The Wii controller is great as a pointer. Much better than a joystick. I wouldn’t be surprised if games take advantage of that.
Tiger Woods is scheduled soon for a Wii release as I recall, so there’s your full-on golf game. Guitar Hero is coming as well I hear. And DDR.
As far as “winning” goes, in some sense Nintendo has already won simply by outperforming expectations. Things had been trending down for them for a while, and they certainly seem to have broken through that. I don’t know if they will end up outselling the other consoles over the next few years, but it is at least an open question, which is more than most were predicting. It looks like there won’t be a dominant system like the PS2.
I’m really surprised at the persistence of the demand for the Wii. I’ve been casually looking for a second nunchuk since launch and I’ve still never found one.
In the computer classes I teach, I do final projects instead of exams.
So on exam day, I bring in my Jakk’s pacific TVGames, the ones that have the old Atari console games loaded right in the old paddle controller.
For two years now, my students have sat and played Warlords, both arcade and console versions,ith a little Pong (and variants), Night Driver, Adventure, and Circus Atari (the one with the seesaw and the clowns and balloons) thrown in.
The graphics on all these games, by today’s standards, is beyond abysmal. And these kids played these games for two hours straight.
Gameplay is king, in the end.
Indeed it is. LOTs of people DL emulators and ROMs for old NES games, and not just for nostalgic reasons. The HS kids I teach are hardly old enough to remember S-NES and still, they happily play Mario and Sonic.
Nintendo has discovered something the radio station industry has known for quite some time (I usedto work as a PD): We win the ratings game by playing music for people not interested in music.
Those that are truly interested and love music with a passion, are a minority. Catering to one of these minorities (e.g. 90’s rock fans) will alienate another group, eventually dividing the audience in even smaller shares, making it hard to turn a profit. Really big cities might support these speciality stations (as does digital nationwide radio). But once you drop below a certain number, there simply aren’t enough listeners.
Nintendo decided to go after people who don’t play videogames.
Well sure, if I get given the chance I will play old school games like mario and loadrunner on an emulator and occasionally i will do it for hours. But would I go out and scour the stores looking for a nintendo and subsequently buy it? No.
**E-Sabbath ** (or anyone else for that matter), I read about how the ps3 controller didnt have the rumble effect in it, but I never read why it didnt have it. So, why? And why won’t it ever have the rumble effect? Seems like a regression to me if anything. I’m surprised that they would drop it.
Lucasfilm has no plans for a Wii Star Wars game as of yet, but that doesn’t mean there will never be one…hopefully.
Wii-lated note: Repairs in 30 minutes or your pizza’s free! Or something like that. More proof Nintendo kicks ass.
Lawsuit over a patent, basically. They lost.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8499
And since it’s not on the core system…
Oh, and Mobo? They don’t plan on a port. I think they’re not stupid, though.
Well, at least the part about removing rumble is easy to answer - the ps3 six-axis controller can detect motion similar to a Wii controller (in six different axis obviously, don’t ask me which ones though) … apparently rumbling affects the motion detection so they simply removed it. Not a smart move in my opinion, since the controller design is the same as a ps2 duelshock and it’s never meant to be flinged around like a wiimote.
I think there are some real problems with the Wii remote, which are apparent in Zelda and the FPS games so far released. It seems that the IR sensor in the remote can only “see” the IR bar within a fairly narrow cone. Point too far away from the IR bar and it suddenly stops responding to your movements. You have to point back at the bar to regain control.
This is pretty frustrating in the thick of the action, and I don’t see how they can fix it. I think it’s telling that they don’t use the IR sensor at all in Wii Sports.
I can only think of six possible axes, or rather two types of movement on 3 axes.
Pitching and side acceleration on the horizontal axis, yaw and vertical acceleration on the vertical axis, and roll and forward/backward acceleration on the longitudinal axis. Or perhaps they have a different idea of “axis.”
I doubt you “hurt yourself”. You probably just got sore.
What you’re describing is just shadow-boxing, and boxers do it endlessly in the gym.
If you do it *one *day, you can/will/should be sore the next day. It puts a bit of a strain on your ligaments. But, it’s not soreness that one shouldn’t expect through any kind of exercise.
I’ve never played or seen the game in real life, but the boxing videos I’ve seen on youTube show people kind of punching endlessly in “circles” (the arm moving like the arm on a piston). Probably less of a strain.
Yet another voice chiming in to say that the Wii will continue to do well. Like a lot of other people, I don’t care if it can play DVDs or CDs. I already own a DVD player and a CD player. When I buy a video game system, the only thing I demand that it play is video games. Anything else (CDs and DVDs) is fluff.
I would also protest the “importance” of graphics. Don’t get me wrong, if the graphics are good, it’s a definite plus. It just isn’t the most important thing. I mean, if a game is fun and has NES level graphics, it’s still fun. That’s part of why companies still re-release old games. Sure there’s a nostalgia element to playing Sonic the Hedgehog, but that isn’t the whole story. Whether the graphics are flashy or not, the game is fun.
The cost is also a big factor. Nintendo is offering a good console cheaper than the other guys, and that counts for a lot to a lot of people. I know people who jumped at the chance to buy Wiis but are holding off on PS3s entirely because of the price. Spending $600 on a video game system is a lot harder to justify than spending $250 (or even $100 or so more on eBay.)
Nintendo has all this stuff on its side (as well as the usual lineup of excellent first party series.) I don’t see excitement about the Wii dying down quickly.
Jamus, the Wiimote has the same (if not better) six axis perception and rumble. It’s the lawsuit issue, I’m as sure as someone who doesn’t work for Sony can be.
By the way, it is possible to build fake sensor bars, or make yours wireless.
I’ve had the Wii for a week now, and I love it. It was a bundle pack with an extra remote and nunchuk and four additional games.
I love the tennis game, and it feels pretty real, but I’m dying for an even more physics-accurate one. Still, the tennis game surprises me. I don’t just flick my wrist, though. I do a full tennis swing when I play, turn side to side, hop around the room. I wear myself out playing.
(BTW, I pulled a muscle in my leg bowling, which is doubly embarrassing because I run regularly.)
For the most part, it’s the controls on any system that determines its success or failure. It’s the one part of the game system that people directly interact with. You don’t hear non-gamers saying, “I don’t play video games because I don’t like how the graphics look.” They’re saying, “Those things are too hard to control.” The Wii remote fixed that problem.
Haha! I think it’s frikkin’ awesome that people are hurting themselves playing video games (no, I don’t mean it condescendingly). I read about a report that was made on the medical benefits of playing with your wii (as someone has already said: no pun intended). Apparently one can lose about 12 kg a year playing with a Wii. The research group was quite small, but it’s still pretty impressive.
Just my .02 on everything…
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The Wiimote is not a gimmick as long as the developers continue to take it seriously and develop for it as the unique control interface that it is rather than as a wacky gimmick. The DS’s touchscreen and microphone system is a similiarly unique interface, and developers have been split almost 50/50; half of them realize what a unique interface it is and develop games like “Hotel Dusk” and “Elite Beat Agents,” giving us brand-new gaming experiences, while others make completely normal D-pad and button-driven games and use it as a gimmick (tap the touch screen to feed mario a mushroom!). As long as people strive for uniqueness - which is what the Wii has going for it - we’ll see great game experiences.
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No matter how much nerds don’t want to admit it, graphics have reached a point of diminishing returns; the difference between the PS2 and PS3 and Xbox and Xbox 360 is nowhere near as great as the difference between the PS1 and the PS2, and so on. It’s a slight upgrade at best, and requires an HDTV to really even be that noticeable. The Wii doesn’t need to be a graphical powerhouse in an age where the PS2’s just-released Rogue Galaxy is one of the best-looking games on the market.
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The Virtual Console on the Wii is awesome, but they really need to do something about the pricing structure; it’s uneven and doesn’t really make sense. $8 each is pretty steep for crappy first-generation Genesis and Turbografx 16 games, and $5 for abhorrent first-generation NES games like “Tennis” is indefensible. But then other games are a great bargain; I downloaded “Super Mario 64” for only $10, whereas I could have bought it for my DS for $30. Likewise, “Super Mario World” (SNES) is only a $6 download, whereas the gameboy advance version is $20. It’s obviously a weird and uneven pricing game that they need to do something about. One suggestion I’ve heard is allowing gamers to “earn” Wii points for each real game that they buy, that they can then use in the Wii store.
It shore is fun to play with. The people who I know who have the thing are almost treating it like a pet, rather than a toy or an appliance. That’s pure Nintendo.
Also, the basic Wii interface is freaky intuitive- specifically the slight vibrating tactile feedback you get when you point at a selectable item with the wand remote. It just feels right.
I can’t wait to see the Tiger Woods golf game.
Well, that was their claim anyway… I know that the wiimote can do the everything and rumble, but I just took it as a sign that Sony put the feature together in a hurry without much forethought.
As for the virtual console… I’m hoping that once the shop is saturated with games, they’d consider lowering the price of some of the… how should I put it… inferior game offerings. Afterall, it doesn’t cost them anything to produce another copy of the game and any money is good money, I’d say.
The Wii graphics are hardly “menial.” They’re a definite step up from the previous generation’s capabilities, even if they can’t match HD-quality. To hear some people talk, the Wii might as well have come from the era of Pong and Asteroids.
I think the Wii will be a straight-up success, and in some ways already is. The only caveat is that third-party developers can easily kill the system if they shy away from it, no matter how easy Nintendo makes it to design for. Nintendo makes excellent games, but on their own I don’t think they can support the product line.
For those of you wondering, Super Swing Golf (out now) for the Wii is a full on game with 18-hole courses, and while it has a fantasy minigolf aesthetic and a weird point system, it uses pretty normal golf mechanics (long shots toward the green, no shooting for kooky targets or anything). The AI is skewed and it sucks until you’re able to purchase more stuff, but it’s pretty fun once past the early stages, and good for vs.