He said that like Metroid Prime, it's still a wait and see for the actual game.

Pretty much this. All the cries that first person would ruin Metroid was just history preparing to repeat itself.

It must be pretty hard for Malstrom to accept that he's wrong if he has to keep writing articles about MOM. It's coming out in 3 months, I'm sure he can find something else to complain about.

How can you know he's wrong when the game isn't out yet, and he isn't even saying the game is certain to be bad?

I think alot of people who are really into the specific franchises like 3d Mario, 3d Zelda and Metroid kinda bought a Wii for one of these games, played the hell outta them, felt they werent given more of the same and at some point during second half 2008 /first half of 2009 sold their Wii.

If these games turn out uber amazing and all release this year, I think alot of these people will rebuy the Wii. In that way, you could say these games really are system sellers. Now, especially since the Black Wii is released everywhere. (i'm pretty sure the black wii will relase in the US during this year with a Wii Sports Resort w/motion plus packin, which will be another incentive for these ppl to reinvest in the Wii)

I know ppl (who hated NSMBWii for some ridicoulus reason that I cannot comprehend) whom sold their Wii's and will rebuy it if Galaxy 2 recieves rave reviews.

Metroid never sold to the large audience. Making a game story driven isn't going to increase that, however since Metroid never sold to a large audience, why not at least try a new approach. So I understand Malstroms view, I do stand by my statement. When he writes his BOS articles he's fine since all he is doing is correlating data and events. When he writers his blog he should just not.

I will ask a more fundamental question -- does every first-party game have to be a system seller?

Some seem to think that.

Maybe the idea is to have a cumulative effect which means several positives cause buying.

Maybe the idea is to maintain a happy and game-buying ownership base.

Mike from Morgantown

Hmm...he wants to make it more story focused this time around?

So he's going for modernization. This is pretty risky, but I'm intrigued.

I love me my obscure Nintendo games, the Fire Emblems and Sin and Punishments of the world, so i support non-system sellers. The issue is that "several positives causes buying" isn't really how Nintendo has operated. They've given the heavy lifting generally to one game at a time, and the rest is just for the sake of software sales, or so i think anyway.

I'll derail the discussion a bit here, but ain't that like the best FMV on Wii?

There will be gameplay to it, it's not gonna be a movie, the reason the story is talked about so much is simply that it's so different from what Nintendo usually does. Anyway, we did get info on how the game plays and confirmation that there'll still be backtracking and such, and I doubt Nintendo would cut a lot on game content for these cinematics, as the actual developers are not the ones making them, so I don't think all this doom talk is justified.

The only thing that does terrify me is if we get to see Samus pregnant :O

The main idea behind the design changes is to try and get Japanese people interested in the franchise, that's their stated intent anyway.  Its about trying to broaden the market for the Metroid franchise specifically.