Food for Thought: 4th Gen Parallels in American Market

[HappySqurriel]

Final-Fan said:

Sullla said:

Finally, I very much dispute than online multiplayer is this generation's "have to have" feature. Maybe to the core gamer, but hardly so for the typical consumer. The Wii has bare-bones multiplayer, yet it's outsold the 360 and PS3 combined in something like 80% of the weeks this year. That claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

That's because the Wii is insanely popular.  It's got inferior graphics, too, which is the perpetual "must have" feature -- but it so revolutionizes games in other ways that people just don't care.  And if online-multi isn't seen as "must have", why did Metroid catch so much flak for its lack of such?  

IMO it is quite hard to find anything in console history that can be compared very closely to the Wii.  The Game Boy also had inferior hardware and graphics, but the battery life issue so dominated handhelds at the time that it was an advantage, not a disadvantage; and the controls were anything but revolutionary. 

The DS, like the Wii, has a revolutionary control system as well as 2 screens (which -- like the Wii -- many critics thought would just be gimmicks), but its technology was a huge step up from the GBA (akin to SNES to N64); its competitor merely chose to make an even bigger technological leap.  

Are there any consoles that are a better fit for the Wii than the GB or DS?   

Because the people who were giving it flack were the same small userbase that supports online gameplay?