Comments on: Wii will rock you

By: fledgling otaku

fledgling otaku — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:28:25 +0000

You’re right. I bought Wii Music, though I refused to buy Animal Crossing on the theory that I didnt want my daughter spending THAT much time at home playing Wii. Would prefer she read a book. We have Animal Crossing on DS for her instead; we drive to Chicago from Madison a lot so its a better format as a distraction. We have Galaxy, but its not that compelling.

Plus I bought Wii Fit Plus (we are heavy users of Wii Fit) and Wii Sports Resort (because I wanted Motion Plus). Have barely played the latter. And we do have a copy of Mario Kart for Wii, but i havent opened the box (saving it as a Christmas gift). But I wonder how often we will play that, too.

I admit I am tempted by Mario Bros but I already have SMB 1 and 3 courtesy of the Download channel so its actually kind of redundant there too!

I think that the new $200 price point is an ideal one but the problem with Wii is that it sets a high bar for innovation, not just hardware but also in gameplay. Apart from the minigame collections, no one really is coming up with new ways of exploting the technology. I am tempted by World of Goo actually but will that really leverage the unique interface? not likely.

What really would be ideal would be to create a Warcraft client. Wii is in many ways ideally suited for the MMO market.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:46:37 +0000

FWIW, wife and I did some early Christmas shopping this past weekend, including two Gamestops. Saw Wii’s being purchased at both, and people asking about the new Mario game. Only other interest was in the PSP. I think Nintendo is going to have a pretty good quarter in the U.S.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:18:59 +0000

Nintendo pretty clearly bungled their late 2008 strategy. Their big games during holiday last year were… Wii Music and Animal Crossing Wii. Neither game did well at all. Actually, they sold a fair amount, but customers didn’t seem to enjoy either. They’ve definitely lost momentum.

I’ve read some speculation about this, and it appears that Nintendo got caught up in the “user generated content” craze (Malstrom writes about this a lot), and was taken off guard when consumers didn’t respond so well.

So if you look at what Nintendo’s done this holiday season, you see them in a bit of a holding pattern, trying to stop the bleeding. They got motion plus out of the door and by all accounts Wii Sports Resort is a sorta replacement for Wii Sports. Then you’ve got Wii Fit Plus, another replacement game. And New Super Mario Brothers Wii, a new 2 D Mario. Mario Galaxy 2, a new 3d Mario game. All of these are sure things, and will sell very well (except maybe Galaxy 2…). They probably won’t make inroads the way that Wii Sports and Wii Fit did when those games launched, but they will carry Nintendo until they can devise something new and exciting. Then again, NSMB for the DS sold ridiculously well. I could see NSMB Wii bringing back disenfranchised gamers… depending on how good it is…

Honestly, I’ve been much happier with my PS3 than my Wii. Indeed, I just realized that I had packed up my Wii this summer when I went on vacation (the Wii is still the premier group gaming system)… and I haven’t unpacked it yet. It’s been at least 3 months. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing the crap out of my PS3 (not to mention watching Blu Rays) almost every day.