As a Nintendo Wii and XBox 360 owner I find that I still enjoy playing with the Nintendo system but I think the many many crappy games that gimmick the Motion controller are actually hurting the device. While HD graphics are nice and find them to be almost necessary for some games to get the full effect I think Nintendo is doing a decent job offering games for all gamer types. They definitely tapped into a Market that know one else was able to do. If there is any truth to the rumors that float around Nintendo's next system will be a powerful one but I guess only time will tell.
Also on the subject of graphical power I still think game developers for the Wii underutilize the the power the Wii does have. Sure it is not as powerful as the other two systems and the hard core gamer market will do everything to slam it but as a gamer that has been playing games since before the original Atari I think Nintendo has always done a fine job delivering an optimal gaming experience. IMO they make the most reliable and best consoles in the business and have awesome customer service. My Xbox is a 3rd or 4th Gen by hardware and has been running good so no RROD and I do not have any reason to get a PS3, but I went through three PS2's back in the day due to hardware failure and Sony was terrible and basically said oh well not our problem. I have owned every Nintendo Console since the beginning and until a couple years ago my sister was still using my NES and SNES and they both worked aside from having to blow on the game cartridges every once in a while. She ended up getting a Wii and seems to love it.
Oh BTW have you seen the trailer for the next Metroid Game? If the trailer is any representation of what the game will look like it looks like they squeezed a lot of graphic power out of the system. It may be the best looking Wii title to date. There are a handful of other titles (Mostly Nintendo developed) that offer great visuals too but there are so many that look like they were slapped together over the weekend which brings me back to my comment above about developers gimmicking the Motion controller.
Nintendo’s seventh-generation games console, the oddly named Wii, was launched back in November of 2006 and became an instant hit. Since then it has sold well over 50 million units and enjoys popularity outside of the traditional gaming community. But is it time for the Wii to receive a hardware refresh or is there still plenty of life left in the plucky console?
Note: Just to put the Wii sales into context, PS3 sales so far total some 27 million and Xbox 360 sales are in the region of 39 million, but all are dwarfed by Nintendo DS sales, which topped 113 million.
While Microsoft and Sony concentrated on developing powerful games consoles to satisfy hardcore gamers (in other words, people who were PC gamers), Nintendo took a step back with the Wii and created a device that was aimed more at the casual gamer. The graphics and style of Wii games are more along the lines of Flash games that people might play on Facebook than your resource-heavy PC game. But the Wii had an ace up its sleeve - it offered interactivity through the wireless Wii Remote that used accelerometer and infrared receivers to detect motion through 3D space. This allowed gamers to play games like tennis in a more natural, real-world way (although some of the actions and motions involved in some games push the boundaries of realism quite a bit).
Between late 2007 and mid 2008 (depending on the market) Nintendo released the Wii Balance Board which added a new dimension to the Wii and made games such as the Wii Fit possible.
OK, so the Wii has, and still is, a successful console. But more than three years on, is it time for a refresh? Many tech and gaming pundits think that it is, pointing to its lack of high-definition graphics as one shortcoming. But this constant speculation of a Wii hardware refresh has prompted denials. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime shot down rumors by saying that “we are confident the Wii home entertainment console has a very long life in front of it.” If that’s not enough, he added:
“In terms of what the future holds, we’ve gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home consoles will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability, and we’ll do that when we’ve totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii. And we’re nowhere near doing that yet. There’s lots of ongoing opportunity for the consumer in the current generation with the Wii console.”
Now the question is, does Nintendo need to update the Wii in order for it to remain attractive to consumers? After all, both Sony and Microsoft have said that their consoles will have a ten year lifecycle (the PS3 is about three years old, while the Xbox 360 is a bit older, at four). But ten years is a heck of a long time in technology. In fact, I can only think of one platform that survived anywhere close to that, and that was the Game Boy platform. That ten-year lifecycle is driven more by economics than anything else. Microsoft and Sony have both found it incredibly hard to make games consoles profitable, so there’s no incentive to go through a development cycle just yet. This ten-year lifecycle statement doesn’t preclude a console launch before this date, but that will no doubt depend on a number of factors, such as the economy and whether the companies think that they can do a better job of selling the new consoles.
The real question for Nintendo is whether consumers feel they need high definition gaming capability. To be honest, I don’t think they do because the types of games that you see on the Wii don’t really need better graphics. This “better graphics = better game” mantra is a holdover from the old PC gaming days. You can have a game with great graphics that sells poorly (think Crysis), but a game can have poor graphics and still be a huge hit with a really long arc (think old-school games featuring Tetris or Mario).
What I think we’re going to see on all fronts in more add-ons and accessories for consoles (think along the lines of Microsoft’s Project Natal). The Wii could also benefit from games from third-party developers that make more use of the Wii Remote and the Wii balance Board. So far, I feel that while Nintendo do a really good job of leveraging the capabilities of the Wii, other developers are lagging behind.
If we can trust companies with their promise of long lifecycles, then it’s a good time to buy a console.
