Why no love for the Nintendo Wii

[Overusedname]

A lack of marketing of the 20+ amazing third party titles, some of which barely made it over here.

I'm assuming it's mainly that, as objectively it's only problem is lower graphic specs.

 

[BrotherRool]

My younger sisters asked for a Wii for Christmas and I feel really bad about it, because even they have barely touched it since. They're 12 but they already want gaming experiences like inFamous, Little Big Planet, The Sims etc and the Wii has failed to provide anything like that.

I think what the Wii has proved is motion controls are excellent for fun experiences with friends and for newcomers to gaming but it completely failed to establish their effectiveness in producing more expansive deeper experiences.

Look at this list here.

I sure as hell want one. Mostly for the following:

Mostly these:
- Metroid Prime 3
- The Last Story
- Xenoblade Chronicles

But also:
- Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers
- Super Mario Galaxy and 2
- Okami
- No More Heroes 2
- Donkey Kong Country Returns
- Zelda: Skyward Sword
- Kirby's Epic Yarn

More than enough reason to miss a Wii.

Of those, two of them were released on previous gen consoles first, and for the rest I want you to consider this question,

if we forget backwards compatibility would you prefer the game selection on a Gamecube or a Wii?

Because even of the Nintendo first-party games, almost all of them are not preferred to their previous older versions. How many people have claimed that Skyward Sword is the best Zelda game? Almost no-one, everyone knows it's Ocarina of Time.

Is Metroid 3 the best Metroid game? Probably not (Metroid Prime?)
I feel like there aren't many examples of Wii games that are better than their Gamecube, N64, DS alternatives. I can't feel confident that the best Mario game came out on the Wii either. Maybe Donkey Kong Returns would be the closest, maybe it beats out Donkey Kong 64.

The closest would be Kirby's Epic Yarn, but even then we've got Kirby Mass Attack and Kirby Canvas Curse on the DS.


And then of the one's we;ve got left, I reckon only No More Heroes is significantly improved by motion controls.

I'm not saying these games are bad, but I'm saying that motion controls aren't the incredible step up that makes these games better than all that came before them. Rather this was really those games riding on the tails of Nintendo's fantastic IPs, development teams and the groundwork laid by previous normal generations. When the PS1 was released it was amazing and took off and would have taken off if Sony didn't have an IP to it's name. If the Wii wasn't created by Nintendo but was just left to rely on it's design and hardware it would have crashed and burned. The motion controls were good for party experiences but even then, I don't think they would have caught on without the Nintendo brand.

So yeah, I think the Wii failed to prove itself as a step forward in gaming. Even some real Nintendo diehards ended up buying a second console out of necessity. The gamecube wasn't a commercial success, but at least it could claim the dignity of producing some games that still remain some of the best games of all time. The Wii less so. It will be interesting to see if the Wii U is a step forward in gaming or not

EDIT: I would just like to add, that to counter this point it's required to not only show me one version of a game that was best on the Wii but several. The PS3 has Uncharted, Little Big Planet, inFamous 2, Heavy Rain, Gran Turismo 5, Valkyria Chronicles which have all broken compeletely new ground or can be considered the best in their area. The 360 has a similar list. And then if we look at the Everything But Wii exclusives we've got the Mass Effect Franchise, CoD 4 (being ported 2 years after the series has become a billion dollar franchise does not count), Dishonoured, XCom, Fallout 3/New Vegas (which ever side of that line you come down on), GTA IV, Saints Row 2, Dark Souls, Spec Ops, Just Cause 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Dead Space, Biohck, Batman Arkhum Asylum, Assassins Creed 2

Which can all claim to have been the best in their area or the best of their franchise. Also look at the number of new IPs. The Wii hasn't failed as a console, but it's failed to provide even a fraction of the depth of either of the others or the PS2, Gamecube, N64, DS.

 

[BrotherRool]

By Metacritic, of their top all time games (with average scores of 95+) 13 were released on the PS3, 10 on the 360, 6 on the PS2, 4 on the Wii. (Naturally the PC has the most because it spans all console generations)

I will say that the list isn't particularly good, there were lots of games missing and GTA IV is not even close to the best game of all time, but I think we can see the principal that the Wii's library was just way way smaller and less varied

 

[New Frontiersman]

Some people are just really negative, and if you enjoy your Wii you should just ignore them and not pay attention to what they think.

I on the other hand like my Wii, I enjoy the games and even the motion controls.

 

[KiloFox]

I felt it was something of a waste. The motion control aspect only worked really well in very select cases and never, I felt, for an extended gameplay experience. I loved it for things like golf games or bowling in Wii Sports but felt it never added anything to more length and/or traditional gameplay experiences. In short, unless the experience was particularly suited to motion control there was nothing that worked better or felt better than just pressing a button on a traditional controller would have.

I also felt the game selection was weak overall with the strongest options by far being Nintendo's own releases, though even those were few and far between and offered little to no improvement over the state they'd been in for years already. I will admit that in the last year or so of the systems life it has received some decent JRPG support that I would have loved to experience if I still had my Wii but it was far too little too late for me. I happily sold my Wii about 3 years back and have never truly regretted it.

this guy said just about everything i was going to... except i never owned a wii. only use ones my friend owned.

 

[Generic4me]

Why? Because the motion controls can't do something that every other console has done since day 1: Work. A single slight mess up on the controls part ruins the game. You can't make games challenging, because they'll get incredibly frustrating, as the Wiimotes do not recognize your inputs correctly. Every game ends up being a boring cakewalk, with hardly any depth. It's crappy hardware, I feel like I paid most of the money on those stupid motion controls. Most of the third-party games suck, and I refuse to pay for another shitty entry in the incredibly overrated new Mario games.

The worst thing is I can't feel that I paid for an overpriced DVD player, because it can't even do that.

 

[Mullac]

Make sure you avoid the "Wii Family Edition" so as they removed the GC backwards compatibility in that version

Yeah, thanks man. Took me a while to work out how to find the difference but I've got it now.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Well, the motion controls are a bit...how can i put it nicely...flimsy. Often your movements on screen don't correspond to your movements in real life and this makes getting into games really difficult for me. If i don't have complete control over my character then i might aswell have no control at all...or better still not bother using the console and go back to something that does work better.

It's fun when you and your mates are all wankered and put some party game on but other than that it is fairly poor. It was an interesting concept when they first revealed it but it never got anywhere near to living up to the hype. I'm sure if i was 8 years old, however, i would have loved it.

It could be worse though, it could be Kinect

 

[Xman490]

I'm actually probably going to get a Wii this Christmas, mainly just to play Gamecube games but some of the new Wii games as well.

You should get some of the Nintendo Selects games, which are officially $20 at most.

See? That's yet another thing to love about the Wii. Also, there are at least 2 classic game collections along with the Virtual Console. (Granted, they're rather limited and sometimes overpriced.)

 

[shrekfan246]

Just as the title says why do you guys think the Nintendo Wii has no love everybody i know hate's it so much but i love mine so it brings me too the question how do you feel about the Wii?

The Majority of The Escapist Hates (and is not limited to):

Nintendo
Activision
EA
ANY BIG NAME COMPANY BECAUSE BIG NAME COMPANIES ARE THE MAN AND THE MAN ARE ASSHOLES
Bioware
Capitano Segnaposto


This is just what I have observed.


(Please take this with a grain of salt, the majority of this is meant as a jest, while some of it may ring true)

Sounds about right, but you forgot Microsoft/Sony/Blizzard (who are so bad that they get to be separated from Activision, not unlike Bioware).

OT: Well, it could have something to do with Reggie Fils-Aime putting on an Epic Troll Face and saying "Problem, US?" when we wanted action-RPGs localized and released (two of the three already were being localized for PAL regions anyway). It could have something to do with the games that were actually good on the system having utterly no marketing whatsoever. It could have something to do with motion controls being finicky at the best of times. But I'm just throwing out a few ideas, here.

 

[OrokuSaki]

Well I have a Wii and I use it fairly regularly........ to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl...... with a gamecube controller.

I think that what really turned me off about the system was the motion controls, I tried to play a few of the games, but the wiimote never read my actions properly. And most of the decent games for it (Such as No More Heroes, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, SSBB, etc.) either came out for other consoles (with a better control system and graphical upgrades) or allowed players to use a gamecube controller.

Zelda might be an exception, but I've never liked Zelda, it's about a mute who kills a warlock who somehow survived being killed in every game since its initial debut.

 

[saleem]

I have a Wii and a 360, I tend to use the 360 more as a media centre and the wii to play games. Having bought the Wii at the end of its lifespan I found there to be more then enough games on it and thats not including the stuff available for the VC.

Games that focused on using the wiimote as a screen pointer such as Metroid Prime 3 and other FPS titles tend to be alot worse then games where the motion controls were used in a more gesture capacity. I really enjoyed playing Thor on the Wii alot more then the xbox version that was pretty lame. Spiderman Friend or Foe is another one that played a lot nicer then the Xbox version.

Too many games for the Wii used the motion tracking as a pointer and too many devs seemed to be preoccupied with using them as a pointer instead of considering the advantages of gesture controls instead.

Overall there are actually a lot of fun titles out there for the Wii, you just have to know what to look for.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I agree with the third-party support problem; the Wii was so different hardware wise from the other two consoles that it would have been a whole different development process; and publishers don't exactly want to spend that extra coin, so apart from the Nintendo exclusives (not everyone's a Nintendo fan) and a few lucky strikes (Resident Evil 4 et al), we just ended up with sub-par ports and shovelware, to say nothing of some of the more poorly put together casual games.

If yer going to try and appeal to a casual crowd, at least put some damn effort in to it; same problem with Kinect, dancing around like a tit is fun for a session or two, but there's nowhere to go from then, and as such there's not much reason to hold on to it; just seem like wasted opportunities.

 

[Epona]

Just as the title says why do you guys think the Nintendo Wii has no love everybody i know hate's it so much but i love mine so it brings me too the question how do you feel about the Wii?

Why no love for punctuation? Let me make it readable it so I can answer it:

Just as the title says; Why do you guys think the Nintendo Wii has no love? Everybody I know hates it so much but I love mine. So, it brings me to the question; How do you feel about the Wii?

I think the Wii is great for playing SNES and N64 games, not much more though.

 

[Lugbzurg]

One thing that majorly hurt it was that Nintendo tried to focus on the "kiddie-casual" crowd, and ignored their traditional fanbase that had been with them for decades. This earned them their first annual loss. They acknowledged their mistake, and have promised to bring more of a focus to the mature crowd that loves them so. In fact, it looks like Nintendo will be publishing and developing more M-rated games on the Wii U than those of all of their previous consoles combined.

After all, They've got ahold of Beyonetta 2, Miyamoto has expressed interest in making a first-person shooter (no way to tell if it's anything M-rated yet, but this certainly isn't something childish, to say the least), and I'm not certain about this, but I think Nintendo might be buying the Banjo-Kazooie (pretty much E-rated stuff here) and Conker IPs from RareWare/Microsoft. Not RareWare as a whole, but just these two franchises. More likely than not, if they are indeed doing this, Retro Studios would probably take command.

 

[Epona]

One thing that majorly hurt it was that Nintendo tried to focus on the "kiddie-casual" crowd, and ignored their traditional fanbase that had been with them for decades. This earned them their first annual loss. They acknowledged their mistake, and have promised to bring more of a focus to the mature crowd that loves them so. In fact, it looks like Nintendo will be publishing and developing more M-rated games on the Wii U than those of all of their previous consoles combined.

After all, They've got ahold of Beyonetta 2, Miyamoto has expressed interest in making a first-person shooter (no way to tell if it's anything M-rated yet, but this certainly isn't something childish, to say the least), and I'm not certain about this, but I think Nintendo might be buying the Banjo-Kazooie (pretty much E-rated stuff here) and Conker IPs from RareWare/Microsoft. Not RareWare as a whole, but just these two franchises. More likely than not, if they are indeed doing this, Retro Studios would probably take command.

Nintendo has always been more kiddie than it's competition. That didn't start with the Wii. You can think back to the Mortal Kombat controversy on the SNES and the Genesis but even before that Nintendo has always tried to keep anything they consider "adult" out of games released in the US. Don't know about Europe but in Japan where a game might show a church, Nintendo would censor it for the US to show a school instead. Nudity was the same way, I think there was some nudity in Final Fantasy VI that got censored for the US and then the nudity was put back into the game when it was re-released on the PS1.