What if the Wii was 'nex-gen'?

KeiZka - 596 days ago

360 arcade sells for 279€ over here. Wii still sells for 270€ here. Hmnm.

Flooding it with lousy games... Can attest to that, but by that same strategy there were also gems on PS2. I don't really see a fault in that one. Plus, blame the devs, not the console as always.

Also, don't pull the next gen graphics into the equation, they don't belong here. Current gen would be more appropriate. Let's see what 8th generation brings.

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deeznuts - 595 days 23 hours ago

It wouldn't fail.If it was a weak HD machine it would do better.

If the Wii was next gen, I might have taken the Wii my GF has home by now, since she "gave" it to me because she doesn't play it (no time, always travelling). So far I haven't.

But I did just rent SMG and I am taking the Wii home this week, so lets see how it does! It won't take time away from Niko Bellic and Snake though.

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crck - 596 days 4 hours ago

I came into this generation of consoles wanting to go back to Nintendo. I played very few Nintendo games in the last decade and kind of missed the games i grew up with. But then I saw the specs for the Wii and it was like WTF? It doesn't even display HD when I had both a HD projector and a LCD tv. It just seemed pointless to me. Might as well buy a gamecube and play those games.

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SaiyanFury - 596 days 3 hours ago

Nintendo also alienated third party developers with questionable design choices and first party policy which they absolutely refuse to change. Where everybody was going disc based media (original PS, Sega Saturn, 3DO, etc.) Nintendo, being pissed at Sony over the fallout of the original Play Station SNES upgrade, chose to make their system cartridge based. At the time, high capacity cartridges were very expensive to make, and the N64's horrible controller design kept a lot of people at bay. Nintendo made a lot of the same types of mistakes on the GameCube. Making it appear childish, with a cutesy controller and again, designing the system around a more expensive, yet smaller capacity media drive, the half capacity yet doubly expensive mini-DVD. And again first party policies drove away the major third party support. Nintendo has a long history of charging exorbitant licensing fees to third party developers which is another reason why they've been flocking to the opposing consoles. Nintendo obviously designed the Wii in mind because they refuse to follow in Sony and Microsoft's shoes. I do give them much credit for what they've done, the Wii is obviously very successful and the Wii has found it's audience. Hopefully that audience's attention span is long enough to keep them buying games, though...

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sidar - 596 days 1 hour ago

GCN, it had it all, just not a DVD player...it was a solid gaming console. it was HARDCORE, better then the PS2...and where were you guys?

no matter what, Nintendo will always be the one who gets yelled at even if they are doing something right.

it seems like they are bound to it

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KeiZka - 596 days ago

Here we go again.. "Might just as well buy GC to play those games" is a blatantly ignorant in itself, since Wii can do things GC cannot. Has it been utilized? Why yes, SSBB and SMG should do the talking here. And such. But if that's your well-informed opinion, do stick to it. It's you missing out, not me.

For Saiyan, ya. Ninty did alienate 3rd parties and still does that somewhat, no denying it. The online, while working, is blatantly not up to the par compared to competing services... Yet, at least.

But GC being cutesy? That controller? Right. What I saw when I first got it in my hands was "ergonomic". More so than the three generation spanning design Sony employs as of now still. It was good to play with, and still is. Hands down. The console itself was quite stupido yes, though. I still don't get that handle...

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SaiyanFury - 595 days 23 hours ago

@ KeiZka

You're right, I will digress my explanation of the GameCube was somewhat attacking. I didn't mean to come off as such as I own a GC myself, primarily for the RPGs on the console.

You're also right, the controller is ergonomic, although the purple "Z" button I find a bit difficult to keep held down for longer periods. It's only a personal opinion when I said the appearance of the GC is "childish". I think that Nintendo used the mini-DVD format and then "cuted up" the appearance so the mini-DVDs wouldn't look so conspicuously smaller than regular DVDs. I guess everything boils down to personal opinion. I don't want to sound like I'm attacking Nintendo, as I'm not trying to. Nintendo is a great company that's done great things, not the least of which is bringing the video games industry back from the brink of destruction. The Wii is also a great console and as such has it's audience.

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KeiZka - 595 days 23 hours ago

I can agree on the mini-dvd, though. But I believe there's the strong fear of piracy that Nintendo seems to have (Cartridges were there to stop piracy too. Quite good at it, though the price was also quite high as you said), which still is there (updates via game disks). Then again, the coulouring of the console did also a number on the image it created for itself... Purple? Heh. I got mine as black, was much better. Then again, if there had been a gray or white one back then, I would've got one immediately. Ah, reminiscing is so fun sometimes.

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SaiyanFury - 595 days 22 hours ago

Most definitely agreed. I wasn't so hot on the purple colour, I also got mine in black.

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Voiceofreason - 596 days 3 hours ago

No you dont. Wii comes with 512mp built in for memory. SD cards only add extra storage.

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SaiyanFury - 596 days 2 hours ago

Typically speaking "next-gen" usually means a leap forward in hardware and software. Generally referring to a new, more powerful CPU as well as a new graphics processor. Add in new hardware like new controllers and functionality. PS3 and 360 have followed this usual trend. The Wii, on the other hand, has not gone so far. It's CPU is directly based on the GameCube and it quite literally has the same GPU as the GameCube, albeit clocked up some. Of course it has it's fancy controller which works well. Nintendo fans will be snarling at me over saying this, but from a hardware perspective the Wii really is like an updated GameCube rather than an entirely new system. I will give Nintendo credit though. It's very successful and Nintendo FINALLY used a mainstream optical disc format. It only took them 10 years to figure that one out.

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BrotherNick - 596 days 2 hours ago

The xbox360 hasn't added new controllers. The PS3 and Xbox360 hasn't created any software much different than the usual. Next gen after this will have motion controls standard. Anyways optical discs are the reason why you need hard drives now for your games, when they were cartridges there was a lot less loading. Unfortunately optical discs are cheaper.

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SaiyanFury - 596 days 1 hour ago

It's kind of a split point. You're right in that cartridges load much faster and data has to be loaded and streamed from optical drives. Conversely, optical drives have great capacity and it's cheap to print a disc, generally speaking. HDDs are mostly used just to speed up loading. Personally, I could do without one in the PS3 as I don't really mind looking at a loading screen for a few extra seconds. But that's just me.

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KeiZka - 596 days ago

Nex-gen is merely an annoying buzzword used mainly by those who think their choice is superior to a certain other option. Right now, there is no "next gen" so to speak, since no console manufacturer has revealed any information about their console for the 8th generation of gaming. And here's the kicker: Wii, PS3 and X0 all represent the 7th generation in gaming, in good or bad. So, Wii didn't go and pound the edges of photorealism. So what? Why should it? It's still Nintendo's answer to this generation of gaming hardware. Just like PS3 is the 7th gen Sony machine, and X0 is the 7th gen Microsoft machine. It has nothing to do whatsoever with "Oh, look, this can do graphics like this, while that cannot" -mentality.

How hard is this to understand, really? If we were to look at facts, PS1 was outdated the moment N64 was launched. Yet it competed efficiently. Same goes for PS2 against all three others, DC, GC and Xbox. Yet it competed efficiently, again. See a pattern here? Now that I really do think about it, PS is the console that has changed the least over the time...

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KeiZka - 596 days ago

Indeed.

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KeiZka - 595 days 22 hours ago

Since when did hardware equate the level of "next-genness"?

That's like saying that two men, who both are born in 1984, aren't the same generation. Why? Because the other one is more like his father in height and resembles his father greatly, while the other one is clearly taller than his father and also bears some, but small, resemblance towards his father.

Also, why didn't 3rd parties support GC that much on 6th gen when GC was actually a powerful console? Hmm... Wonder why, wonder why... Then, let's wonder why Wii gets all the crappy games & ports when its selling others out easily? Dumtidum... Oh, is that a hastily made title rushed to milk some money out of the market? Why yes it is!

(Also, do note, that PS2 suffered this same kind of 3rd party bloating back in its days. Still somewhat.)

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