• 21May 07

  Effect of the Wii on next gen

  I don't think their is any disagreement, at the current moment in time, Nintendo's Wii is the most popular of the three next-gen consoles. The point of this blog however is to look at what the possible effects on the Wii's success could be. I myself enjoy playing the Wii with friends in small groups but I would definately choose either the 360 or the PS3 over it if I was forced to pick one because I find it relatively underwhelming when playing alone (when compared to the other two).

  This got me thinking about what could happen with the next generation of consoles (PS4 and the successors to the Wii and 360). If the Wii proves to be the most profitable of all three consoles how will this effect the minds of Sony and Microsoft when developing their new machines? Will they choose to spend less on the raw power of the machine to keep the price down? Will we end up with a genertation of more affordable consoles that, certainly graphically, are only a minor advancement on the previous generation? To me, this would be a very bad thing. While the Wii stands well alone I don't think console gaming would be as satisfying if all three of the machines were of a similar hardware power. I must stress that I am not in any way bashing the Wii I am just stating that I would rather play games such as Gears of War, Oblivion, Ghost Recon, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy etc. than a collection of mini-games that, whilst fun for a while, aren't what I would consider 'great games'.

  Nintendo are appealing to non-gamers with their machine, I think they have already stated this themselves. I am just worried that by widening the audience in creating a more basic console with less in depth games we could lose games, such as the ones I have mentoned above, which push powerful consoles to their limits.

  Thank you for your time and please, I have seen Wii fans complain about developers not paying as much attention developing Wii games on these forums and my argument links that to the fact Nintendo is opening itself to a less serious or hardcore market so in a way I agree with you so please do not comment moaning about me bashing the Wii.

  • Posted May 21, 2007 4:39 am GMT
  • Category: Opinion
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