If it makes Summa feel like a Real Man to bash the Wii and prop up the PS3 all the time, as much as I don't really care for it, I'm all for giving the man his moments of ego-stroking, if only as a side-effect. If he needs it that badly, let's let him have his moments of self-deluded triumph. Weirdly, I alternate between hating it and wanting him to just stop altogether, and morbidly loving it and wanting him to keep doing it forever. Mostly, though, I just use it as a lame excuse to write my own blatantly outlandish fanboy rantings, such that they don't look quite as blatantly outlandish when compared to Summa's own posts. You know, it's the whole "Well, he started it!" mindset and such. It's a guilty pleasure, I freely admit. It's not that I'm writing my whatsits purely for Summa's benefit though, as much as for the benefit of those poor unfortunate few who may have somehow been suckered in by his World Famous status as a supposedly "serious journalist", as if he were speaking the gospel truth and not just spouting his own fanboy opinion on the subject over and over.

In all seriousness, the Wii and Nintendo are not perfect, shining paragons of the gaming industry. Duh. This has been said hundreds of times. However, the Wii and Nintendo are also not Satan incarnate. This has also been said hundreds of times. Take these two statements and replace "Wii" with either "PS3" or "Xbox360" and "Nintendo" with either "Sony" or "Microsoft" and they are equally valid.

"will it still be popular in 2 years?. No way. You can use any metric you want, sales, advertising, comments, whatever it pleases you. Sales and popularity is steadily dropping since xmas launch."

What planet are you living on my friend?

The Wii was just named CNETs #1 must have item. Consumer interest in Wii is double and triple that of 360 and PS3 at the same time in their respective launches and it's RISING.

From Next Gen Biz

"The results of PriceGrabbers’ study showed that despite rising by 127% in the six weeks since launch, searches for PlayStation 3 are less rife than they were for Wii and Xbox 360 consoles during their respective post-launch periods. In the same post-launch period, Wii searches increased by 579% while Xbox console searches increased by 250%.."

I think you're the one that needs to face reality. I can't speak to 2 years from now, maybe the Wii will fall flat, but it's certainly not happening now, in fact, it's just the opposite.

As for Mandelbaum123, you have some great observations, don't let haters like azrael tell you otherwise.

@ IMOK,

Thanks for posting that. You've put into words successfully what I attempt to do failingly.

Oh and BTW, the Wii is selling very well... but the Wii software is NOT (outside of Japan). People who buy the Wii, stay with either Wii Sports or Zelda (I Wonder why? oh yeah because other games are basically crap and ps2 ports). While that keeps going, expect the Wii drought to extend to kingdom come (developers are not stupid they know they cant compete with Nintendo unless they have a good (children) license or a port). The only game that has reached the top 5 status is "Wii play" and thats mostly because it has a Wiimote. (so you can actually consider that a hardware sale)

"the Wii is selling very well... but the Wii software is NOT (outside of Japan)"

First, Japan is the only territory where we have really accurate software sales so that's nice that you choose not to include them in your comment, but seriously, do you even READ software sales charts? Smooth moves is selling great, so is Super Paper Mario. And it's not just Nintendo software either. Tiger woods is selling well both in the US and in Europe. Speaking of EA, Godfather blackhand is selling well in Europe too. Also, lets talk about PS3 software and I'll even include japan. Where is your comment about that? Exactly.

Well when the DS came out it did seem rather gimmicky but it took off like crazy, it does have the advantage of being a portable though, if your game bombs the invesment isn't as heavy as a console game that bombs.

At this point I feel the Wii is just a fad, its got a cheap price point and an easy to pick up controller but the "innovation" aspect of it gets old pretty fast, I feel the Wiimote will end up hindering Nintendo in the end, it already is as Nintendo is not getting a proper RE5 but rather an on rails shooter.

Add to that the horrible friend code system, Nintendo being unfriendly to 3rd parties(as usual) and the massive drought of titles that the 64, GC and the Wii has and you got the same shitcake Nintendo offered you 5 years ago, it just smells different now.

Best thing I did was wait till the GC was dead, I picked it up for 60 bucks and about 20 of its best titles and didn't spend more than 400 bucks, I'll do the same for the Wii.

Someone should make a Fifty Mario post or something. They do kind of look alike, after all.

Oh, wait, never mind. I forgot that Mario was a Communist, not a Nazi. And he does look more like Stalin than Hitler.

(Invoking Godwin's Variation is the new STFUAJPG.)

Azrael makes me make this face. :(

Seriously though. We get that you hate the system, and Nintendo raped your mother. I understand that. But why must everything out of your mouth make it seem like everyone else in the world is the same way?

Like was said before, Smooth Moves, Wii Play, Super Paper Mario, Rayman, Zelda, and others are selling phenomonally. Where's the evidence otherwise?

-> Azrael: Yeah, you're right. No third party devs ever make games for nintendo consoles. I forgot that the DS is actually a figment of our collective imaginations. And in regards to the eternal drought, refer back to my last post. If more than half of those games suck, I will eat my wii.

-> kyosuke: It's really not suprising RE5 won't be on the wii. Expect the vast majority of those big name games appear only on those beefier consoles. Pretty much all the most popular non-nintendo franchises are "mature", and their target audience fits in very nicely with that of the 360 and ps3. I for one don't give a rats ass. Original content far surpasses endless rehashes in my book.

"If a god damn cooking game sells more copies than a 20 million dollars sci-fi Action RPG I hope you like chopping vegetables."

...If it does, wouldnt it mean that we do?

Damnit DrRockso,

You beat me to it! Well done.

Also, to whoever said it above, I totally agree. Control advancement is more a sign of a sophisticated console than a graphics update. I personally think the Wii and it's audience is far more sophisticated than the 360 or even PS3 audience. The PS3 does have a higher lever of sophistication with Blu-Ray too though. The 360 I see as being the most unsophisticated. It will forever be the home of games like Gear, crackdown, halo, etc. Big burly guys weilding guns, winning against massively outnumbering enemies. I mostly grew out of that fetish when I was in my late teens.

You see, subnet6 is the perfect example of the annoying Holier-than-thou Nintendo fanboy I was talking about. I couldn't have hoped for a better specimen. Sophistication eh? For crying out loud...

"That doesn't mean I have to be happy about it."

No one said you had to be. There's still going to be that 20 million dollar, 4 year wait sci-fi action RPG for you, but when people say that someone who would rather play that cooking game than that shooter is immature, it rubs me the wrong way.

Heh. Some named 'aborto the fetus' calling Link creepy.

@Mr. Green,

How am I "holier than thou"? Please explain. Does having an opinion make me holier than thou? Or just disagreeing with you? Maybe it's because I don't think much of shooters on consoles?

I personally see controls as more related to hardware sophistication than graphics. I'm not the one who brought it up, I was simply commenting on what someone else brought up. No where was I intending to insult you. Did you feel insulted? I'm guessing you did, since you seem to be attempting to return an insult.

@brad drac,

"You pigfucking assraped cockloving cuntmuffin!"

Um, hey....that's pretty solid, can I use it?

@subnet6, Fun is completely relative, the SIMS is a cash cow for EA, but I will never enjoy that horrible game.

Also, I wouldn't call the Wiimote a more "sophisticated" control scheme. The wiimote is an original idea with some serious potential, however having this original control scheme can be problematic. Personally, I would never play Street Fighter/Tekken/VF5, Call of Duty 3 (I was dumb enough to buy this for the Wii), or any competitive game with the Wiimote. The motions, while immersive, are far too inaccurate and cumbersome to play a game at a high level.

For what it's worth, I own all 3 systems, consider the PS3 most likely to succeed in the long run, but I play the 360 the most by far. I fire up the Wii to relive some VC titles on occassion, but thats about it.

@MrGreen

The only ones who I have ever seen saying that technology is mutually exclusive to fun games are those who are attempting to put those words into the mouths of Nintendo fans. I don't know of any one who has seriously tried to claim that the PS3 or Xbox360 is incapable of good games because they're high-tech. And I will be the first to say that anyone who does say this is completely retarded and doesn't know what they're talking about. What most of us are saying, however, is that you don't NEED cutting-edge hardware to prevent a game from innately sucking. I've heard plenty of Sony fanboys say that any given game on the Wii is, inherently, inferior to one on their beloved console of choice, because the PS3 has teh uber grafix, and the Wii doesn't. Like some who have said, for instance, that certain games (e.g. Super Mario Galaxy) aren't "next gen" enough, because they aren't on the PS3 instead of the Wii, and thus are inferior. It's that which I call bullshit.

Im OK: "I don't know of any one who has seriously tried to claim that the PS3 or Xbox360 is incapable of good games because they're high-tech."

I've seen plenty of people argue that high-tech is bad because it makes development costs too high, and game design suffers, companies don't make profit, doom and gloom, etc.

You're under the assumption that there is low-tech and high-tech, and nothing in between. My beef with the Wii isn't that it's underpowered and lacking in features, it's that it is so underpowered and requires you to buy all kinds of stuff seperately, including other controllers. Could Nintendo have done better? Sure. But, all they have to do is whine about profits, and legions of fanboys go out of their way to say that dev costs are too high, and paying high prices for minigames is a good thing.

To me, it's about effort. No matter what Nintendo does with the controller, it's obvious they've put practically no effort at all into the rest of the system, and that does send a very bad message to the whole industry.

I have to buy a seperate controller to play downloadable games, and use a last-gen controller to play old games? Why? Isn't the Wii remote good enough? If Nintendo is making so much profit on the hardware, why are video cables $30? Shouldn't people expect cheaper prices on the accessories?

What about quality? I don't care about HD resolutions and billions of polygons, because that's an issue of quantity. But, SDTV resolutions and no anti-aliasing? There's only 3MB of texture memory? Those are quality issues. Budget PC hardware can outperform the Wii substantially. There's a difference between bowling people over with features, and doing what you can do well. Apparently, Nintendo doesn't care about either features or quality. Hey, folks, look at that motion sensor -- nothing else matters!

One feature overshadows all other limitations. Just use a gimmick and the community will support you 200% because they want to feel that it's a good idea, whether it is or not. Ten years from now, I doubt people will have such fond memories of the Wii. But, Nintendo will have made their billions by then, and will be hard at work trying to invent the next, big, single feature to hide the mediocrity of the rest of the system.

So long as Nintendo fanboys keep telling me "graphics don't matter" instead of "graphics aren't as important as gameplay", then I will say that your assesment is wrong, Im OK.

The community is going out of their way to justify mediocrity because the Wii is an idealism, or they simply have fallen prey to marketting and have no clue what they should expect this day and age. That's the advantage of going after the casual market (or as we used to call it years ago, the mass market). Casual markets don't follow up on current events and can be sold the same stuff over and over again in new packaging -- with only one or two major features to draw attention, of course.

Everything is about image. It's very, very hard for interface designers like me to watch products like this sell so well, because it just proves that my job is worthless, and that fancy packaging will always sell a product, and actually make people feel good about their purchase. Functional design is never as important as image and aesthetics.

Think about it. People buy a game, they play it for one day, and then all they can talk about is the next big game that's coming out. Shouldn't a game give you at least a few weeks of entertainment? Why are the games so damn disposable? That's why gimmicks are bad.

I've seen plenty of people argue that high-tech is bad because it makes development costs too high, and game design suffers, companies don't make profit, doom and gloom, etc.

Actually, I have heard this, but it was in a more general sense, and wasn't specifically in relation to how one console compares to the other. I personally don't agree with it, at any rate. It's not the technology that's driving up costs or hurting design, or at least it's not the technology alone or even primarily. The way these huge publishers and giant dev studios are choosing to run their companies is a big part of it. Big companies tend to think that throwing more people and money at production is going to make it all better, but that's just not always, or even usually, the case. And any money they spend is going to be foisted off on the consumer. Someone has to pay the managers' salaries, after all.

You're under the assumption that there is low-tech and high-tech, and nothing in between.

I'm under no such assumption. Not sure where you got that from. I'm not one of the ones who is claiming that the Wii sucks and that the PS3 is God. As I've said plenty of time before, and as I'll probably say plenty of times in the future, they all have their high points and low points. It's definitely not black and white. It is the "Wii is low-tech therefore sucks and PS3 is high-tech therefore awesome" types with whom I am disagreeing.

What about quality? I don't care about HD resolutions and billions of polygons, because that's an issue of quantity. But, SDTV resolutions and no anti-aliasing? There's only 3MB of texture memory? Those are quality issues.

If there is one thing that has forever bored me to tears when it comes to the console wars, it is the rattling off of system specs as though they matter. I, personally, don't care if the Wii only has 3MB of texture memory, any more than I care that the PS3 has... whatever. Blu-ray or something, I guess. I can't be assed enough to look up some random stat about the PS3 at the moment, because I don't care. I still have fun with the Wii, and that's all that really matters to me, no matter how much or little texture memory it may have or whatever. *shrug* YMMV.

Ten years from now, I doubt people will have such fond memories of the Wii. But, Nintendo will have made their billions by then, and will be hard at work trying to invent the next, big, single feature to hide the mediocrity of the rest of the system.

Yet more useless speculation, the likes of which I've seen too much of lately. I could just as easily predict that ten years from now, people won't have such fond memories of the PS3, and that Sony will be hard at work trying to trojan horse the next big video format change in with the PS4 to grossly bloat the price, and it would be just as pointless. (I'm not predicting that, by the way, any more than I'm going to make any kind of speculation about the Wii either.)

So long as Nintendo fanboys keep telling me "graphics don't matter" instead of "graphics aren't as important as gameplay", then I will say that your assesment is wrong, Im OK.

You're tired of the "graphics don't matter" spiel from Nintendo fanboys (and, yes, there are those who spout this), and I'm tired of the "graphics are what matter most" spiel from Sony fanboys (which I've heard ad nauseam). They're both just a lot of hot air, in any case. As for me, I am not saying that "graphics don't matter" and have indeed been saying that "graphics aren't as important as gameplay". Or at least that is what I have been intending, anyway. If I've ever said "graphics don't matter" myself, then I was misspeaking. Obviously, if you can have both good graphics and good gameplay, that's awesome. However, you don't have to have good graphics to have a good game, but a game without good gameplay isn't worth playing at all, no matter how pretty it looks. At least, I wouldn't want to play such a game, at any rate. Hell, I know I'm weird, but some of the better games that I've played recently have been text games, with no graphics at all.

The community is going out of their way to justify mediocrity because the Wii is an idealism, or they simply have fallen prey to marketting and have no clue what they should expect this day and age.

Wait. Okay, let me get this straight. So, because I like the Wii, this means that I'm "justifying mediocrity", or I've "fallen prey to marketing", or I "have no clue what to expect"? I like the Wii, which means I obviously screwed up somehow? I'm just a sheep with no will of my own, because I've been brainwashed by Nintendo into liking the Wii, when any clear-headed individual would obviously be shunning the damn thing? Liking the Wii is something only those clueless "casual gamers" are doing because they're being duped, and knowledgeable "hardcore gamers" should know better? Sure. Whatever you say. Can't argue with that. Well, I probably could argue with that, but I don't see the point in doing so. Should I be disappointed because the PS3 isn't a holodeck yet? I don't know what to expect this day and age, after all.

Everything is about image.

I agree.

Think about it. People buy a game, they play it for one day, and then all they can talk about is the next big game that's coming out. Shouldn't a game give you at least a few weeks of entertainment? Why are the games so damn disposable?

And this only applies to the Wii and doesn't also apply to the PS3 and 360.... how? Not sure you're actually implying that or not, but this is a Summa Wii-hate thread after all, where people tend to polarize to one side or the other, but still, one can't be too careful here. Hell, for what it's worth I still haven't fully finished Super Paper Mario yet, and I'm still having a blast with it. It's been longer than a day, to be sure. Yeah, sure, I'm also looking forward to other games that are coming, for the 360 as well as the Wii, but I'm not done with this one yet.

Hopefully, all of that was at least semi-coherent. If not, just blame lack of sleep. *heads off to bed*

Summa can troll like none other. Bravo to you sir.

Some of you guys have WAY too much time on your hands, or maybe I'm just envious? Anyway, I love you all. Yes, even you Subnet! You all make good points and in the end each system is worth playing and we're all gaming nerds so let's all just agree that games are fun, that different people have different tastes and let's hug each other to celebrate our love for games!

Or you can all just go fuck yourselves... your call. ;)

@brad drac,

STFU man, I hate every other system besides the Wii. Don't speak for me, you, you, YOU OTHER-SYSTEM-BESIDES-THE-WII-APOLOGIST!

And if I DID love my PS2 and original XBOX (and the over 60 combined games I have for them), that would NOT mean I love the Wii any less.

If I had a son and he was in the street and so was the Wii and a car was coming fast I would save the Wii. I mean shit, I can always have another kid right? Right.

MANDLEBAUM123 - "One guy thinks digg or gaming sites are indicative of the populus, another thinks going for the widest group of people is carving out a niche, and another thinks nintendo's strategy has backfired because his dad hasn't played it. We're surrounded by idiots."

Digg is a cultural barameter. Gaming sites are populated by people interested and informed in the field. A "niche" can also be defined as apecialized market. (not necessarily a smaller consumer base). And the guy was giving a personal example to highlight a point of view.
In conclusion, yes, WE are surrounded by idiots.

-> RICHARD BLOCKER!!!!: Digg is a cultural barometer... of people who actually use digg. I'd say a fairly decent portion of the folks who use it also game. Furthermore, I'm willing to wager most of the people who go to the trouble of digging things to do with gaming are gamers themselves.
In conclusion, yes, WE are surrounded by idiots.