The Wii Malcontents

[Picko]

HappySqurriel said:

Picko said:
People should not simply have to accept mediocrity, nor should they ever be asked to do so.

To some extent, you are looking at this the wrong way. Instead of asking whether there's a problem with the people who hate the Wii, why not ask whether there's a problem with the Wii itself? Criticism is not necessarily bad, and not necessarily incorrect, and I do not understand why so many feel that Nintendo should be beyond criticism.

If a system has crap games then it should be criticised, and there are a lot of mediocre games on the Wii. In fact there is an unusual amount of mediocre games on the Wii as a percentage of total games. Check game rankings, metacritic or even the likes of IGN, they'll all reinforce the notion that there's a reason that some owners of the Wii complain about the system. The average game on IGN for example is rated only a 6.5 (approx) about a point lower than the average PS3 game (A system which is considered to have a very weak lineup). The line-up thus far is weak, significantly weaker than one might expect at this point in its life. There are a handful of excellent games (MP3, Zelda, RE4, PM) but the quality falls away remarkably quick.

Now I agree, that non-owners complaining is annoying. Afterall ignorance is not a virtue. However, if owners want to complain they should, simply because they should never be asked to accept mediocrity simply because others find it annoying.

But the problem is not with the system's hardware, nor is it a problem with Nintendo's efforts, the problem lies entirely with third party efforts to date on the Wii ...

 

When I state "Wii" I use it as a proxy for both the hardware and the games. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the hardware (although I acknowledge that some people might have an issue with motion control as it isn't for everyone). Hardware is good provided it does what it is supposed to do and doesn't break. The Wii achieves both those aims. I genuinely enjoy my 360 but as we've seen the hardware is crap (software is mostly very good however).

I really don't think there's any scope to complain about the Wii's hardware, in fact I would consider such arguments to be silly, I think that for the most part when people, legitimately, complain about the Wii they do so because of the game library. Sure Nintendo's offerings have been mostly excellent but they are only a small part of a big library. The third party offerings tend to be awful and rarely worth the price of purchase, and that is a problem and people should complain about that.

It is afterall a legitimate complaint, if we buy a system to play great games and have great experiences then we should be unhappy if there are only a handful of games that offer such experiences (Even if those experiences are very, very good). The Wii has tremendous potential that has only come close to being realised in a handful of cases. Right now it would be hard to argue that motion control has been a huge success in terms of quality of output (although its been a big success in terms of sales). Feedback (including complaint) plays an integral part in the game making process, and if you stop Wii owners from complaining about bad games then the end result is that game makers simply keep making them. If owners complain loud and strongly enough perhaps it could provide the right incentives for third parties to actually try a little and make the Wii a worthwhile purchase, beyond just for Nintendo's games. Would that not be a good thing?

Ultimately I just don't see how one can argue that Wii owners shouldn't be allowed to complain if they are unhappy with the system. The Wii isn't a perfect system, and we shouldn't pretend as such. When the complaints are legitimate and they are communicated effectively then we shouldn't complain about it.