11/11/2011

Too little, too late?

So yes, Skyrim is out today. I plan to talk all about it in my next post, because it's 7:30 am right now and my Gamestop doesn't open til 10. So let's talk about two other huge games that aren't even out yet, but the reviews are coming in, most extremely positive, showing examples of what the unique hardware can do. Those titles are Super Mario 3D Land and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Mario finally provides an original game for the 3DS that actually makes the 3D more than a nifty gimmick, and Skyward Sword may just be the best Zelda game to date, making great use of the motion + and proving the Wii hardware is capable of more than just gimmicky minigame collections.

So, for both the 3DS and the Wii, but especially the Wii, the question arises, why are these experiences so few and far between? It's like console business 101.  You can start off a little rough but a continuous flow of quality software is pretty much necessary to keep the system going. This is the real reason why this far into this generation of consoles the 360 & PS3 are still gaining steam while the Wii is pretty much done. It really might not have been had a stream of steady, quality releases been a constant. There are a number of quality titles on the system to be sure, but infinitesimal to the number you find on the competition. How excited am I supposed to be about a system that got maybe 4-5 top quality games a year? Sure that's good for my wallet, but not for the gamer in me.

Now obviously the 3DS has not even been out a year, so it's in a slightly different boat, but a lot of the signs are there. A gimmick over quality gameplay, unnecessary add-ons that are confusing and again a serious lack of quality software. Ok Mario is almost here. What else? Mario Kart in December and... yeah, that's what I thought. We have Kid Icarus sometime in future and that's really about it. Nintendo claims the quality games are coming, but we seem to be having a similar issue here to the Wii, where quality is a far distant second to cashing in on gimmickry. And if that's the path the 3DS follows, it's going to fall a lot quicker than the Wii did.

That's it for today, hopefully I will get one more post in this weekend with Skyrim impressions. Until then, here's your BIG BANG OF THE WEEK:

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