Okay, everyone knows that the Wii is the most sought after console right now, one of the cheapest to develop for and one of the most difficult to get good controls for. It also has perhaps the highest density of completely uninformed gamers in its userbase.

Nintendo has come out with their big 3 names already (Mario, Zelda, Metroid) and is going to be following up with some even more highly anticipated games still. (Brawl, Mario Kart) these have all shown incredible advances in the gameplay for each of these series, sometimes incorporating a large amount of the Wiimote's motions controls, and sometimes only a bare minimum.

But the same can't be said for 3rd parties. Games like ninja breadman and chicken shoot are just as likely to be bought as treasures like Zack & Wiki. What if No More Heroes ends up with just as cold of a reception?

Obviously Nintendo can hardly be held responsible for what 3rd parties put into their marketing, or what they DON'T put into their games, but Nintendo is still the one taking the heat for allowing crap games to exist and good games to fall to the wayside. Wasn't it the fact that Nintendo enforced restrictions and demanded quality from 3rd parties that caused them to abandon Nintendo for the easier to develop for and less restrictive Playstation?

So what is Nintendo to do?

 

I would like to see Nintendo start offering a user review channel so that Wii owners can submit detailed ratings, reviews, and warnings, about any Wii game available. Since this would only be accessible through the Wii console, it would mean only people who owned a Wii would be able to play and submit reviews. This would be set up very similarly to how the Wii Vote channel is set up, but instead of voting on questions, you access a database of games to give your ratings to.

To keep this from being hacked, this would also use your Mii as a sort of avatar, which would keep track of what ratings you gave to what games. The ratings you would see would be based on people that gave ratings to games similar to yours. This ensures that you have a more accurate idea of what YOU would think of the game, not what some 80 year old WW2 veteran, or what some housewife, or 8 year old pokemon freak, or reclusive antisocial FPS nerd thinks of it.
This means that if someone tries to hack the game and give a bunch of good games a really low rating, or bad games a good rating, it won't matter. If you gave certain games a high rating, and they gave it a low one, then their ratings won't have any bearing on what you're seeing games being rated at. You'll only see ratings from people that rated games similarly to how you do.

The rating system should also require you to register the game or at least have played it before being able to rate it. By registering the game, your rating of it would have more weight, but it would require you to punch in the pin number that comes in the box.
However, there should also be an option of accessing your gameplay data, as you receive an email that lists the amount of time you've played a game. As long as the Wii Review Channel can find data that you've played the game, then it will let you submit a lower weighted rating based on the fact that you've at least played the game.

Another option should also the ability to HYPE a game. Essentially, to have a list of games that are already out, and games that are yet to be released, but you haven't owned or played. By searching for the game and then giving it a HYPE hit, you can point out that game as something you are interested in even without playing it. HYPEd games would then be displayed to other Wii owners who have rated games similarly to you and perhaps also HYPEd games that matched up to other games that you have HYPEd.

This would allow users to support games they're interested in, creating a sort of 'super word of mouth' effect, and ensure that even causal Wii owners have easy access to see what games to look into purchasing and what games to avoid.

I was also considering the idea that clicking on a game would be able to access the internet browser and take you directly to sites about that game. Developers could even create a webpage specifically formatted for the Wii in which to showcase their game trailers. this would leave marketing and advertising in the hands of the 3rd party developers, but still give them some support.

 

What do people think of this idea? Does anyone see any obvious ways that this method could still be exploited? If so, do they see any ways in which these exploitations could be reasonably patched? Are there any other features people think should go with this?

good idea, but Nintendo would never do something like this... or atleast i doubt it. They don't even seem to care about their own games.

What I'm suggesting is essentially an online, user generated content version of Nintendo Power. Nintendo Power was one of the ways that Nintendo gave support for good games and kept users from grabbing bad games and thinking it was actually the norm for Nintendo.
That was back when Nintendo was building up steam the first time, but I think the magazine has fallen behind the times and needs replaced with a readily available internet source. namely one that can be accessed directly from the wii.

yeaah something of that would really help and be usefull, mii channel? eveybody votes? are crap!

fantastic idea - this is really the type of innovation that the channels should be used for rather than the token hand outs we've been getting so far. The first few channels should have been this, Demo channel, some kind of showcase channel where devs can post videos, footage etc of their up and coming games for Wii owners to go and view and a channel where Wii owners can submit their ideas of what they want to see in a game (kind of an esuggestion box) to make the Wii development easier for dev companies (what better way of knowing what type of game to write than to see a kind of chart of submitted ideas / Genre from genuine Wii owners)

Come on Nintendo - you've given a great concept with the channel system but the implementation has been lame.

Great, so now who will join me in writing emails to nintendo? we can even point them to this site as reference for where they saw this thread. Nintendo gets a great idea, and VGChartz could even get some secondary notice from it.

It is a great idea, in fact, I think that the Minna no Nintendo Channel (Nintendo for everyone) just released in Japan so far does actually something like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvSh1Pt-iM

Where you can download demos for the DS and give some short of opinion about the games that you play on your Wii.

I think that they were talking about something like, you play a game, and you give you're age so another gamers could see the average age of the user of that game.

also I think that they were talking about showing which games have been played the longest hours on the Wii, so people could see the most played games on the system.

We'll have to wait as usual to find out

Or, you could use the user review section of any good gaming website (Gamespot... no wait, scratch that; IGN, etc.)

DMeisterJ said: Or, you could use the user review section of any good gaming website (Gamespot... no wait, scratch that; IGN, etc.)

You could, i could, but we're talking about the most casual of Wii owners, the ones who apparenlty think games like Chicken shoot and ninja breadman are worth purchasing, simply because they're cheap. These people are teh same ones naysayers are going on about ruining the industry. you can't just boot them out, you have to educate them, and you have to do it in a way that gets that education out TO them. A Wii channel specifically for reviewing games this way would ensure that they had a good game list right at their fingertips.

Lets face that, you already said "or any good gaming website, Gamespot, no scratch that."

Even if it's a joke, it still demonstrates the basic concept of the problems with finding a "GOOD" game review website. Even if it is a good game, there's still teh issue of the basic differences in what a casual gamer wants vs what a more hardcore gamer wants.

Yuk04 said: I think that they were talking about something like, you play a game, and you give you're age so another gamers could see the average age of the user of that game. also I think that they were talking about showing which games have been played the longest hours on the Wii, so people could see the most played games on the system.

See, this still holds the problem in that not all 8 year olds like the same games, not all 24 year olds want Manhunt 2, etc. Just because people play wii sports 24 hours a day because that's the only game they've got doesn't mean that's the game everyone wants to keep playing. That's why I'm talking about having the rating system represent games that other people with similarly rated games enjoy. That way your PERSONAL preference is what you will see put towards the top of the list. Not just an age bracket.

 

 

I didn't read everything, but that's a great idea Grey. Don't know what help you'd need in writing Nintendo (but I offer it anyway). Just e-mail them your idea as you've laid it out.