[QUOTE="Grammaton-Cleric"]
[QUOTE="Bigboi500"]
The good ole "reviews give a game it's value" excuse. Never mind the cultural differences and what gets lost in translation. Judging a largly niche Japanese library of Wii games by what Western gaming critics think is equal to giving credibility to some unknown Japanese kotaku writing a review of Dragon Age in Japan. I've never said all Western games on consoles are terrible or don't deserve to exist, but compare games like Dragon Age and Fallout 3/New Vegas to their PC counterparts and they run like crap and look like crap comparatively. They're also full of bugs, don't have mods and are often "dumbed down" with missing content, lack of menus and features. The problem with consoles is the hardware isn't up-gradable and devs are forced to scale back for many years, and the results are apparent in the games. If those kinds of games were not forced to be co-developed or even fully developed on weaker consoles and then ported to PC, those games would be much better.
Japanese games don't usually depend on high-end hardware to be good, games like Disgaea and Fire Emblem, Mario and Ratchet, Dragon Quest and Shin Megami Tensei. With the inter-mingling of Western-developed games that sell well in the West, even the Japanese developers would rather make a quick buck and develop a Homefront or a Medal of Honor game instead of making a proper Chrono Trigger sequel. The decline of Japanese games in the West is due to that rather than an alleged "Western innovation" from genres like WRPGs were you sift through dialog trees and uninteresting characters with boring personalities.
You might be content to play inferior versions of multiplats that run on low frames per second and sub HD, but for those kinds of games I want the true and immersive experiences that the developers had in mind for their games. You can also console yourself that Sony and Microsoft consoles do infact look better than Nintendo games, but they're still sub-standard and tremendously inferior to what PC gamers are playing. That cycle will continue in to next generation as well.
Bigboi500
The issue when comparing libraries isn't merely one of critical consensus but also to demonstrate the massive gulf of quantity that separates Nintendo consoles from others. Both HD systems enjoy, respectively, a much broader selection of genres and a much deeper amount of quality titles within those genres. The onus of any console is the consistent delivery of software and on that front the last three successive Nintendo consoles have failed to deliver anything but an arbitrary smattering of quality titles, many of them 1st party Nintendo games.
Personally, I still find much to love about Japanese games but since you decided to make this an issue of East vs. West then I am obliged to deliver a stark bit of reality, especially since you are claiming Western development is stagnant even while evidence would demonstrate the antithesis of that statement. Meanwhile, the Japanese have struggled to maintain relevance outside of their home turf, which is why companies like Capcom and even Nintendo have been forced to hire outside developers to make Western-type games.
The notion that Japanese games do not rely on or require a higher grade of technology isn't entirely true either. Plenty of Japaense developers have pushed the visual envelop and continue to do so. The truth is that many of these developers utilize lower specs because, frankly, the fan base will buy these games regardless of visual quality, which is why Nintendo doesn't much care to push the medium visually.
Why invest any additional resources when you can churn out a cheaper product for a premium price?
As to your bizarre traversal into PC vs. Console gaming territory, again, either purposely or due to your own pronounced misunderstanding, you over simplify the issue. Firstly, PC's are not dedicated gaming machines but are rather abstract, broadly functional devices that also play games. As such they occupy an entirely different category and they also require an entirely different modality for programming and utilizing such a construct for gaming. Consoles by contrast are dedicated gaming machines and while they are, traditionally, closed box, having a standardized and static set of specs allows developers to squeeze far more performance out of those systems than the raw technical specifications would suggest.
And for all your blathering about the inferiority of MS and Sony consoles, what you fail to grasp is that this is one of the most protracted generations we've experienced, which is why the gulf between PC and console gaming is currently so pronounced. When the new systems launch later this year, that gulf will be reduced dramatically, as it always has, and those consoles will enjoy relative parity with mid-level and high-end PC games until, as usual, the gulf gradually widens. None of that means, as you so ridiculously assert, that these games aren't being delivered as intended nor do you seem to fathom just how many console exclusives never make it to the PC. Currently, I can't play Red Dead Redemption on the PC, nor can I play most fighting games (a genre the Japanese still excel at beautifully) nor can I enjoy any of the God of War or Uncharted titles, etc.
Console gaming has always existed within a different set of parameters and, like it or not, that construct includes Nintendo. Your attempt to deride consoles based on the PC market doesn't even fit into this discussion, contextually speaking.
But truly, you are just a matrix of excuses, leaping from one issue to another while flatly refusing to rebut many of my points, most likely because you cannot. That isn't an insult but rather an observation, as you've made the mistake of foisting your own incredibly narrow tastes onto a broader context that makes it literally impossible to defend these ideas from anywhere but the most subjective of mindsets.
For me, this isn't just about my personal tastes or predilections; I have an academic passion for this medium that will not allow subjectivism to wholly dictate my analysis of gaming. As somebody who was weaned on Nintendo (and counts many of their older titles as among the best software ever made) I have come to accept some hard truths about a company that no longer understands a significant percentage of the core market; specifically, what they want and what they expect.
People like you attempt to frame the complaints levied against the Wii U as superficial issue of processing power and visual fidelity. Predictably, you employ arguments about PC gaming, yet you fail to grasp the real concerns, which are that Nintendo is unable or unwilling to meet even the most modest of expectations of what a console should deliver. Ironically, they at one time were the shinning beacon of many of these standards, and I would also assert that their handhelds have maintained that quality even as their consoles have slipped beneath the waves of mediocrity.
Seriously, how does one justify such antiquated hardware when even a modest increase in power would have been welcome? How to justify such a clunky online interface and functionality that seems, even now, to be entirely perfunctory? How to justify such a tiny hard drive? The piss-poor lineup and the subsequent drought?
All Nintendo had to do was take the resources they foolishly dumped into that tablet controller and instead invest that tech into the console, then pump out some HD entries from their stable of franchises and I would have forked over the cash day one. And that is the final and perhaps most poignant factor that you do not grasp: Nintendo doesn't need you because, regardless of what they do, you will buy their products. They already have you.
Nintendo needs me and gamers like me. I am a professional with a healthy amount of disposable income and I purchase copious amounts of software each and every year. With the soccer moms and casual consumers showing little interest in the console, Nintendo needs people like me and currently, I am as indifferent to their console as humanely possible.
Nintendo claimed they wanted the core gamer back, then made a system that is the antithesis of what many (perhaps even most) of those core gamers wanted.
I can fully understand your passion for video games because I, too, have it myself. I've been gaming since Atari 2600 and am not, currently, a PC gamer. I've thoroughly enjoyed the libraries of all three consoles this generation, and can't see why you absolutely love two of them, and downright hate the other. I hate having to make lists, but the Wii had great titles like Muramasa, A Boy and His Blob, No More Heroes, Xenoblade, The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, Fragile Dreams, Zack & Wiki, Monster Hunter Tri, Rune Factory, all non-Nintendo third party games that were fantastic imo, and while quantity-wise they don't come close offerings of the other systems, they are great games. That's reason enough to have the system and Wii U will be at least as good and probably much better, as far as libraries go, despite not having the power of other systems.The reason I brought up PC gaming was because of the graphical superiority to console games. Just because PC's are so much better, it doesn't mean PS3 and 360 graphics can't be enjoyed. Same goes for Wii graphics, and in the future, Wii U graphics.
And what you say about a company needing their fan bases and new customers, that applies to them all. Sony and Microsoft cannot survive solely on their fanbases, and they have a lot of work ahead of them as well just like Nintendo. Having enjoyed most of this generations libraries on all consoles, I just can't understand the rampant fandom for Sony and Microsoft on this board. Don't get me wrong, I love what they have to offer even more than what Nintendo gave this generation, but I don't believe that those offerings are night and day better, either.
The issue isn't graphics, its gameplay/game design. PCs are exponentially stronger than consoles, but that the overwhelming majority of designers have no interest in exploiting that power in ways that impact gameplay/game design (aka meaningful ways) for fear of alienating console gamers. Of course, genres which console gamers largely ignore such as strategy games tend not to worry about console gamers, but shooters and wprgs are all made with an eye towards the console market nowadays.
Also, the notion that Sony and MS are hamstrung by the narrow tastes of their fanbases in the same way that Nintendo is just doesn't hold water. Throughout the history of their consoles Sony and MS have always had a lot of third party hits from a wide range of genres. By way of contrast non-Nintendo fans stopped buying Nintendo consoles in the N64 era and as a result Nintendo's console fanbase has gotten more and more insular. Goldeneye was a smash hit on the N64, but nowadays Nintendo's fans have decided that Mario/Zelda/Metroid is all they need. The influx of casuals the Wii saw didn't seem to change sales patterns of core games any (the sort of game that sold well on the GC sold well on the Wii).
In terms of software support, the difference between the Wii and the other consoles is night and day. Everyone, from tiny publishers/developers like Atlus to megapublishers like EA and Activision, chooses to focus on consoles other than the Wii. It doesn't matter how big or small your company is, if you believe an audience won't buy your games, there is no point in making the effort.
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