Nintendo Wii kicks the shit out of the competition

The fact that Nintendo is only now making some cash. They don't operate at a loss on their consoles, they actually make money. Before this and the DS, Nintendo was pretty close to going under.

It's not a huge hit yet. They still have a few years to go, before it can be considered a huge hit. Right now they're riding a wave of hype, hopefully it'll stay positive for them. I love Nintendo and I'd love to see them come out with a killer console, graphics-wise and the current controllers.

Maybe next generation or two.

I'm about ready to kick the shit out of my Wii for shutting off unexpectedly.

^checked your prostrate?

True. But the only true "main console" for serious gaming is the PC. PC + Wii all the way.

What?!?!

I guess I'm just forgetting about all the times I've had to install a game on my PS2, then download & install some software patches and drivers before the fucking thing will work.

Oh, I knew exactly what you meant . And I have a feeling that it's not going to be as important as you think. Is there some revolutionary M-rated stuff coming out? Sure is. Is there a hell of a lot more cookiecutter M-rated stuff coming out? Definitely. But of this you can be sure - it takes a lot of effort to make a game that's good with the Wii's controller. So any M-rated games there are going to kick ass. I think you underestimate the draw of slicing your enemies to bits while playing swordsman with your controller or pointing and shooting at the screen much like you'd do with a real gun. Hell, that alone should send the anti-video-game-violence crowd into a tizzy, and we've got to love that.

Most of us have memories of a game called Duck Hunt. The satisfaction of knocking them all out of the air. How fucking pissed off you got when that damn dog pops up and laughs at you. It's much more engaging gameplay, and for that reason alone, I think that the M-rated games for the Wii will really shine.

And there's a very good reason why they were on the edge. Nintendo was playing it safe for years. Just spitting out the usual cookiecutter bullshit. Lackluster consoles that, sure, were prettier, but didn't offer a thing in terms of gameplay that couldn't be replicated on another console. Once they started changing it up some, they perked right back up. You can't ride on pretty graphics forever if all you can churn out is Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo with higher-definition graphics.

I'd rather go through and install and patch and update rather than have my game flip out and hear "Oh, well, it's a bug. Tee hee!" from the company. I'd rather do all that than have it just spin not quite right and hear "Oh, well, you have to buy a whole new console or spend a near-equivalent amount to get it repaired!"

By the way, if you're keeping up to date and the like, you should never need to install a new driver just for a game - you should have already installed it at some point.

[action=Kyle]also whistles about shorter load times.[/action]

Drivers are a moot point. You should have your drivers up to date for your PC anyway.

As for installing... boo hoo I'm so sorry you have to press "next" 2 or 3 times before you play your game. And if you are so lazy that going through an install routine is a pain in the ass, then I'm sure you object more to having to pick your ass up off the couch to walk to put in a disc to play.

As Kyle said, patches are definitely a huge positive. Fixing imbalances, bugs and exploits is a GOOD thing. Not only that patches often offer new content.

When I am talking about "serious games" I mean games of substance that you can play over and over. These games are found on the PC. Not only that, PC is the environment for true online multiplayer (although xbox live has made decent headway in this area, it doesn't exist on the console elsewhere).

Anyone who thinks that "serious gaming" is on a console is probably one of those goons you see on that annoying Arena show on G4.

Yep... reading from optical disc just ain't very fast.
And just wait... in a couple months, Vista will be shipped and DX10 games will be coming out. The new stuff designed for directx 10 far surpasses even the graphics on the PS3.

You're going to hate the next-gen systems because that's more and more what they're moving to (installs and patches).

Plus, XBox 360's are practically PCs anyway. It's the only way Microsoft will ever be allowed to offer something like that in the arena.

-J.

That's what pisses me off. Sony and Microsoft basically just make a PC and then stick some controllers into it to call it a game console.

Playing DVDs, music, video, and all that extra crap is not what video gaming is about.

Don't even get me started on how game developers are focusing less on story line/game play and more on pretty little blades of grass.

Not true anymore, sorry.

I know it's early on, but is this why Red Steel is 'teh sux'? Is this why people can't really stand to play it for more than 30 minutes at a time?

I've also heard, the bigger your TV, the worse the Wii looks. So those of us who do have nice HDTVs, have been really let down by it's graphics. So far, I've only played on my son's 27" HDTV and it looks about Xbox1ish quality.

A lot of people love epic adventures on their consoles as well, with very long gaming sessions and the Wii is just not conducive to it. Yes Zelda is like this, however, many of my friends who have Wiis and Zelda, usually revert to the gamecube controller to play it. This way they can play for hours at a time.

The Wii is a party machine.

No, Nintendo couldn't keep up graphically. Tell me what about the Super Nintendo which was amazing? Not much, but it still was dominant.

The biggest reason why they lost out with the N64 and Gamecube, was due to the fact they refused to go with a CD (N64) or DVD (GC). They decided to use their own media, instead. 3rd party developers didn't want to make games for a system which cost them more, when there was a Playstation out there which it could be done on cheaper. The GC might have been a success had they gotten it to the shelves faster. Well that and they had pretty much NO mature games.

They still don't have a lot of 3rd party support. This will be crucial for Nintendo to survive with this latest console.

Well, as rare as it is to get a brand new console game with a bug, they do offer patches to fix them. It is still incredibly rare to get a game you can't play, however. Unlike many, shoddily developed PC games, where patches take MONTHS to be released before they're even playable to any extent.

Most of the world doesn't update their drivers. Most people don't want to have to make sure their PC has all of the hardware needed to play the latest Half-life or Unreal Tournament at high resolution.

Let alone going to have to buy Vista and a brand new dx10 video card just to get Dx10 capability. Haha.

While I'll agree that the PC is usually capable of much more than a console, you're not going to win anyone back over to the PC that has switched to a console within the last 5 years. Console games are getting that good, the control schemes are getting that much better, that it is very rare there is a game that has a superior control scheme or graphics that are that much better on a PC. FPS are the exception, but then, I know quite a few who switched to consoles for FPS. RTS control schemes are getting much better as well. Which is why C&C3 and Halo Wars are coming out for the 360. EA learned how to make an intutive control scheme for LoTR:BFME2 on the 360. They'll continue with new and updated franchises as well.

Not too worried about load times, when most games which are made have minimal load times anymore. Though, there will always be lazy developers.

REALLY let down?!?!

Okay, what's REALLY let down on your scale?

I need perspective here.

Are we talking sprites that look like Mooninites?

Or, you stood right up next to the screen at nose mashing distance, and you saw a measely pixel, and dampened your pampers that it's not Holodeck resolution?

No, I'm talking about graphics no better than my $100 XBox1 pushes out. That's a letdown.

Next-gen gaming is a large reason I bought a nice and fairly expensive HDTV. All the other consoles look better when hooked up to an HDTV rather than an SDTV, the Wii starts to look worse.

Not to mention I had to shell out $40 for component cables.

However, that's not the selling point of the Wii, so it only matters somewhat in the end.

That particular rant never fails to stir up the hornet's nest.

For the record, there are probably two or three people on this board who might exercise more than me.

I just bought a Gamecube for $60 bucks off Ebay.

I know it's considered 'last gen' but the last console I owned was a Sega Genesis so the graphics still look pretty amazing to me.

I guess I'm not a hardcore gamer... but I'm enjoying my cheap and fun purchase. It came with two wireless controllers and Super Smash Bros.

Thought about getting the Wii but I don't really see the point in spending the extra money.

Also picked up Zelda: Twilight Princess for $37 at Circuit City and Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Sunshine, Robotech Battlecry, Zelda: Wind Waker, Rogue Squadron II, Metroid Prime, and Prince Of Persia for about $15 dollars each.

The total price for the system and nine games is about 200 bucks... still less than picking up a basic Wii system.

And I still have my PC for strategy/oblivion gaming!

You're complaining about the graphic quality of the Wii on HD TVs? Shit, you should try playing an N64 on an HD TV. It looks like crap.

The Gamecube however, doesn't look that bad on an HD TV, and I'd expect the Wii to look just as good.

Maybe your HD TV is just crap.

I was surprised how far the graphics lagged when I finally saw a Wii. It really does seem a generation behind the 360 and PS3 (that will probably change as developers get better at programing for the system). It will be interesting to see what kind of market share Nintendo holds after the novelty of the controller wears off. They've brought a lot of new people into gaming but are they going to keep buying games year in and year out?

I seem to recall that some people are having difficulties getting the mechanics down due to inexperience on both the developers and the players' sides. I'd expect this to get far better.

and...

You're not going to win me over by bitching about the graphics, because I quite honestly don't give a shit about them. The graphics in Goldeneye for the N64 are atrocious, and I still love to play it. Same with a hell of a lot of other N64 games. Or Quake III for the PC. Or anything else like that.

Incidentally, the Super Nintendo did introduce some very nice new stuff with Starfox and Super Mario Kart to consoles, where the increased graphics capabilities augmented the gameplay.

Believe it or not, you're not supposed to play video games for hours at a time. Repetitive stress injuries, eye damage, etc., etc. Hell, I can think of games that were good enough that I would actually purposefully slow down my use of the game so that it would take me longer to complete because I enjoyed it that much. You can tell your friends, however, that I'm sorry that the mechanics of the Wii prevent them from doing marathon runs of Zelda in 30 hours or whatever - that's clearly getting your money's worth right there.

The media might have been cheaper, sure, but programmatically, the PS/PS2 were hell to code for due to some utterly wacky architectures (and this has only gotten marginally better with the PS3, incidentally). The N64 used carts because Nintendo didn't want loading screens, a decision I certainly can't fault them for. The GC's media was designed purely as piracy prevention, and I believe that it actually helped keep them up and running - piracy in Asia is huge, and it certainly would have cut any profits to ribbons.

Can't disagree here.

Oh, console games are released with bugs all the time, they just usually aren't showstoppers. And how do you patch a disc, hmm? And if it's stored on a drive, it'll certainly require access times to apply them dynamically.

As with PC games.

There has been exactly one brick-and-mortar store-released game where I've experienced a showstopper bug, and that was Enter The Matrix, which was shitty no matter what format it came on. Downloaded games, sure, but those are usually from budget/independant developers.

Most people don't have a driving need to tick off all the boxes in the graphics settings screen either, believe it or not. Most people can also read the bottom of the box. Most people also know what is in their systems, either because they built them themselves or because PC manufacturers love slamming stickers on everything. Oh, yeah, and most games won't require a driver update, either. It's a very nice buzzword, though. "Oh, well, you have to do a driver update. DUN DUN DUNNNNN!"

By establishing a hardware cutoff, it is far easier for Microsoft to develop a really solid DirectX instead of pandering to older OSes and an absolutely absurd number of video cards. This also makes it easier for software developers as well to create a very nice graphical experience.

Also, DirectX has had hardware cutoffs for a very long time. I know that there are DirectX 7 video cards, DirectX 8 video cards, etc., etc. Sure, DirectX could handle an older card version (i.e. DirectX 9 handling a DirectX 8 video card) pretty handily, often to the point where you don't really notice so long as the software isn't requiring hardware features specific to a DX version.

I know many a person who have done so who still prefer PC gaming. Know why I prefer it? Easy, easy modding. Sure, it's coming into play more on consoles, but it still is nowhere close to the PC. Replayability on the cheap.

Just to let you know, this is a trainwreck of a sentence grammatically. Anyway, I find driving games, FPS (of course) and TPS, and RTS (though I rarely play these, they practically require a mouse to be remotely playable) to all be most easily controlled on a PC with a keyboard and mouse combination. And, of course, because you can perform hardware upgrades, you are limited only by the software in terms of the graphics quality if, in the end, that really makes you hard.

None of the Rockstar studios are even remotely close to lazy, and yet I actually left the room waiting for Bully to load for the PS2. Same for a lot of other games. I don't think they're any more minimal, I think you've just gotten used to them, which is a shame .

EDIT - by the way, I'm neither a Nintendo fanboy nor a PC gaming fanboy. I can't afford any of this gaming shit, because I can't burn $100s like pipe tobacco. I am just able to get a game every once and a while, so having good gameplay is of paramount importance to me - I need to be able to replay this shit.

The Wii has a chance to win this next gen war, or at least give Sony a decent run for it's money. And GuiltyGear sounds like a major M$ fanboi.

Just keep in mind that it's not the Xbox2, PS3 or the Wii that has the most consoles out right now. That title solely belongs to the Nintendo DS, where it has taken off in Japan with a big part due to, not the hard core gamer, but the 40 to 50somethings who go to and back from work on the subway. Yes, that is the age of our mom's and dads. And that has translated into sales of over 18 million units.

The games. The GAMES made SNES amazing. The games were fucking awesome.

I had a SEGA Genesis because the guy at the store convinced my mom that the Genesis was way better so she got that for me when I was a kid instead of an SNES one Christmas. Genesis hardware was better but a lot of my cousins had SNES and I always wanted one. I eventually bought a SNES myself, way after PS2 was already out and I played it all the time... even though it was old tech by that time, THE GAMES WERE VERY GOOD.

The games make the console. That's it. How good is this console? How good are the games?

Please don't make shit up. Come on now. I'm sure you realize that when you don't lie you make a more convincing argument. The Wii version of Zelda does not support the gamecube controller. So, sorry, I know for a fact that "many of your friends" do not revert to the gamecube controller to play Zelda on Wii. In fact I know that none of them do.

Even if you could use the gamecube controller, I've found it easier to use the Wiimote. You don't have to swing it around like a moron, all you have to do is shake the damn thing. A chimp could do that is no problems.

I had both. I didn't prefer one to the other. I loved some Genesis games and I loved some SNES games.

Yeah, so I called my two friends who I thought had said this. What they had said and I didn't originally listen well enough to hear, was that they went back to playing the gamecube version of TP, instead of the Wii version. Both of them had bought the GC version when it came out, but just like me a couple days before christmas each found a Wii, but they picked up TP for the Wii. Frustrated that they couldn't copy their saved games over, they figured they'd still try it out since it had 16:9/10 support. Both said the graphics look pretty much the same, except the whole world is mirrored. Instead of Link being a leftie, he's now right-handed. They prefered the gamecube control scheme over the wii's control scheme. To each their own.

Call me when Samsung starts making crappy LCD HDTVs, k?

The Gamecube doesn't look bad on an HDTV? It's terrible, especially without 16:9 support.

They really aren't much better than the Gamecube. Gamecube had pretty nice graphics for it's time, but the Wii is nowhere close to 360/PS3 graphics.

The controller is a novelty. Except for the Wii360 combonation owners, a lot of the people buying Wiis are those who do not game much or don't game at all. Which was Nintendos aim in the first place. Whether they will be able to hold the attention span of these people, is exactly the question.

Sony has a chance as well. As long as Blu-ray takes off. I personally think Nintendo and MS will end up beating out Sony, because you can buy both systems for the same price as you can buy a PS3.

I don't know if you can really count Japanese sales when talking about the North American market (Minidisc anyone?). I'd be interested to see how well the DS is doing in America; I know far more people with a PSP than a DS but that doesn't really say much.

I think both systems had great games but I will admit that it's my SNES that I still play. I think there was a lot more replay value in the games.

The thing that drives me nuts about it is that the controllers are so f-ing small. My hands really cramp up in games like Megaman X. Someone's got to figure out a way to hack/adapt a Playstation controller for SNES use (they have the same layout, just with extra shoulder buttons).

I play Smash Bros. Melee and RE4 on my HD TV, and it looks fine. I don't even need those extra cables to use progressive scan or whatever.

I think I have a 40-something inch Sony. What size is yours?