To Wii or Not to Wii
Pity that busy monster, gamers-unkind…to Nintendo’s extraordinarily successful pint-sized hexahedral Gamecube-with-motion-control. Who knew the Wii would become the sales darling of the current generation? The Nintendo ditto-heads, sure, but they thought the Virtual Boy would usher in head-mounted gaming long before the Wachowskis were jamming knitting needles upside the backs of pasty-faced heads.
No one got it logically right then, analysts included. We’ve all had our arms twisted round behind our backs since, as the Wii’s stampeded over Sony and Microsoft in worldwide unit sales and put the lie to cries of “gimmick” and “fad.” The numbers tell the story: 53 million units worldwide, against Microsoft’s 32m and Sony’s 24m.
Or do they? If you like the sort of games I do–stuff like BioShock, Fallout 3 (PCW Score: 90%), and Fable 2 (PCW Score: 100%) or wargames like HPS’s Napoleonic Campaigns and SSG’s Decisive Battles series–you’ve probably flicked through Nintendo’s holiday bill with disappointment verging on disdain. This year’s no different. Wii Fit Plus? New Super Mario Bros? That’s it. (Of the nearly 400 total titles queued for release, those were the only two Nintendo saw fit to highlight.) Smart as those two may turn out to be, they’re basically updates to safe and friendly franchises. When a publisher like Electronic Arts does this, it’s the devil. When Nintendo does it? We’re supposed to call it “innovating.”
Now there’s rumor of a price cut for the Wii from $250 to $200, a 20% slice that’d be the first since Nintendo introduced the system three years ago. Nintendo’s been turning a tidy profit on the Wii hardware for some time. By comparison, Microsoft and Sony have had to absorb massive cost-of-manufacturing shortfalls. Developing for the Wii is dramatically simpler and cheaper, too. The result: Developer and publishers flocking to the Wii to grab a piece of the action.
Would a Nintendo price cut be enough to counter recent ones from Sony and Microsoft? Propel the Wii back to comfortable monthly victory margins after dramatic monthly sales drops?
Maybe. If you’re a Wii buff, I can say “I hope so” vicariously and for your sake. But if I’m being honest and openly selfish about it, I hope not. Speaking as a guy who only reaches for his Wii remote these days to play stuff like the Metroid Prime trilogy, Zelda, Mario Galaxy, and World of Goo, I want the kinds of games I like to play (and the systems they’ve hewed to) getting the sort of developer attention they deserve. Games more like Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and Assassin’s Creed 2, and less like Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 or Barbie and The Three Musketeers.
Nintendo’s predicament? Mediocrity fatigue. A manically massive library of depressingly prosaic Wii games. Xbox and PS2 gamers ready to update and finally enticed by Microsoft and Sony’s price drops. Full-kitted cutting-edge media centers that let you stream audio/video from the web, media-laden storage hubs, or external USB hard drives entirely free. Microsoft and Sony’s impressive “casual” entertainment libraries and advanced motion-control interfaces incoming next spring. The arrival of Windows 7 alongside cheap computing kit from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD. And bottom line, a breadth of gaming experiences you just can’t get on the Wii.
Call me antediluvian, call me shortsighted. Sometimes trends are forward-looking. Then again, sometimes they’re not.