So the Wii U has officially been unveiled, the paint is still drying and we have a release date and how much that sucker will cost. The question that I’ve been asking myself since the announcement of the upcoming Nintendo console is; will I once again be suckered into purchasing a Nintendo console that I probably won’t play? I’m not saying that the Wii U won’t be quality, that it won’t be innovative and fun, or that it won’t feature a bevy of top notch first party titles that will without a doubt appeal to many gamers. Instead, what I’m looking at is my long history with Nintendo consoles and how the last few generations of Nintendo consoles have disappointed me and ended up costing me money that could have been spent better elsewhere.
I’ll start off with this; my plan for right now is to skip over the Wii U. This will be the first time that I have ever made a decision to skip over a Nintendo home console, after owning at least one of each console, and in the case of the N64, I believe I’ve owned around four or five of them. Go figure. It is a tough decision to make, because it means that I’ll miss out on this generation’s Mario, this generation’s Zelda and every other beloved franchise that Nintendo holds under their belts and continue to push out for every new console. In a way, it is letting go to those childhood memories of playing Mario and Zelda and saying, “I’m not sure what they offer is going to do it for me this time.”
That is not an easy statement to make. The Gamecube was the first Nintendo console that I was a bit uneasy about. I still was making regular use of my N64 at the time, and owned an Xbox, Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, all of which I was using regularly as well. For some reason, the launch of the Gamecube really didn’t affect me all that much. There were no games that stood out as “must buys” and no real reason to put down my hard-earned cash for yet another console when I had enough games to play and didn’t feel like I was particularly missing anything. For some reason still unclear to me, I decided that WWE Wrestlemania X8 was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and that I needed to buy a Gamecube, that game, and the first party titles that I had missed out on. To make a long, unremarkable story short, my Gamecube got about a month’s worth of use before it collected dust and I eventually gave it away to my step-nephews due to disinterest.
Then came the Wii. At this point, I was older and I believed to be much wiser. I remembered my purchase of the Gamecube and remembered how disappointed I was with the Mario and Zelda offerings, so, I sat tight. I wasn’t sure that waggling a controller was for me, anyway. At this point, I had an Xbox 360 and didn’t feel like I needed much else at the time; it played DVDs, it got just about every third party title in existence and the first party titles were pretty incredible as well. I held off for years until I finally played Wii Sports with a few friends back home and I was hooked. I knew that this dumb, inexpensive, simple game was going to force me to go out and purchase a new console. That is exactly what happened. It was good fun, but eventually, friends got sick of sword fighting my Mr. T Mii or playing ping pong against my Bruce Lee Mii. The dust collected and my bitter memories of the Gamecube’s first party offerings kept me away from new installments of some of my favorite series.
Eventually the dust gathered again on a Nintendo console that I hastily purchased. It was, as Philip K. Dick would have called it, merely kipple in the pastiche that was my apartment. Eventually, the Wii became much like my Gamecube was, and it turned into a gift for my dog-sitter after a few weeks of unexpected travel turned up, and proved to be a rather inexpensive method of payment for me. I think that it is high time for me to accept that I’m simply not Nintendo’s target audience anymore and simply sit this one out. Let me know how it turns out.
Just ignore this article
its his nonsense opinion and its borderline insane
Wii u preorders are almost sold out, we wont miss you. Your not a gamer.
Why not offer a rebuttal to the arguments presented in the article, thus validating your view point and preventing you from coming off like a petulant 10 year old fanboy? His points are far from nonsenacle, as they are backed up with information, where as yours are not. Your lack of even remotely correct grammar, punctuation and capitalization suggest mental infirmity on your part while the article is obviously proof read. Also, Nintendo is very well known for creating artificial scarcity during console launches so pre orders being sold out are not a good early indicator of success. The same thing happened with the 3DS and it’s a dud so far.
I’d offer a rebuttal against the article, but it’s nearly impossible to argue with people who use the words “casual” and “hardcore” the way you new gamers do.
exactly which is why I didnt.
The article is so poorly written
the 3ds is a dud? thats why its number 1 in the world with the best exclusives?
Hey folks, excuse me “vampiric” but when you are a published writer, who is responsible for providing their opinion, which is the nature of a feature, well then you could insult my fellow writers, until such a time, enjoy some spam message flags for irritating the community.
anyone can endulge in tabloid journalism
Tabloid journalism is sensationalism based mainly on gossip and celeb junk. An Editorial is where someone expresses an opinion and provides their argument for said opinion.
wii u has sold out preorders what now?
That’s great. Good for the industry and good for Nintendo that financial analysts have been predicting doom n’ gloom for a while now.
I’m really not sure where you are ascertaining that I hate the Wii U or think it’ll be a bad console. It doesn’t fit my needs and I won’t be caving into the hype and buying it unless there are some really amazing, must-have titles for me, just me, not anyone else, but me.
its obvious what you think
all gone.
…just like your intelligence. You are truly pathetic and the epitomy of an internet troll.
arent you the troll
No young man, you are and your activity speaks for itself. You are in denial and there is no doubt to the majority of people you have engaged from authors, mods and regular posters that you are a sad person who needs attention and doesn’t mind if it is negative. Like others have stated, you are the epitome of a troll.
Maybe, if you were a bit more eloquent in your comments, you wouldn’t catch so much flak. Just something to think about.
awwwww wii u is sold out and the trolls of nintendo speak
The guy is pretty stupid. As you can see, he doesn’t have the intelligence to be eloquent.
He doesn’t even realize that his broken sentence gives the impression that he is talking about himself. Too funny.
I’m not really sure you should be criticizing an author’s journalistic integrity when you don’t even “endulge” in proof reading your own six letter comments.
Maybe I missed something, but I don’t remember using the terms “hardcore” or “casual” anywhere in this article. This was my own personal experiences with later Nintendo consoles and how they lost me, just me, as a consumer. First paragraph I mention how it will most likely be quality and have great games that people enjoy in it.
For “poorly written,” I dunno. I’ve been writing for years, dudes in comments sections who use fake names and some of the worst grammar imaginable generally doesn’t bug me.
3DS had slow sales after it launched, so much so that it was EVERYWHERE, if you followed gaming you’d understand that point (a simple google search turned up a lot of results, here’s ONE; http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/04/nintendo-3ds-sales/). The DS outsold the 3DS for a very long time, and yes, the 3DS has done a lot better this year, and a lot of that has to do with the DS not being supported like it was and the 3DS having the heft of Nintendo’s support.
I like that the knocks against this are from people who either have severe reading comprehension issues or are attributing things to me that I’ve never said. Go figure.
You’ll have to excuse him. He trolls so many articles and easily loses track of who wrote what and then pretty much regurgitates the same BS on multiple sites. He’s just a pathetic attention whore with no shame.
It’s funny that someone with the inability to spell or form a proper sentence can criticize a writer. You got to love the freedom and anonymity of the Internet. Were even a moron can post word diarrhea and think he’s contributed knowledge.
Well, I didn’t write the article. I just agreed with it. And I’m turning 31 next month so if you think I’m new, all I can say is thank you ^.^
Couldnt agree more. Remember wii had like a re4 port and a few other hardcore games. Than BAM, nothing. Just casual shit. I wont be fooled again.
I feel the exact same way. Nintendo’s classic franchises gave me a wonderful childhood experience, but they’ve worn mighty thin. I simply don’t need another Zelda game, much less a mediocre one like Skyward Sword. The people who worked in the studios during the glory days of Metroid, Super mario Brothers and Zelda are basically all gone, meaning the lessons learned from mistakes and the successes compounded by having a team work on a franchise are no longer in play since nintendo now hashes out each title to new people each time. And it really shows. They are messing up gameplay mechanics that are virtually identical to older editions simply because of lack of experience. And how about something new? The company is stuck in a massive deja vu zone. Cute novelty controllers, who’s appeal wears off 5 minutes after start, will only impress teenagers. I need substance and Nintendo can no longer deliver that as shown by the last two generations of in-house software. Prove me wrong, nintendo, I’d love to be! … But I sincerely doubt I will.
I think it comes with aging, sometimes. A lot of my friends who still love Nintendo still have their old NES games and still lust after them. I’m just not a nostalgia person and the games don’t speak to me like they used to.
So many people have told me how great the recent Zelda games are, but Wind Waker was where it lost me. Nothing to do with graphics or whatever, just the pacing, gameplay and story weren’t doing it for me anymore. Sure it was an awesome game, just not for me. Just like I love film, but 8 1/2 doesn’t do it for me.
Sure thing, there’s definitely something to be said for being over exposed to the old franchises by the time you get some years under your belt. But the industry was different back then because the customer base was different. The types of people who played those games were often social misfits and had to take up other hobbies, often that were intellectually enriching. So the games had to be clever and make good use of the mechanics available to them to keep the core user’s interest. Today, with every self professed “grown” 13 year old playing video games, lowering the bar simply comes naturally.
That said, I adored wind waker AND twilight princess. However, I am tiring of the standard OoT gameplay elements in the series. That game is such a weight on the franchise. No Zelda game can ever be innovative again because then all the kids will cry about how it’s not like OoT, and when it fails to be innovative, they’ll cry that it’s boring! XD
And that’s Nintendo’s in house franchised in a nut shell and why I think they’re in for stormy seas in the very near future unless they crack open some serious creativity and give significant control of development back to individual studios, giving them contracts for game franchizes that go beyond one game and we’ll see if it’s a blockbuster. You have to have time to build on those successes and learn from failures to get back to a level of creativity that used to exist in this industry.
Yer don’t think I’m gonna buy the Wii U this time out or atleast until I have a good play of it,the most recent wii games I have bought have left me very dissapointed and in the end when the PS4 and xbox 720 comes out the Wii U will just get left behind again it may be good for the time between now and when the PS and xbox comes out but I’m not paying between £270-£299 for the console with one controller and having to pay another £120 for a second just for 2 years sorry Nintendo.
Well I think your price point and the timing of their console release hints on an important factor. Nintendo isn’t really in competition with Sony or Microsoft anymore as they’ve fully embraced their target demographics of little kids and casual gamers by this point. The type of person who is attracted to the Wii exclusively tends to be more into games as a limited interest rather than a genuine hobby. I actually don’t doubt they’ll sell pretty well with that set, and there’s a TON of casual “gamers” out there these days.
That said, price point, system specs and that backwards “hardcore” controller have pretty much shot them in the foot for reclaiming the core gamer demographic. (Or did they fix that train wreck of a controller?)
I agree with this opinion piece completely and Dave’s experiences seem to mirror my own. Whilst I loved the SNES and N64 it’s been a downward trend since then. Both my Gamecube and Wii got very little use and I would be lucky if there were 2 or 3 games a year which caught my interest.
Whilst I have no doubt there will be good games on the Wii U, I suspect I am no longer the target audience for these games and the one or two key exclusives are not worth the total cost of ownership.
My current plan is to skip the Wii U altogether although I may choose to pick one up right at the end of it’s lifespan and play the handful of Zelda and other exclusives when they are dirt cheap. Of course if the Wii U proves me wrong with a non-stop stream of amazing games I want to play I would certainly get one earlier.
I actually played my wii alot so… ya.
and the WiiU is the only nintendo console I’m actually buying myself… (others were gifts)… so I can’t really relate 😛
That’s OK, to each their own, right?