The future of the Wii?

[Godfatha]

The simple fact that the Wii has sold a phenomenal amount of consoles in such a short period of time should be incentive enough for third party developers to cater to those who bought the Wii to create a quality game.

Key word is of course...should.

Aside from Nintendo games I haven't had a lot of fun with the Wii games (aside from Tiger Woods 2008 but I'm a huge fan of golf games) so I'm hoping that now 3rd party developers will step up already and putting more effort to cater to those who have a Wii.

[EWRFan]

I think the problem is that the third party companies see the Wii as a nuvelty item in which they can simply create a cheap game with motion controls and sell a lot of copies. No effort goes into this games. Take a look at the gazillion games based on carnival games and other mini-game collections and you get the idea. The hardcore game is left out of it, outside of games like Zelda and maybe Metroid.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Ninjabread Man, which we're selling for £19.99 on the Wii was a game that my wife put in my Christmas stocking last year, on the PC, for £1 from poundland. SO frankly, chucking that out again for such a price is disgustingly lazy.

[Cactus Drags]

I find it hard to take seriously as a traditional games console.

traditional gaming consoles endet with SNES.

[Gongsun Zan]

I find it hard to take seriously as a traditional games console.

traditional gaming consoles endet with SNES.

[King Ellis]

Things will really kick off once that proper Star Wars game comes out. Wiimote + Light Saber = Killer App.

[hackerjack]

The Wii was always going to have a problematic period. While many predicted that problem being in it's first 6 months due to the strange nature of it's control system and the total lack of established titles. This prediction was made mostly by gamers and industry heads then. In fact the Wii was the huge falure that they predicted, at least with the established market. Most 'normal' gamers were unimpressed, those that wer thought it a passing toy, but instead it has opened up it's market to those who don't normally play games at all.

The problem with those people is that they wont keep coming back and buying sequal after sequal like the sheep that are the rest of the gaming fans. They also won't start buying established games just because they like a bit of Wii Sports every now and again.

So there in lies Nintendo's current problem (and by current I mean once the Christmas boom is over). Unless they can come up with other killer follow up games that differentiate themselves from the other consoles it will not grow any further. Simply porting other games to it from the PS3/Xbox and altering the control functions a littlejust won't cut it.

Which is why they are creating an artificial shortage of the consoles leading up to Christmas, so that the interest and sales are spread through what will be a very diffict Q1/Q2 in 2008 until other manufacturers begin to understand how to best make use of it.

Whether that will be able to or not will decide on the future of the Wii, but regardless of that I hope it has permanently openned the doors for real innovation in the gaming market for a change.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

More and more I'm believing it's a marketing ploy. Every day we're getting ten people coming into the store asking if WE have the Wii cos no-one else has (They also ask for Wii Sports but that's beside the point, it's a fine and entertaining set of demos - especially bowling).

Low supply = high demand = The most talked about console AGAIN this Christmas with the PS3 added to the market since last year.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Also we got word through this week, Nintendo are putting up the price of the Wii by £10 at some stage soon apparantly which we of course have to add to the price of sale. We at least aren't adding anything else on top.

[King Ellis]

It does amaze that it still has limited stock. I still see places like "We have new stock of Wii next week!" or something. They must be like releasing 2 a week or something.

The whole marketing gimmick thing has come up with this and the PS3 and 360 before it. To me, though it seems plausible it's just, it just doesn't make business sense. If you wanna make money then your product needs to be out there.

And really, £10 price increase? That's funny when Sony and Microsoft seem to be falling over each other trying to slash prices world wide.

[EWRFan]

If I where Nintendo, and this is an attempt to appeal to both camps, I would have bundled the Wii with both, a remote and nunchuck and a classic controller. This way they can make games that appeal to both camps and the console itself is ready for any kind of game out of the box.

Just an idea.