QotD: Wii to Fail?
Posted September 22nd, 2006 @ 09:26am by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: Will the Wii fail with dedicated gamers?
My Answer: Some at slashdot seem to think so. I don't. I think, as one of the early posters said, that gamers want a break from the same-old. Combined with the new appeal the Wii will have with non-gamers (read: my wife and others like her), and I think Nintendo is on to something.
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Posted 22 Sep 2006 at 10:31am #
It will absolutely fail with "dedicated gamers". I define a dedicated gamer as playing FPShooters or RPGs for 10+ hours a week. They want shooters and RPGs that are prettier, and more graphics intensive. They got it on the PS2, and now the XBox 360. But that's not the market Nintendo is after.
I'm an "older, mature" gamer, and I think a tennis game with the Wii controller will be cool as hell. I don't play that many hours a week (in fact, I'm getting a Wii on launch day, but waiting until Christmas, which is after finals, to get any games; I'll just play my Gamecube games on it), but I've got a ton of disposable income, and the prospect of a new way to play games is intriguing.
Nintendo is targeting me, part of the other 95% of the gaming market with this: innovative games, with a natural way to control your actions in the game. I mean, pointing at things? How much more natural does it get?
Who cares if it fails with the dedicated gamers? They're not speaking for the majority of what people want.
Posted 22 Sep 2006 at 1:42pm #
i think the Wii will initially fail to the tiny little niche market of "too cool for school" gamers. those hardcore retards that really dont like having any fun, and care more about their reputation of "hardcore"
then a few months will pass, the whole world will be having a blast, and that niche market will sheepishly come around.
that's my prediction. ...assuming, of course, that the Wii is as good as it looks, and Works-As-Intended&tm;
Posted 22 Sep 2006 at 5:57pm #
I'm not sure why everyone thinks it's going to fail. It's no technical prodigy, but it is everything what the Revolution would have been even without sensors and Wiimotes; better than the Gamecube any way you slice it, Virtual Console and way better connectivity, network and "beyond gaming" solutions out of the box.
There's a group of people who won't buy anything remotely Nintendo-like because of it being "for kids" (read: the games don't have enough blood in them, except for Resident Evil, which doesn't count because it's on a Nintendo console, which as we just have established is for kids) and I wouldn't be surprised if they turned the Wii down as well, but that group is not "hardcore gamers". I'd call that group "asshats", but that's just my phrase.
Christopher's definition of dedicated gamers as gamers who care about graphics seems odd: if you were playing for 10+ hours per week, you'd be sure to appreciate qualities beyond just graphics much more than the more casual gamer, and let's face it, graphics is where the Wii really loses out to its competition. I agree that Nintendo will not be *after* those guys specifically, but I don't see why they'd have a big disadvantage in trying to capture them.
Additionally, the Wiimote and nunchuck seems to make a much more "keyboard-and-mouse" like approach possible (aka the Metroid Expert mode) so I would be surprised to see those people shy away from the console because of a lack of good FPS games.
Posted 22 Sep 2006 at 6:18pm #
Well put, Jesper. I think the Wii has the potential to be incredible.
Posted 24 Sep 2006 at 4:22pm #
I'm with Christopher. We've been waiting for a console box that will have games that we can play as a family (or in "teams" of 2) that aren't all kill-everything-that-moves type and the Wii looks like exactly what we want. We're going to pre-order locally it the second we can.
"Dedicated gamers" who spend $5,000 on a desktop PC just to play games and are looking for a console game for the other 10 minutes in their life aren't going to go for this, and I don't care. I don't think Nintendo should either.