With the Wii U, Nintendo is aiming for the
midpoint in order to capture both audiences equally. Sounds like a great
strategy, but I've noticed things that may condemn it to the same fate as it's predecessor. Or worse.
Right off the bat, the Wii U does not have the same wow-factor that the Wii had. It's pretty safe to say that families are probably not going to rush out and buy them, unless prompted by their children. Nintendo has instantly lost a huge percentage of that crowd by making the console so iterative yet incompatible. That demographic is largely ruled out, so instead they are forced to turn back to us.
The first thing I thought when I saw that new controller was "How are they going to make that fun?". If the original Wii wasn't covered in so much snake oil and confusion I would have asked the same thing. What could one possibly do with a controller with a tablet interface, a front facing camera, IR sensors, andaccelerometers? The answer is, of course, a million and one incredibly shallow things. The examples that Nintendo showed in their press conference were a small sampling of those things. Throwing shurikens, playing board games, assassinating mii's, etc. These are not games, these are applications.'We' do not want applications, 'We' want games. And without that, what is left of the Wii U? Nothing that I don't already have. Well, except special inventory management in Darksiders 2, but I'll live.
When they first showed the original Wii, I was optimistic. "Oh, what excellent technology! Some very creative people will make something very smart that I'll love!". That never happened, and never will. They have trolled the creative depths for years now and come up with nothing better than Wii Sports Resort, all of it ending up on a spectrum between "gimmicky" and "a ps2 game on a bad controller". With the Wii U, this metric has simply changed to "gimmicky" and "a 360 game". It's telling to me that Nintendo usually only has a smattering of it's own technology present in it's own games. It shows that they know traditional games allow for so much more than their tech can provide by itself. So why would 'We' want a U?
'We' don't.
But that is simply my own logic as to why the Wii U is probably going to be useless to you. It's still admittedly a great big question mark as to what the general adoption rate will be, but I think things like "The Wii U is an 'inbetween' system," and "We still **** hate motion controls" will dissuade many of 'Us'.And as I've shown, the Wii cannot do without us, especially not this time round. If we don't pick up and support the Wii U, third party support will drop like a rock for wont of sales and the only ones that will profit in the end will be, once again, Nintendo, garnering sales from two demographics that are at odds with each other.
Right off the bat, the Wii U does not have the same wow-factor that the Wii had. It's pretty safe to say that families are probably not going to rush out and buy them, unless prompted by their children. Nintendo has instantly lost a huge percentage of that crowd by making the console so iterative yet incompatible. That demographic is largely ruled out, so instead they are forced to turn back to us.
The first thing I thought when I saw that new controller was "How are they going to make that fun?". If the original Wii wasn't covered in so much snake oil and confusion I would have asked the same thing. What could one possibly do with a controller with a tablet interface, a front facing camera, IR sensors, andaccelerometers? The answer is, of course, a million and one incredibly shallow things. The examples that Nintendo showed in their press conference were a small sampling of those things. Throwing shurikens, playing board games, assassinating mii's, etc. These are not games, these are applications.'We' do not want applications, 'We' want games. And without that, what is left of the Wii U? Nothing that I don't already have. Well, except special inventory management in Darksiders 2, but I'll live.
When they first showed the original Wii, I was optimistic. "Oh, what excellent technology! Some very creative people will make something very smart that I'll love!". That never happened, and never will. They have trolled the creative depths for years now and come up with nothing better than Wii Sports Resort, all of it ending up on a spectrum between "gimmicky" and "a ps2 game on a bad controller". With the Wii U, this metric has simply changed to "gimmicky" and "a 360 game". It's telling to me that Nintendo usually only has a smattering of it's own technology present in it's own games. It shows that they know traditional games allow for so much more than their tech can provide by itself. So why would 'We' want a U?
'We' don't.
But that is simply my own logic as to why the Wii U is probably going to be useless to you. It's still admittedly a great big question mark as to what the general adoption rate will be, but I think things like "The Wii U is an 'inbetween' system," and "We still **** hate motion controls" will dissuade many of 'Us'.And as I've shown, the Wii cannot do without us, especially not this time round. If we don't pick up and support the Wii U, third party support will drop like a rock for wont of sales and the only ones that will profit in the end will be, once again, Nintendo, garnering sales from two demographics that are at odds with each other.
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