7 Bit Arcade

The title of this feature for all that are musically unaware, is a homage to Ian Dury’s song, ‘Reasons to by Cheerful’ a dry look at the slightly boring world that surrrounded him. The same goes for my Wii. However, this sad, dust attracting box is leaving me for a new home at a slighty deprecated value than what I bought for it. But why am I selling it I hear the Nintendo fan boys shout? Why are you selling the party wonder that is the Nintendo Wii, a console based on bringing people together so they can fling arms and potentially destroy all objects within their radius. The reasons for letting go of my fandom and the chance to play potentially the best platformer of 2010 follow:

For those not in the know, 2010, the start of the tenners, has the return of Italian Plumber booked securely into its release schedule. However, here in lies the problem with the Wii, the central plight the Nintendo has yet to plunder.

The Wii Games Market

The Wii market is polluted with two types of titles. The first include the words ‘play’, ‘family’ and ‘collection’ whilst the second type of wii games try to incorporate the Wii‘s motion sensitivity to do everything in the game. It is this overkill that in my mind killed any chance of the Wii ever appealing to more than just a casual gamer. This is has not done Nintendo and Mr Miyamato any harm as the sales figures of the Wii are astronomical compared to any other next gen system (Kerchinngggg). But what it has done is drive away proper gamers who have returned to their Xbox’s and PS3′s.

Games such as Madworld, No More Heroes were hit with news stories that centered around the violence and gore that they were bringing to Nintys kiddy system, so any chance of these games succeeded were grinded up inside the PEGI pepper mill. On the subject of Sega making another super mature game like Madworld, Mike Hayes, Sega boss, responsed with a possible umm and arr:

What’s your strategy as far as core games on Wii go after the problems you had with MadWorld? Are you reducing your presence in that area?

No, not at all – you’ll see that at E3. One of the things is whether they’re super-mature – that’s a different thing. But the Wii market is huge. Going for the super-hardcore? Probably, the answer is not. But do we think there are edgy games we can bring out on Wii? Yes.

But what does he mean by edgy? Will sega consider bringing out games such as ‘The Club’ on the Wii, heavily flawed yes, but is that what is meant by non super mature. Sega are very committed to trying to break the hardcore market on the Wii and have shown this commitment through the release of The Conduit, even though it was panned by the majority of reviewers (Zero Punctuations review is key) it still managed to do well, hence being a foundation for Sega to bring their core games to the Wii

Hayes: We actually regard The Conduit as a success. We shipped 300,000 units, sold through half of those and now it’s at the point where it’s selling consistently at a time when Wii sales are generally depressed in the marketplace. So what does that tell you? We still kind of don’t know.

What we can say is that we’ll still do mature games for the Wii market because with an install base of some 34 million in Europe and America (maybe half of whom don’t own Xbox 360s and PS3s)…. So even if you took half of those where they’re not into those (core) games, you’ve still got 8 million consumers to go for. So I think the sheer scale of the Wii allows a shooter, or a mature game, to be a niche but a successful niche. And because the development costs can be less on Wii, that means you can sell less to be successful…. We can take more risks on the Wii.

What is true, is that developing for the Wii is a lot cheaper, which leads me back to my central point on this section. Crap games. Like, would you ever play this for example without constantly thinking about Sarah Jessica Parker.

The wii has recently been at the centre of speculation of getting a successor, dare I say it, a Wii 2(gether), which brings another reason for selling it.

Wii-quel

We should all be aware by now that the Wii is not the only motion detecting device on the market, as Microsoft and Sony have released their bad boys into this lucrative ‘make a tit out of yourself’ business. Whilst these two giants planned out the first foray into the motion detection arena, Nintendo has been sitting out listening to what consumers would like to see in a possible Wii 2. Cue the over-enthusiastic rumour columns of Internet blogs as various sources came out flying with what was to be in the Wii 2. Below be a few rumours that I have found.

• Blu-Ray Drive
• 1080p so you can play Cooking Mama in HHHDDDDD
• Mind Control
• A new controller and nunchuckLink

I left one item off the list as I was flabbergasted by what it was stating.

a higher specification graphics chip than Sony’s PS3

What. Ex-f**king-squeeze ma second, did you ever read this? Army use PS3

Oh and this one. It’s about curing cancer

So it seems that the Wii will be getting a chip more powerful that *cue epic voice* the world!!!! *end voice*

Anywho,

This is a contributing factor to me selling my Wii as it is now starting to live in the past, a fact Nintendo realised when they released the Wii Motion Plus, or the most expensive bit of blue tac ever that you stick on the bottom of your controller to make it heavier. Duh. So why keep something that will be out done but the end of the year by its bigger and possible better older brother, hence another reason for the sale.

I just don’t use it, not even at paaarties

I do have friends, honest, I don’t give names to pieces of mould in my tea mug and ask them if they would like to play some games. I have real talking people friends, with personalities. However, shouldn’t we all be up for a game on the Wii when we are slightly drunkard, as that is what it is aimed at for those who remember the Pac Man Age? No is the answer here, as we have recently seen that party games on devices where you don’t have to see how fast you can waggle your hand are much more satisfying. Buzz is evidence to support this.

The Wii is marketed in the UK as being a console for ‘everyone’, the recent advertising campaign with Ant & Dec just cemented this fact even more. The premise of the advert was to show a group of people of multiple ethnicities having fun playing on the Wii. The thing is though, these adverts work, as the Wii is accessible for everyone. We all have stories of getting someone to play a Wii game who has never played one before, and then laughing at the consequences, so in that port of call it succeeded. But then, did that person every play the console again after their gaming cherry was popped? Probably not. It is a very expensive bit of equipment to use only when cheeky Geordies are in the vicinity of your television.

So why are we keeping hold of the Wii, a less superior device in this modern world of next generation consoles? Are we still held hostage to its motion detection niche even though more powerful techniques are appearing? Will we still buy the sequel to Carnival: Fun Games just because it is the latest game to appear on the console to hopefully bring us together, just like Ant & Dec hoped.

With the recent announcement of ‘The Conduit 2′, it does seem that developers are continuing the support of the Wii but for how long? Only time will tell.

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