Wii Owners Looking at a Nintendo Drought?

The site Computer and Videogames has up an (unverifiable article) stating that several anticipated Wii titles are going to be delayed until late 2007. Specifically, they mention Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption as being out of our hands until the Christmas season next year. They report this information via 'reliable sources', and Nintendo is unwilling to confirm or deny the claims as of yet. N'Gai at Newsweek reminds us that Reggie Fils-Aime denied the possibility of a 'Nintendo drought' in an interview they conducted back in October. Here's hoping he doesn't live to regret these words: "... The third example I would give you is Mario Galaxy, another from-the-ground-up Wii game that we are strategically timing the launch to make sure that we continue driving momentum through 2007. So N'Gai, how do I answer the question, 'Will there be no drought,' and 'How will we make sure that there are fantastic titles for Wii?' The answer is Zelda, Metroid and Mario. Which is a pretty darn good lineup."

Wheres my Wii...

[deggy]

Games drought - What about the console drought. They may be doing better than the PS3 but they're still like gold-dust. Where's my Wii???

Re:Old Games, Pshhaw

[maynard]

I have an old SNES that still works great. Why re-buy all those old games again? Never mind the difference in manufacturing quality between the SNES and a PS2 or 360. Hell, my first 360 didn't even last an hour; the SNES fifteen years and still going strong.

Europe only?

[Bloomy]

Maybe this is just for Europe. The release lists linked in TFA have dates for games that are already out in the US (Children of Mana, Star Fox Command, Excite Truck).

Drought? Who Cares!

[freeweed]

Fortunately, Nintendo came out with a strong enough launch lineup that I really couldn't care less if nothing new came out for another 6 months. Include stragglers like Elebits (which was a couple of weeks late) and the system already has a solid half dozen must-haves.

The Wii is an overwhelming success not because people are ga-ga over the latest and greatest, and just trying to be "first on the block" to have one. It's successful because there's already a TON of fun to be had with it. The last time people were buying a system by the million JUST TO PLAY THE PACK-IN was the NES and Super Mario Bros. We all know how that one turned out. It took a year or two for much else to happen (I'm thinking Zelda and the ensuing Nintendo-mania of the late 1980s), but in the meantime everyone was very happy just playing SMB and a few other early releases.

Other than the real hardcore types who buy 20-30 games each and every year, there's more than enough Wii goodness to last the average person for 6-12 months. Coincidentally, this is exactly the type of person who the Wii is aimed at.

horses

[headonfire]

The answer is Zelda, Metroid and Mario.

You mean the answer is flogging dead horses by using the same franchises over and over again. Not that I don't love me some Zelda, Metroid or Mario action, as most games in the franchises are excellent; but I'd like to see something else move into Nintendo territory. Please, for the love of god. Give us some fresh meat. Hardware-wise, we're in a new realm, and it's been fantastic. The DS, the Wii, both great. Now let's try some new characters, shall we? Mario doesn't have to retire, just, let him take a short vacation, and focus some of that Mario energy into a new project, a new product, that's gonna make us scream.

Re:Drought now or drought later

[togashi06]

3rd party Developers are not looking at the Wii as a place to make new creative games - why do it on old technology? The Wii is going to be looked at as a dumping ground or a place to make a cheap buck. PS2/XBOX ports, new levels on an old engine, rework the control scheme and push it out the door.

Can't agree with you on that, just look at DS compared to PSP. Which one is getting the really creative games? It's not about power, DS and Wii have more than enough to deliver a complete experience( who has an HDTV set at home, anyway?), just look at DS's catalogue... elite beat agents, final fantasy 3 just to quote some. The last thing I hear from someone who has played them is a complain about it being old technology.

The minigames are the whole point!

[freeweed]

Funny that you'd mention minigames. Again, you have to think of just who the Wii is aimed at.

Is it aimed at the guy who plays Zelda all the way through 10 times? No.
Is it aimed at the gal who collects every last star, heart, bonus fish, or whatever in Mario to unlock another costume? No.
The guy who races every last track down to the microsecond hoping to finally open another level? No.

Is it aimed at folks who just want to sit down and have some fun for a while? YES.

Minigame collections, to me, are exactly what the doctor ordered. Not some sprawling 100+ hours of gameplay. Not some endless quest for little reward.

I'm in the gaming middle. I play through Zelda, but ONCE. Once I'm done, it has zero lasting value to me. Minigames, on the other hand - hell, I'm STILL playing Tetris, which for all intents and purposes these days, is a minigame. Quick if you want, no story, no collecting things, nothing. You just fire it up and play for a few minutes. I find the mingame style of games are playable far longer than most modern games.

Re:Wheres my Wii...

[nonsequitor]

Ok, I'll bite. However I think stores may start revising their return policies for these hot items once they flood back onto their shelves after the Christmas season is over and everyone who wasn't able to sell their's on ebay returns it. The stores know that they lose potential holiday sales because of this, scalper's aren't returning unsold tickets after the event. People who were willing to buy one as a gift for a relative, now will not be buying it at all and total sales will drop. Whether or not they will sell once returned remains to be seen. The Wii is going to be hard to come by for a while yet, but I predict seeing a PS3 on the shelf will not be an uncommon occurrence after the new year.

Re:Wheres my Wii...

[meepzorb]

Parasites? That's the free market you're badmouthing. Market demand is high, supply is low.

Note the original poster's point: "Supply is low" because of scalpers (who have no intention of actually using the product) waiting on line to grab the PS3s before legitimate buyers can.

These scalpers then attempt to generate wealth that they neither earned nor created on eBay-- with no renumeration to the designer, the manufacturer, the supplier, or the retailer.

Scalping isn't an instance of "the free market", it's actually an attempt to profit through interference with the processes of the free market. So yes: "Parasites" is actually an excellent choice of word.

Re:Drought now or drought later

[seebs]

Actually, so far, I'd say you're precisely wrong; this is the one platform offering any real chance to do something different, rather than just the same with more polygons.

Google "drought" count

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

Substitute games for wine, and he could well have been speaking of Nintendo, whose previous consoles have notoriously gone months between significant first-party games. (Google "Nintendo drought" and you'll get more than 190,000 results.)

I did this. I also did a few other searches.

Nintendo drought: 186,000
Sony drought: 328,000
Microsoft drought: 880,000

Oh, he might just have been talking about GameCube. Then:

GameCube drought: 59,300
PlayStation drought: 132,000
Xbox drought: 156,000

What have we learned? Hopefully, NOTHING, since quoting useless, random Google search terms is something we should already know to be a stupid way to emphasize a point.

(The numbers definitely change significantly when you use quotes, but somehow the sentence, "Google `Nintendo drought' and you'll get more than 50 results," doesn't quite have the same idiot-impressing tone to it.)

Re:horses

[LordKronos]

Please, for the love of god. Give us some fresh meat.

Have you tried Animal Crossing or Pikmin? Those are both relatively fresh (2 titles each) and both incredibly fun. With Animal Crossing, I can see how it definitely has limited appeal for many gamers, but I think Pikmin could be great for almost anyone.

Re:Wheres my Wii...

[kubrick]

If you think that's fair or "free market", then you probably thought that KennyBoy was unjustly accused.

If the people selling were happy to sell, and you were happy to buy, that's the free market right there. "Fair" doesn't come into it. A purely free market is not usually a good thing for the majority of the participants in it, which is why we legislate to restrict them (probably not as much as we should, but legislators sell themselves so cheaply these days).

Re:For the love of Wii

[MemoryDragon]

Actually if you look at the mario and zelda games, you will see that the characters often are recycled but the gameplay differs quite a lot, which is a lot compared to many other publishers who recycled the gameplay and exchange the characters and hammer a different title onto them. I recently had the chance to play mario 64 (bought it over the virtual console) and was quite surprised how different the gameplay was to what I was expecting. Instead of doing another pure jump and run this game had an amazing puzzle density from the beginning. Another one is Zelda, twilight princess is simply excellent and quite different compared to the old zelda titles which I had played (although probably very similar to occarina of time) You can blame nintendo for many things, but not for recycling the game over and over again like EA does.

Re:Not necessarily a bad thing

[MemoryDragon]

The main problem is that Nintendos games have excellent quality, every game which does not come close to this quality or even tries to, looks like a stinker, while on other systems they might pass as average games.

If you deliver excellent quality you can compete with Nintendo also on Nintendo systems. Classic example is Rayman Raving rabbits, probably the only non Nintendo must have title for the Wii. And just because the game really is designed for the wii (it would not work on other consoles that way, due to the control scheme)

Publishers like EA who constantly just recycle the same garbage have a hard time on Nintendo systems, but others who try different things and have good quality like Ubisoft lately or also Capcom lately are quite happy there.

Nintendo produces bad games very rarely, while I do not even touch games from certain publishers.

Re:Old Games, Pshhaw

[the dark hero]

you cant replace memories!T_T

....or hours of play time either :P

Re:Drought now or drought later

[thatguywhoiam]

That said - I agree with you otherwise. The new controller is already forcing developers to think outside the box, and I feel that there will be far more innovative and exclusive games for Wii than there will be for PS3 or 360. I'm not saying that those systems won't also have innovative games, but they won't be game-play innovations. PS3 and 360 are definitely going to try to push the envelope on graphics and audio realism, I just don't think they are going to have the same effect as innovative play control is going to have.

But what about the motion sensing controller for the PS3? Surely we can't discount that completely out-of-hand. Yes, it is a me-too idea from Sony riding Nintendo's coattails in this regard, but this is nothing new; Nintendo has pioneered many of the control methods we see commonplace in other consoles today (don't really need to list them). Personally the original dual shock is still my favourite, and I like the sixaxis a lot for that reason.

Anyways my point is - the xbox has the most to lost potentially if there is a real Revolution (ha) in motion sensing games. The PS3 controller is not as detailed in positioning resolution, but it IS there, and a port many of the simpler non-stickhandle type games would not have much trouble (I'm thinking Katamari as opposed to Wii Sports). And don't forget there are 3rd part USB controllers gunning for the Wii remote, that already work on Xb0x360/PC/PS3.

Seems to me the major differences between the Wii Remote and the Sixaxis are one-handed vs two-handed control, and level of positioning resolution.

Re:Wheres my Wii...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Scalping isn't an instance of "the free market", it's actually an attempt to profit through interference with the processes of the free market. So yes: "Parasites" is actually an excellent choice of word."

The truth is in the market, it's all relative... there are a great many thefts, theivery, etc, that go on everyday in the market legally. The truth is the market in theory is a good idea, in practice this attempt by everybody to maximize profits ends up hurting the social fabric and hence you have people who are constantly in fear of losing their livelihoods which spawns moral degeneration, a culture of greed, pettyness and in more extreme cases outright crime.

We could argue the same thing about unequal bargaining power of Publishers versus game developers, or what Wal-mart earns in profits versus what it pays its workers. We could argue that employers steal from employee's through unfair contracts. i.e. Wal-marts, the waltons daughter is looking at buying a 68 million dollar painting, meanwhile most employees at walmart do not have healthcare for their children. Free market my ass.... the market in practice is a bunch of protectionist economic dictators or oligarchs attempting to displace the economic risk onto the weakest groups of some group of people around the world and in society.