Wii: Get It or Get Out

Filed in archive Features on March 28, 2008

Image by Rob Howard for House of Nintendo

Over the many posts I've made here at the House of Nintendo, there have been numerous versions of the same opinion: Nintendo needs to make sure that a wide variety of genres are present on Wii. And that is still my opinion today.

However, over the course of the Wii's life, it seems as though there are a subset of gamers who are magically wanting the Wii to sprout more processors or to magically become HD enabled. It is as if there people cannot recognize that different gaming platforms have inherent strengths and weaknesses, which result in different types of games. You cannot ask system "A" to be just like system "B."

Wait, actually, we have that already: it's called the Xbox 360 and PS3!!

Unfortunately, it seems like this gamer subgroup is healthily represented by the gaming press. Look up Variety's review of Super Mario Galaxy, for instance. It isn't a review, but an editorial about why the game would be better on the other platforms, which is a ludicrous assertion on its face.

Nintendo took a different direction with Wii. So it makes sense that the games would be different. But one of those differences is price, and people forget that. The Wii is designed to be an overall "cheaper" system, which means a little bit less of the "fat" included in games today. Huge big budget games aren't a precise fit on the system, which is why a healthy does of fun, shorter games populate it.

That isn't to say that there aren't exceptions: there are. There have been plenty of large budget core titles on Wii. But overall, you are going to see a library that emphasizes some different things, and some of us need to understand that. The 360 and PS3 might cover these gamer's needs quite well, and they should support those platforms.

So with Wii, gamers should "Get It" or Get Out: that is, understand that the Wii is about different experiences delivered in smaller increments for lower costs. If you don't like that, time to support another platform.

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Rating: 8.25 out of 4 vote(s) cast.

Response from: J.B. (03/28/08 9:44am)

I remember when Nintendo was giving their first big talks on the philosophy behind the Wii (and for that matter, the DS)... Iwata/Reggie would talk about how, if there wasn't some sort of major shift in how the industry approaches their products, we would be heading for another "dark age" of gaming. It's interesting to me to see how the Wii has done that... not only by offering fresh titles to an increasingly large audience, but seemingly also by polarizing some of the biggest voices that review/talk about games. I think this sort of change in discussion (like the Galaxy review in Variety... it's eye-opening to know that's how their thought process works) might serve to make everyone step back a little and look at games in a larger sense. That is, what gaming has become culturally and what importance that it really has to a wide variety of people... I think that the Wii has proven that gaming has evolved to a point where the loudest voices in the room can't bully a system into going away simply because it doesn't have a "badass factor" to it. Gaming simply isn't governed anymore by these same voices that have dictated "cool" for so many years, and I think it's a shock to a lot people, but I think that the shock is wearing off... maybe that's exactly what we needed, and what Nintendo was going for all along...

Response from: Rob Howard (03/28/08 10:43am)

That's some very insightful commentary and completely right.

You have to think a few steps ahead in business, and that's what they've done. It takes some people a while to really grab ahold of the ideas they are after. I certainly was a skeptic back in the Nintendo DS launch days. But I was won over then. Some aren't and are never going to: I just hope these people aren't reviewing Wii and DS titles for major publications and websites! Believe it or not, I think every magazine/website benefits from having people who actually like a platform cover it! It's so clear that the Game Informer staff detest all things Wii, so those reviews are very hard to trust.

Response from: Malibu Real Estate (03/29/08 11:18pm)

While in California recently, I got my first taste of the Wii games.most were as you would say short fun land to the point.
There was one exception however and that was one called Resident Evil (3 and 4?)
I thought I was going to kill about an hour with my nephew, and it took all day long to play it out!
In the end this little kid still beat me! Dave

Response from: Rob Howard (03/30/08 1:22am)

Yep, you are talking about Resident Evil 4, which is not only a great game on Wii (as well as on the Gamecube and PS2) but is one of the all time great modern video games.

I'm wondering how he beat you though, as RE4 is a one player game?