this year has nothing. EAD has something in the pipe that will be amazing, but 2008 looks pretty bad on the Nintendo side, then again, you can't buy a wii/wii fit by just walking into [video game store], so they don't need anything.
- Treshnell, on 11/20/2008, -8/+33We love the characters we grew up with, but we're tired of seeing them stuck in the same situations every couple of years. There's only so many times you can remake the same game.
- humperdinck, on 11/20/2008, -1/+25Seriously. And the semi-colon! The only thing missing from that abysmal headline is a misused apostrophe in "its".
- PhoenixAvatar2, on 11/20/2008, -3/+27I don't know about you, but I didn't buy a console to buy two games a year and play them for a week.
- SolipsismX, on 11/20/2008, -1/+23This article was pretty bad. I own the Wii exclusively and every major Nintendo console before it, but even I can admit Nintendo is abandoning its audience and even selling its new audience short. The argument in this article is essentially that Nintendo is sticking to its guns by making games for everybody.
Since when did Nintendo make games for everybody? See if a casual gamer can beat Super Mario Bros. 1 or Zelda. Laugh at them even more when they try to beat Zelda 2 or Metroid. Sure, these franchises are still around, but rather than expand on them, Nintendo adds 12 developing houses dedicated to games for everybody (leaving 4 for the original audience that helped build it up).
Nintendo doesn't have the 3rd party games anymore to fill the gaps in Nintendo's own library because they lose them by constantly making stupid decisions. They first lost them when they decided to censor Mortal Kombat and even though they made up for it by 2, they screwed themselves in the end. They screwed themselves by going with cartridges instead of CD for the N64. They screwed themselves by going with a cute looking system for the Gamecube, using a smaller medium and refusing to go online. Now they're doing it with friends codes, by continuing to make shallow games other than the few AAA games we'll probably see this generation and using an unnecessarily weaker system. I knew that the Wii was going to be weaker than the other two systems, but I was thinking it would be weaker like the PS2 (or even dreamcast) was weaker compared to the Gamecube and Xbox.
Not only that, but the games it makes "for everybody" aren't games for everybody. If they really wanted, they could add advanced modes to the games like EA is doing. For instance, there's no reason why Wii Tennis couldn't have had an option to control the movement of your player with the nunchuck. There's no reason Mario Galaxy shouldn't have a better manual camera system that DOESN'T overcompensate for gamers that get motion sickness.
Even the simple games they make are phoned in. I don't play the pokemon series, but reading reviews of the new games and talking to somebody that does, I'm under the impression that the series hasn't really changed at all since the N64: the same goes for the new Animal Crossing game. - supersteve, on 11/20/2008, -19/+39i'll stick to gears and COD4 thank you
- magus824, on 11/20/2008, -2/+18Tired of seeing them stuck in the same situations? Have you even played Mario Galaxy?
- inactive, on 11/19/2008, -12/+27Well said. The Wii could have been so much, but all it really is is paying for overpriced games you already bought once before (VC games), poor ports from other consoles that replace "hit the A button" with "insert wrist spasm here", and the very, very occasional fun 1st party game. Not worth the money at all.
- Enkairi, on 11/20/2008, -1/+14In my opinion, the Nintendo Wii has become a console for playing mini games. Games good for when you are throwing a big party and just want to sit for 10 to 15 minutes. I miss Nintendo games where I had to sit on my couch for days straight to beat the games.
- drachemorder, on 11/20/2008, -4/+17"Sorry, but Nintendo abandoned me when I turned 16."
That's EXACTLY the mentality the article is arguing against. - jumpjet701, on 11/20/2008, -4/+17Problem is, its the same games every generation... mario, zelda, metroid... once they are released, you might as well be done with the system, because the third party games are litterly trash.
- MasterGrief, on 11/20/2008, -8/+20I'm sorry man, this is just too long. This is digg. Comments are generally three hundred words or less. Not eight hundred and ninety-six.
- SpeedyG, on 11/20/2008, -3/+13So let me get this straight, you basically told Nintendo to go pound sand a decade ago, and NOW you're pissed that they've had success by not catering to only you?
I can't believe, after games like The Sims become far and away the best sellers of all time, that "gamers" like Topher insist that their tastes are the only ones that matter. Vote with your dollar; nobody except for the choir you're preaching to cares about how you feel Nintendo has violated you. - AirRaven, on 11/20/2008, -2/+11...The *Wii*? Not on par with the PS2?
I'm getting the impression you're talking out of your arse on that point.
The Wii's quite easily more powerful than any of the last-generation consoles. Granted, it's no 360 or PS3 by a long margin- but that doesn't make it necessarily "hopeless", on any count. - Ugotownedo, on 11/20/2008, -2/+11Hunting down stars and going through levels is what Mario's all about, don't expect Nintendo to change that. What they SHOULD do however, is make some new IPs. Come on Nintendo, remember when you hyped up the pointing functionality and how good it would be for shooters? Well how many shooters have actually used it properly? Answer: One, Metroid Prime 3. And that's only a single player game. WE WANT A GOOD ONLINE FPS LIKE COD4 AND HALO 3.
- Scopitone, on 11/20/2008, -3/+12I sometimes wish I was so incredibly amused and the Wii satisfied my gaming needs. Life would just be so much easier without having to worry about what I'm possibly missing on the 360, PS3, and PC!
... - Visual77, on 11/20/2008, -1/+9They lost me as a fan when they stopped making those games entirely. They haven't even announced anything that interests me. A game holds my attention for anywhere from 1-3 weeks, depending on complexity, replayability, length and quality. Let's quadruple that to 12 weeks. 3 months. In the past 3 months, name a game that fits what I'm describing - a clear progression of accomplishment, a start point and an end point, a sequence of memories of playing the game.
The last time the Wii got a game like that was Mario Kart Wii, released almost 6 months ago.
It's not that they aren't putting out traditional games as fast as I want, it's that they've simply stopped putting out traditional games.
In those 6 months, I've gotten Disgaea 3 (PS3), Metal Gear Solid 4(PS3), Little Big Planet(PS3), Valkyria Chronicles(PS3), Fallout 3(360), Grand Theft Auto 4(360), Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts(360) and Tales of Vesperia(360).
1 game per month from the other two consoles, and that's only counting games that came out during that time span, not older games that I went back and picked up.
Before the Wii's launch, Nintendo often declared that they weren't competing with Microsoft and Sony, that they were going into a new market. I chalked it up to advertising speak to avoid a direct hardware comparison. Since the launch, they have shown me to be wrong - they really are in a new market, and I, as a gaming veteran of more than 2 decades, am not a part of their market any longer. - skywake, on 11/19/2008, -2/+10True, there hasn't been a "big game" like Galaxy this year but there has been a fair bit more then nothing. Early this year we got Kart AND Brawl and then latter in the year Wii Ware launched. Considering last year we only got Metriod Prime and Galaxy and at launch we really only had Twilight Princess 2008 has actually been better in terms of the quantity of decent first party games for the Wii then 2007 and 2006.
The only difference is instead of getting our "Nintendo" games around Christmas we got them early in the year. Now we have almost nothing we know about to look forward to from Nintendo in the next six months or so..... excluding Wii Sports Resort, Punchout, Sin & Punishment 2 and the "Play on the Wii" collection obviously.... - Spoomeister, on 11/20/2008, -3/+11The amount of anti-casual-gaming snobbery in this thread is pretty amusing, and shows how insular a "community" gamers have.
Not everyone thinks a game has to be an all-consuming multiplayer passtime, or be measured in whether it takes 40 hours or 60 hours to finish, to be enjoyable.
And the part of the article I agree with most:
"But what happens when you switch over to these other gaming systems? When you listen to everyone playing online? You have to put up with cursing, racism, children who think that they can dish out verbal pain, kids who have been given M-rated games by parents who either don't care or don't pay attention... Sure, the audience may have gotten more "mature" in age, but they have not matured in behavior.
The games I see in other company's libraries are titles that typically give me an image of a gamer that becomes easily enraged. Honestly, these games make me think that people don't actually even enjoy the games they play. And if they do, they don't know how to show it." - TrevorBelmont, on 11/20/2008, -0/+8The N64 was chock full of bad ass. With Mario 64, Goldeneye, Zelda OoT, Perfect Dark, Rogue Squadron... these are some of the best games I ever played. I'm pretty sure that it was the first to incorporate an analog thumb stick as well.
The Game Cube is the black sheep of it's era but I love the little guy. People love to say that it couldn't run with the big dogs but it offered several unique and amazing games. Geist is and was an amazing new look at the FPS. Pikmin was adorable and lots of fun. Then there's the masterstroke of the system (and maybe the entire generation) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. I can't say enough good things about that one. It was dark, legitimately disturbing and it had a way of breaking the third wall and messing with the players head that would make Psycho Mantis bow his head with inadequacy and shame.
Nintendo has always had the good sense to not butt heads with the competition by trying to make it bigger and more powerful than the other guy. They learned from the early beating administered them by the Sega Genesis and have consistently offered a unique and fun alternative.
Maybe the last few systems weren't your bag but you can't conclude that they were bad and that there were no good games.I gotta say on that point, you're totally wrong. - DeathRay2K, on 11/20/2008, -0/+7I'm surprised you'd compare the Wii to the PS2. Even the gamecube had better specs than the PS2, and the Wii has about twice that.
While it's not as advanced as the 360 or PS3 it's certainly a current gen console. - ReDoEr, on 11/20/2008, -1/+8I don't really think that's the problem. Mario games will always be Mario games, Zelda games will always be Zelda games, and so on. That's how to get new people interested in (great) old franchises. The problem is, there seems to be nothing BUT Mario/Zelda/etc. All the new games for Wii seem to be updates of games I had on NES in 1987. I haven't purchased a new Wii game since SMG, and the console now largely collects dust while I use the 360. Hopefully The Conduit will jump-start the withering collection of NEW IP's for the Wii.
- iofthestorm, on 11/20/2008, -2/+9Clearly you aren't playing the right games. Brawl, Mario Kart, Zelda, Metroid, Mario Galaxy are all games that are generally highly regarded. There's a whole host of third party games that get overlooked too.
- DNABeast, on 11/20/2008, -0/+7I'll back you up AvidLinuxUser. I loved the combat in Windwaker and the way it tied in with the musical beats.
- drifter, on 11/20/2008, -2/+8You praise them now, yet everyone hated them and they nearly went away not to long ago.
Fact is, Nintendo took some chances and got lucky. Overall, they haven't pushed huge boundaries. This will be shown even more so once both the Xbox and PS3 have motion sensor. - Elranzer, on 11/20/2008, -0/+6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Man_9
- jjones20, on 11/20/2008, -3/+9Its not about the quality of games imo, its about the quantity, most consoles have a bit of slack in terms of releases during the spring / summer, espiecally after the usually huge christmas rush, but the Wii seems to have year long droughts, maybe a big game will come out that year, maybe not, but when they have 2-3 big releases a year, and you might enjoy only 1 of those i have to go the same route i went with the gamecube, have my primary console and then pick up a Wii 3-4 years after its been out and play through the games i missed.
- Shaymojack, on 11/20/2008, -4/+10Even if it's a different setting, it's still just hunting down stars.
- chaosblade77, on 11/20/2008, -1/+7I think Nintendo released all of their first party titles too quickly, and didn't spread them well enough. In the first year and a half, Nintendo pumped out Battalion Wars, Twilight Princess, Excite Truck, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, Fire Emblem, Mario Kart, Smash Brothers, and several "lower quality" releases like Pokemon Battle Revolution and Mario Sports games.
10 games (at least) directly from Nintendo themselves released between Nov 2006 - May 2008. That's not even including the Wii Play/Fit/Sports. How many other companies have released 10 games, most of them quality games, in less than 20 months?
Then they've already said they've started development on the next Mario platformer (which we probably won't see for 4+ years, but still), a new Zelda game that's supposed to shake things up by changing the formula, Pikmin 3, and Sin and Punishment 2. Plus they are obviously going to release games in their other franchises like Star Fox and F-Zero, along with rumors about stuff like Kid Icarus, Kirby, Golden Sun, and whatever Retro is working on. Plus who knows what else - they had two entirely new IPs (Project HAMMER and Disaster) and although one was canned and the other was a let down that may not come to the US, it was still a sign they are trying some new ideas.
They're doing a lot more than they did over the last two generations, people just don't notice. - Jones82, on 11/20/2008, -2/+7So Nintendo's biggest problem is they need to put a bunch of new characters in Mario Kart instead of the ones we know? Who cares about that, either the game is fun or it isn't.
- HalsMyPal, on 11/20/2008, -0/+5he covers this in the paragraph about 3rd party games.
how many games have you bought for your 360 or ps3 that were made by sony or microsoft, probably about as many or less than nintendo has made in house for the wii, all of your other games are 3rd party. if serious 3rd party companies would put out games for the wii like they do for the 360 and ps3 you wouldnt be complaining about the "kiddie" games. but alas these "cutting edge" companies just want to keep making first person shooters with a space/alien/super suit hero theme on a three generation old control scheme instead of having the courage to go and make something new with nintendo.
Nintendo hasn't stopped putting out "traditional" games it just lacks the good third party activity that the 360 and ps3 have.
if the ps3 or 360 had the same lack of third party enthusiasm then you would be complaining about their lack of "traditional" games because the only quality games you would have would be the ones made by sony and microsoft.
dont blame Nintendo they have done everything right and haven't missed a target, its the external companies that have fallen out of step. - jasmus, on 11/20/2008, -3/+8hardcore.
- turkoftheplains, on 11/20/2008, -1/+6Dugg for word count.
- WhiskeyLemur, on 06/30/2009, -0/+5I had a lot of hope for the WiiFit, but it was so incredibly lame that it's now gathering dust under my TV set. It doesn't help that I have weak ankles and every single exercise I tries forced me to put a lot of pressure and control just on that one specific joint (with the possible exception of the jogging game - and come on, jogging in place at one set SLOWWWWW speed?). The obnoxious voice nagging you every time you skip a day wasn't a selling-point, either. Maybe it's just me.
- SeVIIen, on 11/20/2008, -0/+5I knew that someone had to have beaten me to it.
Dugg for the prompt, concise grammar policing and skillful use of recasting. - chaosblade77, on 11/20/2008, -2/+6Is that really a problem? I'm pretty sure the next generation Xbox and PS will have PS3 caliber graphics as well.
Probably slightly better, but you can't really expect the leap we saw this generation again. There's not much further you can actually go. More than likely, there will be a few new graphics technologies to be embraced, but for the most part next generation graphical improvements will be all about framerates and higher resolution textures, and not so much about more polygons.
Besides, Nintendo CAN'T release another Wii for the eighth generation. The casuals simply wouldn't buy it since they won't see what is wrong with their current one and it wouldn't sell. If Nintendo does release another console when MS and Sony do, I'd expect it to be more competitive like the Gamecube was, while also supporting the Wii for the family-friendly gaming that it's currently got a hold on. Otherwise we'll probably see the Wii as Nintendo's only home console until as late as 2016. - tatinthehat, on 11/20/2008, -1/+5How do you explain their sales then? It's not like more people magically appeared from the core video game market. Sure, there are people who bought a Wii and have dust collecting on it (myself included), but obviously by how many systems Nintendo is moving, and games they are selling (let's face it, people are buying Wii Fit and Wii Music), they're tapping into "some market".
As far as I'm concerned, Nintendo has tapped into the "non-gamer" market to an extent. I know people who bought a Wii having not even touched any video game system prior in their life. - Dalenn, on 11/20/2008, -1/+5Guess what... Nintendo is a business. They have a formula for making money, and it works. It's as simple as that.
- purzzzell, on 11/20/2008, -1/+5@flamingboy - your last statement simply serves to prove his point
- luet, on 11/20/2008, -0/+4chaoswings if you had read your OWN LINK, you would have realized how wrong you are.
- Xihix, on 11/20/2008, -26/+30Nintendo will never stop pandering to casualfags at this point. It's making them too much money.
- Charlotte_Web, on 11/20/2008, -1/+5Nintendo reminds me of Apple.
They will come out with a revolutionary, albeit underpowered, gizmo. People rave about the coolness of it and buy it in droves. Then they release the second generation of the unit, which has a lot more power and meets a lot more expectations. It sells well through the established base, and continues to grow marketshare like crazy.
Two years on the market, and the Wii is only just now being found in stock on a regular basis at your local retailer. With that kind of crazy enthusiasm for their product, I can promise you that Nintendo isn't asking themselves what they're doing wrong.
The next-gen Wii HD is rumored to have a faster processor, HD output, and significantly larger internal storage, as well as maintaining backwards compatibility. That all sounds great, except that it's not rumored to hit store shelves until 2011; Can Nintendo maintain enthusiasm for the Wii until then?
I think so. They've got a lot more franchise titles that are coming out in the next couple of years, and a lot of developers that previously scoffed at the Wii are finding it hard to ignore the size of the rapidly-expanding installed base. - reticulate, on 11/20/2008, -2/+6Yeah, because Call of Duty 4 wasn't a genre-defining experience or anything.
Not that'd you know, obviously. - Frozo, on 11/20/2008, -6/+10It's called "getting older". Did Kool-Aid abandon you too?
- bergur1, on 11/20/2008, -6/+10All trolling aside, I've felt that Nintendo has abandoned me, sure the Wii might deliver to some extent but only because of few decent titles, what bugs me even more is that these are the same characters Nintendo came up with over twenty years ago and they are still roughly dangling their creations around as if Mario was drunk and was cool about it.
I will respect Nintendo when they stop making Mario kart and make a Kart racer with new characters. I will respect Nintendo when it doesn't become about a boy named Link. I will respect Nintendo when they let their favorite franchises die a death without humiliation.
I only buy Wii games from WiiWare right now but only because it doesn't have as many money-hungry 5th rate developers (still has some...party games? really?). - skywake, on 11/20/2008, -2/+5Oh I agree, and that's why the Wii's strong third party support is important....
....oh wait *cries a little inside* -
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