I have not been paying too much attention to videogame related news lately; however this story from CVG (via N4G) caught my attention. At some point the Wii will go HD …
“In terms of what the future holds, we’ve gone on record to say that the next step for Nintendo in home console will not be to simply make it HD, but to add more and more capability,” he added.
“We’ll do that when we totally tapped out all of the experiences for the existing Wii and we are nowhere near doing that yet, so lots of ongoing opportunity for the consumer in the current generation.”
It will be interesting to watch what Nintendo does next. As far as I can tell the Wii is still selling like hotcakes. Obviously Nintendo is carefully planning their next move, system upgrades, etc, and I could not see Nintendo following the GameBoy, GameBoy Light, GameBoy Advance, GameBoy Advance SP, DS, DS Lite, DSi cash cow. Maybe. The handheld gaming demographics and what will fly in terms of system “upgrades” has to be completely different. I doubt that most moms are going to run out to “upgrade” their Wii to a better looking Wii.
This is not to say that graphics do not matter. I am not a complete dumbass; after all I spent my review writing days lamenting gameplay over eye-candy. Now I am a graphics whore! Not really, but I actually get the mass market a lot better than I did when I was an arrogant, elitist, anti-establishment reviewer.
What will Nintendo’s next system offer? First, the Wii name and Nintendo brand recognition. Second, better graphics. What else? Continue to work on motion control improvements? Continue with GameCube and Wii backwards compatibility, and maybe offer some sort of upscaling similar to what the PS2 did for PSX games? I am not sure if the Wii audience really cares about an online gaming experience, but there is room for improvement in this area.
I am not sure what the Wii 2 could do to improve the gaming experience. Nintendo has a massive gold mine in the Wii installed base waiting to be tapped by Nintendo, but that is about the bottom line, not gaming. I love Nintendo’s games, but as a system, other than going the GameBoy Light path mentioned above, the Wii is a dead-end gaming platform.
Most people are predicting no new game consoles before 2012 from either Sony or MS.
It would be ironic if Nintendo jumps first, considering their commanding market share.
Some MS person apparently said we’re only half way through the 360’s life. They have to be profitable by now so they may not be in a hurry. But if Natal doesn’t take off, what then?
Sony may be holding off because they’re still losing money. But it sounds like they’re going to try to push 3-D as well as their own motion controller as stopgaps? 3D is such a scam. The electronics industry is trying to get premium pricing for their products but will people really pay a premium to put on those silly glasses?
I haven’t been paying attention to HW sales but they all had price cuts a few months ago. Economy has to affect sales somewhat. I heard overall SW sales were down this Holiday season.
From my POV, I’m ready for the next gen. I can’t see putting more money into current gen. hardware unless my console breaks.
I agree on 3D. For now I don’t care about 3D games or Blu-ray movies.
I am not sure if I am ready for the next generation systems because I am not sure what they will offer over what we have right now. Obviously, based on what I typically post here, my PS3 is not getting a gaming work out. Something significant would have to come along to really change that, and right now I am not sure that a next generation system is the answer.