Wii After a Year

[fearsomepirate]

MOH2 has almost swayed me. I think if a few more Wii titles of that order of quality come out, I will actually get one.

 

[Teasy]

3. In one year, only seven Wii titles have a Metacritic rating above 85. 63% of Wii titles rank below 70. This puts Wii as possessing one of the most poorly rated libraries in all of console history, beating out only commercial failures such as Jaguar and Virtual Boy.

Could you post the info to back this up please? As in stats for game libraries for every console one year into there lives..

Seriously I think that would be very interesting info, especially to compare to other systems in the future, and since you've already obviously done the research you might as well post it..

 

[Scott_Arm]

MOH2 has almost swayed me. I think if a few more Wii titles of that order of quality come out, I will actually get one.

I haven't seen any tv ads for that game either. I'd like to try it out, but I'm hesitant to buy another WW2 shooter.

Does anyone else think Nintendo may be reluctant to show television ads because of the obvious graphical comparisons to PS3 and Xbox360?

Some people are saying Nintendo is heavily advertising in parts of the world, but my experience in Canada is that they're not.

 

[Nesh]

.

3. In one year, only seven Wii titles have a Metacritic rating above 85. 63% of Wii titles rank below 70. This puts Wii as possessing one of the most poorly rated libraries in all of console history, beating out only commercial failures such as Jaguar and Virtual Boy.

If this is true it indicates again to the same thing I was ponting at a long time ago and it hasnt changed at all. It's sales are not explained at all by the quality of the games released on it. It looks like it is mainly the price and the idea of motion controls alone that sell the console.

Developers are still yet to show the appropriate interest at delivering big projects despite the huge userbase. There was the arguement that developers were waiting to reveal big titles later, and that the reharshes, rereleases and party games were mainly a result of jumping too late. Things havent changed much there either.

 

[Megadrive1988]

3rd parties probably had no idea Wii would do so well.

even on Wii with its lower cost to develop for, you don't create big games overnight, or in the course of a few months. It takes time.

I think we'll see things change in 2008 with plenty of big 3rd party games coming out, and others being announced for 2009.

 

[dobwal]

Wii has proven something that no other generation really took care of: price is king. That's my sole outtake
from this gen. I don't think it's waggle or the marketing or anything like that... Wii is doing well because it's the cheapest. If the PS3 and 360 was the same price with everything you needed (game storage, a game, etc) I don't think the Wii would be selling this well.

No way to prove it of course

The $199.00 GC, $299.00 Core and it less uglier twin brother $279.00 Arcade waves hello.

Try correlating console price versus demand and see how that pans out.

 

[_xxx_]

Well people buying it for Wii sports don't see it much different than table soccer or Monopoly. It's a social toy with Wii Sports and that satisfies many people in itself, I rarely met enyone who bought it for other reasons.

 

[PARANOiA]

The $199.00 GC, $299.00 Core and it less uglier twin brother $279.00 Arcade waves hello.

Try correlating console price versus demand and see how that pans out.

Did the $199 GC launch in the same month against a $599 PS2 ?

You can't buy a Core, go home and play games. You need to buy storage and a game, pushing the price up... not sure the exact cost to get home and play (since I'm not in the 'States) but I'd guess it's closer to $400 compared to a $249 (?) Wii.

Now, the Arcade.... that's an interesting one. You can go home and play in HD I believe, and you get five games. When and how do we get sales split by SKU?

Edit: price and demand have a very strong relationship when you toss in a third variable.... competition.

 

[Hazuki Ryu]

Wii has proven something that no other generation really took care of: price is king. That's my sole outtake
from this gen. I don't think it's waggle or the marketing or anything like that... Wii is doing well because it's the cheapest. If the PS3 and 360 was the same price with everything you needed (game storage, a game, etc) I don't think the Wii would be selling this well.

No way to prove it of course

Nintendo only has proven how easy it is to decive people with crapy hardware like that

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I think the NPD report indicates no sign of a Wii sales drop in the US. Strong Guitar Hero 3 sales actually suggest that the core gamers are indeed buying the machine, and Mario Galaxy might as well rule the software charts for Christmas... It gets even more exciting

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Wii has proven something that no other generation really took care of: price is king.

Disagree.

What WII has proven IMO, is that approachability is the key. That is what has enabled Nintendo to broadening the user base. I can't tell you how many people I know that are quite literally intimidated by the standard controllers for the so-called "real" consoles.

So many buttons, sticks, etc. The non traditional gamer picks up a controller and quite literally doesn't know what to do with it.

Now, you combine approachability with price, and you get "king."

 

[borowki]

Wii has succeeded in targeting a new audience, mainly by replacing monopoly, activity and other board/party games. Most owners usually keep it in the closet and play only a handful of games, not even thinking about buying new ones.

Just checked Hasbro's quarter report: They're reporting an increased in sales of traditional board games. People who play Monopoly or Scrabble probably enjoy more cerebral sort of games. It's rather unlikely they'd find swinging a remote at the tube a superior form of entertainment.

Rather than the Wii satisfying an existing need, I think many people probably buy the Wii hoping it'd produce for them social interactions that they lack and miss.

 

[ninzel]

Well one really good thing to report is that the Wii controls have finally really been done well with MOH:2. People playing it online say the controls are bliss for an FPS console game.

 

[MulciberXP]

So Wii's about a year old now, and here are the facts:

3. In one year, only seven Wii titles have a Metacritic rating above 85. 63% of Wii titles rank below 70. This puts Wii as possessing one of the most poorly rated libraries in all of console history, beating out only commercial failures such as Jaguar and Virtual Boy.

This is a sad reality. It amazes me to see all the horrible titles being sold for this console. In a year they've only produced a handful of titles that I was actually interested in playing, and only half of those were any good. I've had actual fun playing only 3 games on the system. Zelda, Metroid and Wii Sports. Of course, Guitar Hero is fun, but it's better on other systems, and RE4, but its the same as the GC.

4. Nintendo has shown itself completely uninterested in advertising its own games. Mario Galaxy received little press for a flagship title, it practically kept Metroid Prime 3 a secret, it deliberately kept Battalion Wars limited at trade shows and out of the advertising stream, and so on. But as little as Nintendo advertises, 3rd parties advertise even less.

And the only games they do advertise are junk like Brain Games and Wario Ware

5. After a long period of games with bad controls, Retro finally nailed FPS controls with MP3. EA quickly followed suit with MOH:Heroes 2. Could more Wii FPSes be around the corner?

We can only hope. This is the first console ever where FPSs actually make sense to me.

6. After one year, Wii has already exceeded 13m, more than 50% of either Gamecube or Xbox sales. Yet major game announcements from 3rd parties have been extremely scarce, and there do not appear to be any on the way. Where are the JRPGs, the shooters, the action titles? Third party sales aren't good, but overall, neither are the games. On the other hand, will gamers inevitably gravitate toward buying the games with the flashiest graphics?

After playing through Twilight Princess I thought that this is the perfect system for platformer rpgs...now if only they'd release some.

7. Manhunt 2 came and went. After all the controversy, it turned out to not be worth playing anyway.

I'm still gonna get it.

8. It's quite obvious that Nintendo is adamant about preventing online communication, and the overall brokenness of Wii's online gaming is deliberate rather than accidental.

Agreed, it's pathetic. I may just be an idiot, but it was frustrating as hell to share my Mii. Honestly, aside from the Wiimotes, which work very well, the rest of the system seems like its full of a ton of half-assed features that impair the systems usability and annoy me on a daily basis.

I'd also like to add that I was AMAZINGLY pissed off after buying 2 arcade controllers. They have ALL the right buttons to play GC games...they just dont. So now I have to keep 4 GC controllers around. What are all those buttons FOR then? None of the arcade games available use that many buttons!@


Really the only reason I got the Wii was because I dont have an HDTV. As soon as I can afford to get a decent TV, I see my Wii collecting dust if they cant get any better games made than Zelda Crossbow Trainer and Cooking Mama: Cookoff

 

[MulciberXP]

Did the $199 GC launch in the same month against a $599 PS2 ?

You can't buy a Core, go home and play games. You need to buy storage and a game, pushing the price up... not sure the exact cost to get home and play (since I'm not in the 'States) but I'd guess it's closer to $400 compared to a $249 (?) Wii.

Now, the Arcade.... that's an interesting one. You can go home and play in HD I believe, and you get five games. When and how do we get sales split by SKU?

Edit: price and demand have a very strong relationship when you toss in a third variable.... competition.

This is the deception. Sure the system and a Wiimote (sans chuck) is $250, but even to play all the games in Wii Sports you have to get the nunchuck, so add $20 right there. Plus the ENTIRE appeal to the console is that of playing in a group (it's built directly in to the name and front and center to every Wii commercial), so you have to buy another Wiimote and another nun-chuck. Add $60.

This puts us at $330.

Also I couldn't wait to play some of those classic turbo graffix and sega games, so I went and bought 2 Classic controllers, that wont even play GC games, another $40.

Nintendo is killing me with this crap. Sure the system is cute, but now I have a nightmare of a drawer full of redundant controllers and tangled cables. I have 6 controllers and can still only play 2 player games hahaha.

 

[PARANOiA]

Interesting read on the Wii...

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/leve...ame-industry-shot-itself-in-the-joystick.aspx

After reading Harris' alternative explanation of why the critically maligned Carnival Games had become a hit--a "fundamental disconnect between how the people who review Wii games play them and how everyone else plays them"--we asked him to expand on his remarks for our guest post series P2P. He agreed, and the resulting essay is a thoughtful look at how the evolution of videogame controllers has contributed to the shrinking of the industry's reach, and why the Wii remote and nunchuk--even as the games built around them continue to confound the critical establishment--are beacons of hope for a stagnant medium. Enjoy.

I actually agree with the article... the Wii is not meant your people like us.

 

[Corwin_B]

This is the deception. Sure the system and a Wiimote (sans chuck) is $250, but even to play all the games in Wii Sports you have to get the nunchuck, so add $20 right there.

The Wii comes with a nunchuk out of the box. Nice trolling attempt, though.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Here's the link info: http://www.metacritic.com/games/wii/scores/

Note also that there are 12 total games scoring above 80, which is about 10% of the Wii's library. I'll go ahead and list the 85+ games with their scores

1 Super Mario Galaxy - 97
2 Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - 95
3 Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition - 91
4 Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - 90
5 Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure - 87
6 Super Paper Mario - 85
7 Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - 85

7 games is 6% of the Wii's current library. Now if you go to PS3 here, you'll see 12 titles scoring above an 85 (12%), and 36 scoring above 80 (35%). Here's the data for the Xbox 360 up through the end of 2006 (since Metacritic doesn't give the release month):

Xbox 360
85+ titles: 14 or 10%
80+ titles: 40 or 29%

What about the Xbox? Its 1st year library had a bad reputation, with such duds as Bloodwake and Azurik. Again, data is through the end of 2002.

Xbox
85+ titles: 25 or 14%
80+ titles: 52 or 28%

For the N64, since Metacritic doesn't list every N64 game, I'm just going by the IGN scores, which are usually within a few points of the industry average. I may have miscounted, since IGN doesn't present the data in a way that I can put it easily into a spreadsheet. This data s through Nov 1, 1996.

N64
85+ titles: 7 (23%)
80+ titles: 11 (37%)

As you can see, despite having a library of only around 30 titles by Nov 1 after launch, the N64 had approximately the same number of 80+ and 85+ titles as the Wii! What other mainstream console has such a poorly rated 1st-year library? My guess is that the Saturn's library rates very poorly, but it's not on Metacritic. But as you can see here, the Wii has the worst-rated year 1 library of any console in recent memory.

 

[MulciberXP]

The Wii comes with a nunchuk out of the box. Nice trolling attempt, though.

you're right, i forgot, i had to go to best buy to get a chuk because gamestop didnt have any. picked up the other wiimote with wiiplay. (my mind was kind of messed up that day. i had got back from china the day before and had some serious jet lag) anyway so my pricing was off $10 + a nearly worthless set of minigames. you must be proud of your rolly eyed comment after scoring such a huge interweb victory!

 

[fearsomepirate]

Can't you play VC games with GC controllers anyway?