So, as you might know by now, Wii sales aren't doing so hot. The former champ of the console world has seen sales cut in half, thanks to a crappy economy and price cuts from competitors that offer a better deal. But even though a Wii pirce cut is planned for the end of the month, I can't help but wonder if it's too little, too late. No, the Wii isn't going to drop off the face of the Earth or anything, but I think it might just fade from our collective consciousness under a barrage of Xbox 360, PS3 and PC titles, to the point that it doesn't even exist in a mental sense. It sounds dumb, but it could really easily happen: how many people forgot the Gamecube was around when the PS2 and Xbox were dominating the scene, for example?

Such a set-up would essentially make the Wii another Dreamcast, except I don't expect it would kill Nintendo, just change their plans immensely for the next generation of consoles. But how exactly would something like this come about? To do that, we have to look at what makes the Wii so dismissed by core gamers right now, the same people who abandoned and later reunited with the Dreamcast.

Some will say it's all about graphics. Well, that plays a part, yes, but the PS2 was the least powerful of all three consoles last generation (meaning Gamecbue power > PS2 power) and yet we got titles like Final Fantasy XII, God of War and Shadow of the Colossus that were absolutely gorgeous and kicked the crap out of most of the Gamecube and Xbox libraries. Considering the Wii is more powerful than the Gamecube was — though the two share some parts — there is no reason so many Wii games look awful other than total laziness on the part of third party developers who want a quick buck with a PS2 or Xbox port to the Wii. That also explains the immense amount of shit shovelware on Nintendo's little console.

Some say its "the forced waggle" the Wii remote brings. Yes, Nintendo has motion controls at the forefront of their mind in development, but they are NOT forcing anyone to use waggle or the pointer or any other special features if they choose not to. And waggle or not, there are plenty of good games on the system.

That of course, brings me to the last thing people say: the library sucks. There are no good Wii games except Nintendo's. And to those people, I still simply ask them to open their eyes: Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy, The Conduit, De Blob, Elebits, Kororinpa: Marble Mania, Let's Tap, MadWorld, No More Heroes, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure. None of these games are awful and yet they all still sell poorly. The Dreamcast at times suffered from this same problem, yet today we find so many quality Dreamcast games that were passed over by the majority of the console's owners in its lifetime.

While it's not the exact same set-up as the Dreamcast's fall (we're not talking about cheap DVD players here), the story is more than a little bit similar: Console debuts and revolutionizes the gaming world. Console jumps out to huge success. Rival consoles quickly dwarf it and kill sales. Except this time, it's the future motion controls, the digital marketplaces and the online multiplayer capabilites of the PS3 and Xbox 360 that are ultimately going to put the Wii in a bad, bad place. If Nintendo can't come out with a more powerful and still relatively inexpensive Wii, then it's doomed to fall off the radar as Natal and the PS3 Wand deliver what the Wii remote does, just with a shinier package and the ability to play with friends all over the world easily. It's bad news for Nintendo and likely to make their next console much more traditional. While that's good on the graphics end, a non-innovative Nintendo is bad for the industry, as they are one of the few major innovators left.

In 10 years, I would expect that like the Dreamcast, the Wii will have a renaissance of sorts among collectors who start picking up some of the above mentioned titles out of bargain bins at their used game shops. They'll sit around and wonder why the console never caught on and had a massive drop-off in sales in 2010, while Nintendo survived and put out a PS3-like console as its replacement. And they'll never remember that a total lack of support from them and from developers was the reason the Wii became a classic console like the Dreamcast. Except this time, they can't say they could never afford it as an excuse.