And that sucks because I can't get my hands on one, people are still lining up at 6 a.m. at Toys R' Us for it ----------------------------------------------------------------------- http://videogames.yahoo.com/ongoingfeature?eid=509116&page=0 Of all the pundits that tried to call the console race before Christmas, few predicted the Nintendo Wii, with its modest hardware and oddball control system, would still be lining up the punters in March. 436,000 Wiis sold in January, beating the Xbox 360 and PS3 handily, and there's no sign of the pace slackening. The handheld DS is doing nearly as well, tightening Nintendo's 18-year stranglehold on the portable market and capitalizing on its first-rate software selection. A total of 635,000 new Nintendo systems made their way home with eager U.S. purchasers in the supposedly quiet post-holiday period. Even with that quantity of systems moving through the retail system, both the Wii and the DS remain hard to find in stores nationwide, while the other two consoles are lining the shelves. If you're unfortunate enough to still be looking, your best bet is to keep your eyes on online trackers like ours or resort to the usual auction sites. Wii games are shifting well, too. Although Wii heavy-hitter The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess sold well in January, it was actually beaten to the top spot by quirky minigame-fest Warioware: Smooth Moves, despite the latter not actually coming out until the 15th. Rayman: Raving Rabbids came third, with under half of Zelda's sales. Unsurprisingly, Wii owners have vast appetites for games that take advantage of the machine's uniqueness. Nintendo's fast pace of impressive releases continued in March with the surprise appearance of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the N64 smash hit that's remembered as one of the best Zelda games -- if not the best -- of all time. Coming up in the next few months, fans of classic Nintendo systems can expect to see Super Metroid, Excitebike, Mario Kart 64, and Duck Hunt hitting the service. Nintendo classics... ...coming to the Wii So even when the release calendar is quiet, as it was throughout February, Nintendo still provided Wii owners with a compelling collection of re-releases and old favorites. 12 of the 20 all-time best-selling video games are Nintendo products (and, incidentally, seven of them feature Mario in some form or other). With all these great titles to draw on, they can keep up this pace for years. No video game publisher, developer or hardware manufacturer commands the adulation of as many dedicated fans as Nintendo. Started in 1889 by a Japanese businessman, the company initially made its name by producing "hanafua" -- Japanese playing cards. It struggled through much of the 20th century, until the company's visionary third president Hiroshi Yamauchi (now the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners) hired a 25-year-old artist from Kyoto named Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto, along with Game and Watch designer Gunpei Yokoi, set about laying the foundations of Nintendo's current success with games like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Yokoi's story ends sadly: he resigned from Nintendo in 1996 after falling from grace (he was responsible for the failed Virtual Boy handheld) and died in a car accident a year later. Miyamoto's story, in contrast, mirrors Nintendo's: he was instrumental in the development of both the Zelda and Mario series, and ranks as one of the most recognized and successful game designers of all time. Miyamoto currently heads Nintendo's Tokyo development team. Among its home console innovations Nintendo counts the first joypad, the first use of force feedback and the first analog stick -- and now the first fully featured motion control system in a major console. It's famously innovative in its strategy, too, dodging the race for more and more powerful hardware in favor of trying to expand its consoles' audiences beyond tech-heads, geeks, and video game addicts. And it seems to be working. The Wii has been a big hit in an Illinois retirement home, where the inmates are organizing Wii Bowling tournaments and showing up their grandkids. The Mayo Clinic and the International Sports Science Association are already studying the potential health benefits of Wii games. You can't buy that sort of word of mouth. With the release of the Wii, Nintendo is adopting tactics we more often associate with its competitors, Microsoft and Sony. With the Channel updates that have rolled out in the last couple of months, the Wii is now the only full-size console with a usable web browser, an online news and weather service, and even its own email address. These are functions we would normally associate with those Internet set-top boxes that were all the rage back in 1997. Could the Wii, with its unique mouse-like pointer control system, be making a play for the "convergent device" Holy Grail, delivering multiple diverse functions straight to your TV? Contrast that with the Wii's attitude to online gaming. Or perhaps that should be "lack of attitude." While Microsoft and Sony both invest much into their single-login, integrated systems that pack online functions into every game, Nintendo's content, for the time being, limits its gamers to one-console multiplayer. The phenomenal success of the system so far indicates, however, that either this just isn't an issue for most buyers or, and perhaps more convincingly, that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are already sating our appetite for online multiplayer entertainment. It's coming, though. June 25 is the scheduled release date for Pokemon Battle Revolution, which will use the console's Internet connection to enable head-to-head online battles between trainers. It'll also be the first to link the DS and Wii together, enabling players to transfer their Pokemon from handheld titles to the Wii, and use the DS as a Wii controller. Given the continued popularity of the Pokemon games, both among its intended demographic and older RPG fans, it's sure to be a big seller. Nintendo's other guaranteed hit, Mario, isn't coming to the Wii until later this year, although his debut appearance in the Miyamoto-designed Super Mario Galaxy is looking to be yet another stunner. Another fan favorite, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, is also expected before 2008, and for the first time includes a non-Nintendo character: Snake, from the Metal Gear series. Of course, none of that will console you if you're still hunting for your Wii. Nintendo tells us they're making continuous shipments to feed the "huge demand around the country." At some point they're sure to get ahead of the demand, but with the next few weeks seeing the release of anticipated Wii titles like Super Paper Mario, Prince of Persia: Rival Swords, and The Godfather: Black Hand Edition, we're not holding our breath.
wake me when they have a compelling "next gen" game worth buying. and I'm still waiting to see how their online gaming turns out. and of course, delay delay delay.
dude, there were several of them at sam's club last time i was there. why are these so hard for people to find?
I bought my tv from Sams. 32 inch LCD, $700 is really affordable. 2 HDMI and a built in TV tuner. good prices
Just got my copy yesterday. Good times. The Wii isn't trying to play in the same sandbox as PS3 and Xbox. I think that's got a lot of the gamers here with their panties in a bunch (show me a next gen game, the graphics suck, etc, etc). They aren't trying to port a Gears of War or Fall of Man. Nintendo's gone off in their own direction and are simply going further and further away from the PC-styled consoles. And they're doing an incredible job. Maybe it's not high-def, but it's fun and enjoyable. And the hardcore gamers are severely outnumbered by mainstreamers by the retail reports. Do you think you guys want it to fail because it's "inferior"? That people just don't realize that Xbox/PS3 are "superior"? The market doesn't lie - Wii is what people want. Evan
Really? Are you sure it's not a bundled set? If it's for the standard Wii then tell us which Sam's please.
Madden is alright, I also got SSX, its ok too, but Wii sports is by far the best, I hear Tiger woods is really good too.
A lower price is what a majority of people want, imo, and N delivers there, sort of. Just look at continued PS2 sales. I want N to succeed, I want all of them to succeed really. But I think Wii's failure to step up to the plate and deliver games is rather pathetic. Hopefully that will change, but there is no guarantee that those anticipated titles will live up to expectations. I'm really waiting on one real game that takes advantage of the wiimote to the fullest. I think that will be Metroid, but who knows. Maybe they never come out with a game that really does that. You know that this console is likely to only be around for 5 years or so no? And they're going to pretty much not release anything worthwhile for nearly a year of it's life other than VC games and games that should have been on the GC. And if the GC is any indication, their support for the last 2 years or so of the console will be pathetic as well. Kickass 3rd party titles would really help out. I'm glad EA is trying to fill the void, but they will need more than what's been offered so far. I wistfully remember when Metroid, Galaxy and a slew of other games were expected to be launch or at the least near-launch games.
You've been around games for a while, haven't you? I seem to remember you've been gaming for a while. I ask because I think what's happening right now is pretty much the norm. It's always seemed that way to me. I think the barren release schedule after launch is rather routine. The Wii and PS3 both suffer from this problem - mainly because all systems do. Do you remember what the 360 lineup looked like for the first six months or so? The DS - which is selling like mad and getting all sorts of publisher support - didn't have jack for most of the year it launched. In addition, sales are what drive publishers/developers more than anything else. The early success of the Wii pretty much = more publisher attention. It's one of the reasons I think the PS3, despite all the early doom and gloom, should be okay. They have a lot of publisher support so the games should come. (though, if sales contine to struggle there could also be a problem there.) It probably isn't a good idea to think that the GC is the norm and the model for the Wii. (Other than the tech base). This is quite the different generation already.
They seem to be getting way more support from publishers, although according to Miyamoto IIRC, a lot of publishers are putting their 3rd and 4th teams on Wii projects. They'll get more games that way, but I don't know if people really want that (PS2/PSP ports like PoP and Manhunt 2?). It is a start for Nintendo though, and perhaps they can convince some of the AAA teams to work on it (assuming those teams are fine with working on the Wii hardware...which probably isn't a safe assumption). I kind of want to fast-forward a year or two just get a better idea of how things turn out.
to expect a crapload of games right out of the gate is more than a touch unrealistic. But I can't really remember a non-nintendo system that has hung people out to dry as much as the wii has so far. The PS3 suffers from this more because imo, the PS3 was a rush job, but even then, they will still be about on par with N as far as quality games go, and will probably surpass it in the not so distant future. Probably. I liked the content that the 360 produced during it's first 6 months more than the wii's. And out came killer apps like GRAW, oblivion. The DS does give me some faith, but there's a long history showing that N wont get that killer 3rd party console support. Agreed. I still think it'll struggle to get a huge user base if they don't find a way to lower the price substantially. iirc, N also had shoddy support toward the end of N64's life as well, and the GC was supposed to be a different generation, and while they did manage some more 3rd party support near the beginning, that waned and it ended up being the same ole N. N made some promises for the wii, and as far as I'm concerned the only thing worth noting that they have delivered so far is a GC ported zelda with wii controls integrated in and a good selection of emmulated games(and btw, it would be supercool if the saturn rumors were true as I have never played some of those classics and would never pay what they are going for, but alas, they likely most certainly bunk). Do I think they will follow through, yes. To a satisfactory extent? I dunno yet. Too early to call. Maybe we'll know in 2 years.
That's fine, but I don't think that the 360 launch was exactly spectacular. There were a lot of EA Sports games, CoD, Kameo...a port of Quake, I believe. Not a whole lot of quality. Nothing you would call a killer app. I think CoD2 was the best seller of all of those. And GRAW/Oblivion didn't come until late March, IIRC. I know because that's when I actually got mine. And then after that, again IIRC, it was pretty barren for a while. Yeah, but see, why did that happen? The sales. GC sold nothing like the Wii, while the userbase of other systems continued to rise. Of course 3rd parties are going to notice that. And when you say 'the same old N'...as compared to what, exactly? The N64? Before that, the SNES and the NES were king. I can understand if you had a bad experience with the GC (though I had more than one console so I still played a good range of games 'last gen'), but I just think that the industry jumps way too much (look at what's happening so far with the PS3) to consider the last gen indicative of this gen. Sales alone at this point have insured that's going to change. Certainly it's possible though, so we'll see. In any case, the demand is still huge, so the publishers will take notice. And the system is just fun, really. It's enjoyable. I think that's what's important to a lot of folks that have it/have tried it. Wii Sports, for example, is hardly a deep game but it's just a blast to play. That's going to count for something.
I thought CoD2 was pretty good, esp for a launch game. The rest, eh, mostly rentals. But some interesting games. Out of the wii I'd say the most interesting is godfather maybe, and super paper mario(finally). I guess the golf game but eh. and that was what, 5 months in? and those are still 2 of the best games on the system so I would consider those killer apps. If I got a 360 I would probably eventually get both of those. And online gaming helps a lot for the replayability of even crappy games, if there's an okay community. If there was one huge snafu with the 360, it wasn't the games, even though there wasn't a ton, it was the ****ty release. I'm surprised they ended up selling as much as they did for the year with all the shortages they had, for what was it, the first 3 months or so? The NES and SNES were king imo because they had a stranglehold on 3rd party support. They lost almost total support with the 64 and made up some ground with the GC, but not a ton. I think the industry moves slower than you think it does, or perhaps it's just my natural pessimism shining through. I would really like to see the wii win, if for nothing else, to stick the point to M and S that most people would prefer not to pay half a grand for a new console. More like half of half a grand. But on the other hand I do think they should have made it a wee more powerful. Eh, whatever, it's still interesting to keep track of. The next new system I get will probably be the DS, but I'm still having fun with my PS2, GC, and even DC. No rush. I'll pick up a console when their prices are cut in half.
