I always find it interesting to see how unknown the Anno franchise still is in most countries. In Germany it's one of the most popular and bestselling franchises, everyone who plays videogames knows the Anno franchise here.
Don't worry about the sucess or future of the overall franchise, btw: Anno 1404 for PC sold more than 100.000 copies within the first 10 days of its release last summer.
I prefer the PC versions - which are Anno 1701 (PAL) / 1701 A.D. (NA) and Anno 1404 (PAL) / Dawn of Discovery (NA) - over the handheld/console versions.
I'm not a graphics whore, but the last two Anno games for PC are not only fantastic games with an incredible depth, they are also among my most favourites when it comes to visuals. Anno 1701 for PC still looks great more than 3 years after its release and its successor 1404 of course looks even better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AlscbNMPQ8 (1701)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d-q3mT0OwY (1404)
The DS versions are great as well (if you didn't know, there are two):
Anno 1701: Dawn of Discovery (NA) / Anno 1701 (PAL): http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=17378®ion=All
Dawn of Discovery (NA) / Anno: Create A New World (PAL): http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=32232®ion=All
Similar to Firaxis' Civilization vs. Civilization Revolution, the Anno developers did a great job in streamlining and porting it handheld/consoles...
...and worldwide publisher Ubisoft did a fantastic job with those confusing names and those ugly boxarts for the 2nd DS version and the Wii version...
I never played the Wii version, but I'm sure it's a great game, like all Anno games.
BTW:
People often put this franchise into RTS genre, which is not wrong at all, but I think RTS is to vague as the gamepplay is not really comparable to classic RTS such as Age of Empires or Command & Conquer.
To me the Anno/Dawn of Discovery games are managerial building sims. IMO it's the best building sim franchise on the market at the moment
(also thanks to EA which is slowly destroying the godfather of all building sims, SimCity, by just porting the franchise to every new system without trying to develop new ideas).
