Whatever the hell you want to call it, everybody's pretty much in agreement that in the next couple of months Nintendo will be unveiling their next system and that it will be out well before whatever Sony or Microsoft has planned next, probably in the next year. Sure the Wii was a resounding success, catering to that oh so hard to capture casual market in a level never before achieved. But any reasonable Nintendo/Wii fan will tell you that the Big N did plenty of things wrong with the Wii, and these are crucial critical things they need to fix if they want to stay ahead of the pack:
Make Some NEW IP: Hey we all love Mario, Link, Zelda, Kirby, etc. Nintendo has a very reliable stable of icons they can release for their systems and the faithful will buy it like there is no tomorrow. But how long have these characters been around? Nearly all of Nintendo's stable have been around since the SNES era or earlier, without much in the way of anything new. Now granted, nearly all studios that have been around awhile have venerable series they rely on, but new ideas need to be developed or else things get stale pretty damn fast. Just make sure the usual Nintendo magic is applied, and they'll be just as welcome as any of their current big stars.
Satiate the hardcore base: Now Nintendo's appeal to the masses worked very well, but it came at the cost of alienating a whole lot of people who had been loyal to them for years and with good reason. Oh sure, there has been a trickle of core titles throughout the Wii's existence, but it's some pretty long dry spells in-between. It's why sites (including this one) are basically constantly justifying owning a Wii, because it's this generation's fondue set. If Nintendo comes out with something gimmicky with no real depth, the public will probably just respond with "meh", and the hardcore, already being spurned once, won't be fooled again.
Figure out a cohesive online system: If there is one area where Nintendo has royally screwed up, it's in their online system. Potentially there's nothing wrong with it-Tons of unique channels, online play, and tons of classics along with original titles through Wii Ware and the Virtual Console. But the execution is horrid. The friend code setup is an insane joke that has no plausible justification. The Virtual Console and Wii ware are both half-assed efforts with little to no push behind them and many of the unique channels are gimmicky one-note ideas that never go anywhere.
Ok that's all I got for today, should hopefully have another post up between tomorrow and Sunday. In the meantime, here's your FREE GAME OF THE WEEK: Pokemon Tower Defense
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment