BarelyAudible said:
"Those don't count 'cause I don't like 'em! Nyagh!"
That about sum it up?
No, take a look at them yourself. There are some ok ones on the list but many of the best scorers are simple puzzle games and/or DS games. I'm not mad at their handheld service. Nintendo is an f'n white shark when it comes to the handheld market and I think everyone knows it. I do prefer my psp and PS Vita to my DS but moreso because sony's machines are more gaming than iPad but more of a media pad than the DS. For example, my three most used items on my original PSP was a box set of UMDs of the first two seasons of Family Guy, the Incredibles, and the Final Fantasy Tactics Lion Wars UMD. It wasn't that I wouldn't have played other games, it's just that Sony fails at supporting their handheld devices with enough legitimate titles while Nintendo kicks absolute ass in that category but I also enjoy watching non-game media on my handheld which the DS isn't exactly made for. Now that I have the playstation backlog at my disposal on the psp and Vita I've got all the titles I want. They've also supported the Vita with some new titles that my wife and I have enjoyed. Still, I don't anticipate them supporting it in any way close to the way Nintendo supports their handhelds.
But these new Wii games aren't mainstream games. I keep repeating Captain Rainbow only because it is the most blatant example of the nature of that list as only 22,670 copies were ever sold and its failure meant that it only ever got released in Japan.
The biggest IP on the list is of course the Wii franchise (Wii sports, Wii fitness, Wii etc). The innovation is the peripheral, not the games themselves. That being said, Nintendo completely deserves praise for being the visionary that brought these alternative peripherals to the forefront in a successful manner. I anticipate that the upcoming generation will at least try to bring things like the Oculus Rift onto the scene which could change everything (imagine a legitimate 3D environment in the horror genre or in world exploration games. Imagine a final fantasy game where you enter the shop and can look at the items on the shelves, etc). In some ways, I think the Wii experimenting and succeeding financially in such alternative peripherals bears a significant contribution to this area. The kinect is fantastic, but can we really say it would have existed yet without the Wii? I don't think so. And the kinect itself is being applied to other real world problems that are genuinely amazing. I thank Nintendo for that.
But seriously, take a look at the list they presented:
Wii Sports,Wii Play,Big Brain Academy,Endless Ocean,Wii Fit,Wii Music,Captain Rainbow,Flingsmash,Fortune Street,The Last Story,Pandora's Tower,Magnetica,Maboshi,Art Style series,Lonpos,Bonsai Barber,You Me and the Cubes,Eco Shooter,Line attack heroes,Fluidity,Thruspace,Lego City Undercover,Electroplankton,Elite Beat Agents,Hotel Dusk:Room 215,Master of Illusion,Rhythm Heaven,The Legendary Starfy,Fossil Fighters,Glory of Heracles,Art Academy,Solatorobo:Red the Hunter,Inazuma Eleven,Steel Diver,Spirit Camera:The Cursed Memoir,Freakyforms,"
Even accepting the Wii X titles, because they are wildly popular (though I do continue to argue are along the same lines of a peripheral based IP rather than distinct IPs, but that still accounts for one massively popular new IP), how many of those IPs
for the Wii do you personally vouch for as legitimate mainstream titles? Keep in mind, I don't count Sony or 360 games that fall in the 60's or lower on metacritic either unless sequels were made and scored highly enough to warrant being a well recieved, well liked game. Fortune Street has existed on multiple consoles, such as the original playstation. Art Style is the name that older bit Generations (release on the GBA) titles were re-released as when the Wii and DS came out (people forget this because bit Generations were only released in Japan). Endless ocean -> Everblue (same company, same concept, different game name). Starfy is a GBA title from 2002. Lego City Undercover is part of the Lego franchize. These are legitimate disqualifiers if we're talking about NEW IPs of this generation of consoles. If we allow titles within a decade then some of those titles would apply, like Art Style. But Art style is still just a series of mini-puzzle games and not what we would traditionally call a AAA mainstream game.
Of the list, I place The Last Story, Fluidity, and...? As good examples of new IPs that should continue on. While last story borrows flagrantly from the final fantasy series (including the name... Last Story, Final Fantasy...), it is distinct and new enough that I'd look forward to any sequel. Fluidity is a lot like Loco Roco but is clearly it's own distinct thing otherwise.
For some reason that is beyond me, they did not list Red Steel or No More Heroes. Two new IPs that I believe warrant praise. I'd listed Animal Crossing and Pikmin earlier but I only just realized that both titles were from 2001. Don't know why I thought they were current gen.
I'm not saying Nintendo fails to produce
any new IPs. I'm saying that they are falling behind their competitors and this will come back to haunt them if they don't pick up the pace. New, successful and exclusive IPs are what will prevent them from going the way of Sega. As a Nintendo fan, you should be behind them doing this too. I'm not sure how anyone could lose if Nintendo feels pressured to develop new and exciting IPs. I mean, Sony and Microsoft are both relatively young in this market space. Perhaps they'll suffer from the same issue when they reach Nintendo's video-game industry age. At which point I hope Sony and Microsoft fans can also agree and pressure them to do better. But surely you look at the ps3 and 360 titles and realize that there's not very much comparable on the Wii. Where was the Bioshock, the inFamous, the Little Big Planet of the Wii console? Hopefully the WiiU will usher in things like that. Hopefully Wonderful 101 will be the first of many of those kinds of titles.
I do wonder if Sony should be considered to be an outlier right now because I genuinely don't know how they're pumping out such titles. Maybe teetering so close to the edge (thanks to poor hardware decisions) has pushed them down that road, once again proving that necessity is the mother of invention. But it seems that Microsoft isn't too far behind them if you allow titles shared with the PC but not other consoles.
