[Wii] Can the Wii change the future of gaming?

It's clear that Sony and Nintendo have taken approaches to this generation which are polar opposites of each other.

Sony has completely embaraced HD (obviously) and their sytem doubles as a Blue-Ray player which is cutting edge for HD media content.

Nintendo seems to rebuke the concept of HD, as none of their gamesd will go above 480p, and they only even seemed passively interested with selling their consumers component cables.

Sony's machine is the powerhouse of this generation and the pricetag shows it. A pricetag which only the most dedicated and well off gamers are willing to pay.

The Wii is being touted as the GC 1.5, and one is left to wonder how much of a step up it even is from the original Xbox. Nintendo seems to also be attempting to appeal to families, and even older folks as this is a common theme in their ads.

What I'm getting at is this. If the Wii were to completely trash the Xbox360 and PS3 in sales this generation would we see the videogame industry take a turn with Nintendo's current model as the new direction, or would we still see a "MORE POWER!" approach in the next 5 or so years when the Xboxsphere and PS4 are ready to drop?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

How much more power do we really need? Twice the power of a GC and more online focus sounds fine to me...None of this HD stuff means anything, except lag times on my older consoles. This isn't like going from 32/64 bit to the current gen, where the difference in 3D games was huge (and the previous gen looks downright ancient). 360 is reasonable for the cost and I can see it dominating in the US, but everyone knows it isn't going to work in Japan.

*shrug* I'm perfectly fine with PS2 graphics and such and its' the weakest of the current gen consoles (DC aside). I hope the system stays afloat and we continue to see great content on it (plus hopefully, licensing costs will drop, so we'll see more niche games come over). It's ironic that its' probably a much greater threat to Wii than PS3 may ever be.

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There is always going to be a more power group, and it will always be bigger than the quality over technology group, at least, as long as Moore's law holds and that isn't going anywhere anytime soon, not at least for 30 years in the worst case projections.

And the PS3 would be hundreds cheaper if they got rid of the Blu-Ray, which has more of a business decision to do with Sony than it does its gaming division. It needs to make sure it promotes it as heavily as possible to attempt to squash Toshiba. The difference is a media machine versus a gaming machine, so if Nintendo does well, we're still comparing apples and oranges. The business model for the PS4 could never be the same as the one for the Nintendo 6, because Nintendo doesn't have other unrelated products to worry about.

Also, consider this: there would be no negative to Nintendo having a system as powerful as the 360 other than cost. There is nothing wrong with the games looking better. Nintendo's advantage is better games more than it is a lower cost. If the 360 and/or PS3's games came up to the quality of Nintendo's...I don't see why I shouldn't prefer one of the former systems better.

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I think it's clear at this point that simply having a powerhouse of a console won't win you marketshare (considering the last 2 console generations were won by the weakest consoles for their time). Regardless of whether the Wii or PS3 do well, I don't think it will have a major impact on future consoles. The different console manufacturers pretty much do their own thing: they might be competing with eachother, but they aren't going to totally change their direction just because another one did.

Sony went from making pretty much the weakest console each generation to the most powerful: what prompted their change in direction? I doubt Nintendo or Microsoft were the reason, since they clearly could see that they could dominate the marketplace even with less than spectacular hardware.

However, I'd certainly hope that not all of the companies decide to go for the "cheaper and underpowered" route. This is one of the first generations where the power gap between consoles and high-end PCs isn't so major, and it's doing so without a substantially higher cost. Sure, the PS3 is $200 more than the PS1 and PS2 were when they were released, but given the technology in them that's quite understandable. Whether or not it still does well is another issue, but I doubt Sony would let a little thing like failure change their mind *cough*Betamax*cough*.

Personally, I'd rather see the consoles $100-$200 more expensive when they're released and have technology in them that isn't already outdated so that at the very least, it will still have a lot of potential left in it half way through it's lifecycle when the price has dropped to lower levels. Especially since in the current generation, all it would take is a $100 price drop for the Xbox 360 and it would be almost the same price as the Wii (which is very feasable since it now only costs them $330 or so to manufacture the console).

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I've always been a believer that games are limited by their engines. The more the game engine can do, the more the developer can do with it. And of course, engines are directly limited to the amount of processing resources available to it.

I think the Wii is going to open up a new avenue of gaming, but at the cost of closing itself to current avenues. I think the Wii is going to end up being exactly what Nintendo wants, a simple gaming platform that offers an experience really similar to arcades. That is you jump right in playing and the gameplay concepts are generally simple but grabbing.

At the same time, the Wii isn't going to be the platform of choice for games with depth and complexity. Developers will be more likely to develop a game like Final Fantasy XII on the PS3 or Xbox 360 where they have the tools to develop more detailed, more interactive worlds. The growth of these game elements on the Wii will be stagnant as the hardware won't be able to support more powerful engines than can support these kinds of elements.

We're starting to see a split in the market. People looking for quick, simple and fun games are going to be looking at the Wii where I think people looking for deeply involved games are going to be looking at the PS3 or the Xbox 360. I also think the PS3 and Xbox 360 route is going to have the bigger install base, but of course those two consoles are going to have to share it.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Yes I want my pixel shading and volumetric lighting plus smoke, and high dynamic range and anisotropic filtering and real time shadows and other various forms of gloss but beneath all of that I do want quality gaming. There's no need to break games into quality vs presentation subcategories because there are plenty of examples where both can be found.

To answer the question however, no. The Wii will not be ushering any massive overnight changes to the gaming industry. It will be business as usual. The new control scheme of the Wii is something for developers to mostly toy with. It's the processing power of the 360 and PS3 that will allow developers to be able to fully realize their goals and ambitions.

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Originally Posted by Hotobu

What I'm getting at is this. If the Wii were to completely trash the Xbox360 and PS3 in sales this generation would we see the videogame industry take a turn with Nintendo's current model as the new direction, or would we still see a "MORE POWER!" approach in the next 5 or so years when the Xboxsphere and PS4 are ready to drop?

It's still far too early to tell, but I can't imagine any of the consoles truly trashing the competition in this generation. They all have strong core fan bases, and are solid systems in their own right.

I do think that Sony has guaranteed some losses due to the heavy price of the PS3, their arrogance, and lack of defining exclusive titles, but how much Sony's competitors will manage to steal in the long run is still impossible to say at the moment. A significant amount of gamers out there still consider the Playstation brand as the pinnacle of gaming, and will expect more of the same with the PS3.

Now, suppose your theory was realized and the Wii does dominate the market, I guess the competitors would have no choice but to figure out why the Wii was successful and implement those ideas into their respective consoles. However, as I mentionned above, the chances of this happening are almost slim to none. I think Nintendo's goal with the Wii is to become a true competitor again and not necessarily win the race.

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How I see it is pretty clear. The generation of Saturn, N64 and PS1 showed that power doesn't necessarily mean greater sales. The PS1 won that console war, even though the N64 was far superior.

The current generation, the PS2/GC/XBX systems, shows that the PS2 has won. It had the lowest of the 3 in terms of internal specifications, but it still won. It had a large amount of developers who could easily make games for it, because it was versatile to the developers and their projects.

The Gamecube had superior graphics, but ultimately it didn't have enough attention. No developers means the console's only living off first-party titles, in this case Nintendo. The Gamecube did this for awhile.

The Wii has the lowest specifications in the next generation consoles, so it only makes sense that it's going to be more approachable by developers. Which means sales, which means winning the console war.

History always repeats itself.

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Originally Posted by Hotobu

What I'm getting at is this. If the Wii were to completely trash the Xbox360 and PS3 in sales this generation would we see the videogame industry take a turn with Nintendo's current model as the new direction, or would we still see a "MORE POWER!" approach in the next 5 or so years when the Xboxsphere and PS4 are ready to drop?

Nintendo's 'new direction' is aiming to widen the gaming audience, which is aging on average. A wider audience is more revenue. In that sense, the industry has no choice but to do the same.

The so-called 'More Power' approach will continue for a long time. The Wii may only be a GC 1.5, but it's still has .5 times more power than Nintendo's previous generation console. It wouldn't have worked out any other way. The Wii needed more power to due what the company thought was necessary.

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Originally Posted by Newbie1234

Now, suppose your theory was realized and the Wii does dominate the market, I guess the competitors would have no choice but to figure out why the Wii was successful and implement those ideas into their respective consoles. However, as I mentionned above, the chances of this happening are almost slim to none.

*cough* Six-Axis *cough*

The last game that I played/purchased that I felt was really original/unique was Katamari Damacy on PS2. We don't need a new "generation" of consoles in order for developers to innovate. So far for the Wii, I see sports games, a Zelda game, racing games, "kiddie" games (that licensed Nickelodeon or whatever stuff), yet another version of that game with monkey balls...

On the DS, Kirby's Canvas Curse was the first game I thought really utilized the stylus (which is unique to the DS) in a way that could not have been done had the DS not existed in the first place. Has Kirby's Canvas Curse changed the future of gaming? No. I have yet to see a "Katamari Damacy" or a "Kirby's Canvas Curse" in Wii's line-up.

In the end, developers are going to do what makes money for them. For some that will be innovating; for the vast majority that will be playing the "me-too" game.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The important thing to remember at this point is that launch titles for systems usually live off of one title for a while, while developers settle into the newness of a new generation of game making. The Wii will be living off of Zelda, and other games with a traditional feel (Monkey Ball, Red Steel (See Goldeneye) for a few months at least. I don't even remember the launch titles at 360's launch. It was, what, Perfect Dark Zero, and..... yeah, Table Tennis? Whatever. PS3 will have Genji 2, a new Ridge Racer game, and some other bull honkey that will be forgotten about come FFXIII, and all the other big name titles that are coming.

As far as innovation goes, i don't think it's a matter of one beating out the other.

Lets use movies as our example. We have the unimaginitive stupid comedies like White Chicks, Little Man, Big Momma's House (2) (sorry if anybody here really loves those movies), and movies like Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, 12 Monkeys on the other side of the spectrum, the movies you don't hear about so much, but are still wildly successful in the circles of people who follow them. There are different markets for different things. There are people out there who are looking for the lowbrow stupid humour, and some people who are out for the thought provoking, well thought out writing etc...

Of course there are deviations from the trends, in that some people will see movies of a different side of the spectrum every now and then, and that's where the 2 console mentality comes in.

For a question like this, the number one thing to remember is different tastes, and preferences. I personally don't think that one console is ever going to win over the other, because each company is going to do their best to keep their portion of the market immersed in what they have to offer, no matter how much the other consoles try to cash in on it.

Am i making any sense?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.