I have never visited Helium before; I found this article via some obscure search looking for something entirely different than a combination PS3 vs. Wii article and poll.
Now consider the Wii. The Wii is the least advanced of the 3 major consoles on the market. Its dated technology means it cannot cope with today’s ever advancing games industry. Instead, it is forced to rely on a gimmicky gaming style. The Wii cannot handle the level of gaming that the PS3 does, so it instead has to turn to games in which the actual gaming experience is less important.
The style of games that the Wii promotes is not one that will last. Sure, the Wii can be very fun at first, but how long could you control Indiana Jones with nun chucks before you start to wish you had a proper controller, and a fuller, richer gaming experience? The novelty value of interactive aerobics and simulated bowling will soon wear off, and gamers will be left wishing for something more substantial. And substantial gaming is not something that the Wii provides.
Silly rabbit, everyone knows that the Wii, with great first party games from Nintendo, compliments a PS3 or Xbox 360. And I guess the writer has failed to notice that this casual gaming craze keeps on keeping on. iPhone games. Granny games on the Wii. It is kind of the Tetris phenomenon, minesweeper, or solitaire all reincarnated.
I’ve kind of thought the same way as that POV. Considered getting the Wii when Tiger Woods and Grand Slam came out but couldn’t do it.
I can see swinging once in awhile, even though I know it’s not 1:1 motion tracking even with Motion Plus. But most of the time, I want to remain seated and the tradeoff in graphics isn’t worth it.
People seem to be taken with certain mini games in something like Wii Sports. But a lot of those positive reactions seem to be based on how it’s such a great parent-child activity. Well that’s good but it’s a pretty narrow criterium for judging the worth of a game.
Even PS3 and X360 games have gotten shorter this generation, not because they put out mini games which are little more than tech demos but because of high production costs for creating high-def content.
Both Sony and Microsoft will be pushing their own motion-control schemes. Imagine if the next-gen consoles dedicate a certain percentage of their BOM cost to specialized devices, resulting in less RAM or CPU/GPU than they otherwise would have gotten because fancy cameras cost more than standard controllers?
I’m not sure I’d want that tradeoff.
Already there are compromises on PS3/360 games in graphics. There’s no true 1080p rendering (also a couple of years ago, lot of people were saying nobody was going to buy 1080p TVs so wasn’t needed) and there are people who’d rather have 480p graphics with more of the shader and anti-aliasing effects which can’t be done on higher resolutions.
The success of the Wii might tempt Sony and MS to make modest improvements on graphics (the performance gap between this generation and the PS2/Xbox/GC isn’t as great as the gap between PS2 and PS1). Who knows, developers might resort to motion-control gimmicks instead of producing better content.
The Wii appeals to a broader base of people, many of whom don’t know the limitations of the motion control nor see the differences in graphics — not too surprising since many people say they don’t see a difference between a DVD and HD content.