bitter but bang on the mark....
The wii goes to prove that a game system doesn't necessarily need a plethora of triple AAA titles (the wii has what a small handful) to sell huge volumes at retail. It also goes to prove that those crap casual games which are just appalling on every level, (gameplay, technically etc...) unfortunately do sell and make publishers a **** load of money.
Wii is the new EA of the gaming world.... More crap repackaged.....
Oh how I couldn't agree more. I bought a Wii at the end of last year (actually, on December 31 to be exact
), and I've barely used it. Have not finished a single game on it. I got a PS3 in April and a 360 just last Wednesday, and I use them all the time.
From my experience, I've noticed people seem to love the fact it has "motion sensors". If anything, that's one of my least favourite things about the console, and find it weak that it was the main thing Nintendo has been promoting about the console. I find it a huge pain in the ass to have to point the Wii remote at the screen to do anything, I love with the 360 and PS3 it's as easy as holding in a button and using the controls themselves to select things. Game developers have totally misjudged the use of the Wii remote in many games also, and it really makes games less enjoyable. Despite the fact I think The Simpsons Game sucks ass anyway, it made it all the more annoying when, one minute, you're controlling a character normally, then suddenly you're expect to start violently shaking the controller or pretend to throw it at the screen just to do anything useful. I'll take the button controls on the Dualshock 3 and 360 controllers, thanks.
If the motion sensor thing is what gets people, then maybe Sony should make Sixaxis the main point of promotion for the PS3 - exact same concept, it tells the console the direction in which the controller is moving. People complain about Sixaxis, but I honestly don't mind it. I much prefer using it to steer in GTA IV than having to hold the damn Wii remote vertically for a few minutes and almost breaking my wrists just to pass a half-thought out level in Super Mario Galaxy.
I've noticed that it's the people that DO NOT own a Wii that think it's the best thing ever, and this in part goes back to what I said about the motion sensors. Nintendo is marketing that gimmick to try and draw in the naive people that have had little to no experience with games. If people actually did their research, they'd realise that the 360 and the PS3 are vastly superior consoles in comparison. In contrast, it's the people that DO own a Wii that realise it is very boring with a mediocre selection of titles.
And then there's the games. Nintendo continues it's tradition of mainly offering games that "the whole family can enjoy", and it's this that makes me NOT want to buy them. In making a game appeal to a wider audience it is, ultimately, alienating a lot of people -- the more you "water down" a game, the more lame and easy it becomes just so what, they don't get letters from seven year olds and their parents complaining about violence in games on an "all ages" console? Even Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the one game I was eagerly anticipating on the Wii, let me down greatly. It may have been the fact I really was a kid when it came out, but I absolutely loved the original Super Smash Bros. For some reason The Subspace Emissary story in Brawl really annoyed me, after playing sandbox-style games like GTA IV a lot lately, to suddenly be thrown into a sidescroller really made me feel that Nintendo really is lagging in this generation, despite the immensely massive sales of their console.
In fact, in the future, there are NO Wii games that interest me in the slightest -- everything I want is on the PS3 and 360. This is why I'm selling my Wii and all of its games, 11 months after I originally purchased it, because in all I doubt I would have even gotten 72 hours of play time out of it in the entire time I owned it. I'm putting the money towards a PSP and a PS2, because the one and only thing I dislike about the PS3 here is it's lack of backwards compatibility.
My advice? If you're a hardcore gamer steer clear, both my partner and I both own Wii consoles, and we both regret it as neither of us use them very much. I'd only recommend it if you weren't seriously into games and didn't care about things like a competent controller/remote or the quality of the graphics.
