| Game_boy said: Xbox Live is a success, not a horrible failure. However, there are three problems that XBL doesn't have: 1. Developers will not take WiiWare seriously as a source of revenue. 2. The console's primary market of casual gamers rarely takes advantage of online features of consoles. 3. The small amount of memory on the Wii makes it inconvenient to buy and play games without using additional cards or redownloading games. The size constraints will limit the quality of avalible games. As I am pro-Nintendo and anti-Microsoft in general, this is an objective summary of my worries with the service. |
1) Square-Enix is already taking WiiWare seriously with their exclusive FF:CC game. Nintendo themselves are taking it seriously by releasing newexclusive games for it. It's only a matter of time before other developers follow suit.
2) The top-selling games on XBL, by far, are casual titles.
3) There's nothing preventing Nintendo from releasing memory expansions, or allowing games to be played off of SD cards. On top of that, WiiWare titles have a 40mb limit, which isn't too much less than XBL's old limit of 50mb. Plenty of quality games were released under that limit. You'd be surprised what you can do with so little space to work with. (Example: Wasn't Super Mario 64 released on only an 8mb cartridge?)
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
