How much was the Wii success due to motion controls?

[Gamerace]

silicon said:

Monteblanco said:

Gamerace said:

My God, still after so many years so many of you don't get it?

Is wasn't the motion controls in and of themselves, and this is why Move is destined to FAIL.

It certainly wasn't the price, the GC was always cheapest and ended up last.

By the same token the Nintendo franchises and fanboys couldn't make GC a success either.

If those things had anything to do with it (they helped in the beginning sure) then the GC not the PS2 would have dominated last gen.

The Wii succeeded because it showed non-gamers, ex-gamers and casual gamers that they too could enjoy Wii games without having to learn complicated controls.   That's still the main reason why Wii sells and look at the games it's sells - Wii Fit, NSMBW, Mario Kart, Just Dance, WSR (now packed-in), Wii Play.   Those games are forever in the top 10 or top 30.  Since they launched.   Why?  People anyone, regardless of age, sex, or game experience can pick up those games and have fun without learning gaming controls or sensibilities.  

Zelda was not a huge success - 7m.  Neither was SMG or even Brawl in comparison to the 'Wii' titles.   With the exception of Wii Music, Nintendo has been very smart in the use of Wii in games.    If a 50 yr old woman sees Wii in the title, then she knows she can play that game and have fun.  If she doesn't then it'll be too complicated, require too much co-ordination or too much of a learning curve or just be a half-assed 'Game Party' type crap game.

Motion isn't the secret, making games accessible and fun to everyone is. Motion just facilitated that.  And based on the PS4 adds, Sony clearly hasn't learned a thing from Wii.     What MS does with Natal remains to be seen, but I suspect they are closer to finding the Wii formula.   However Natal has to work, which is debatable currently, and MS relies toooo heavily on 3rd parties who by and large, still don't 'get' it either and therefore can't help Natal to succeed in the market that's Nintendo's forged for themselves.  And Rare?  Please.  Rare makes great quality games but not accessible ones.

Right in the point. Accessibility is what made the Wii a success. My mother, that bugged me for years about video and computer games got one and I had a lot of fun playing Wii Sports last week. She wouldn't try to play a PS3 game and I don't think she would be good enough to enjoy it. Most people don't invest sufficient time to find a dual stick controller something actually natural to playing. Actually, after playing the Wii for a while, I tried MGS: Twin Snakes and I was shocked as how clumsy the controls are. Many games developed to the PS3 make use of most of the 14 buttons available. It doesn't matter how good is the tutorial, this is complicated. I suspect the reason some well know franchises failed in the Wii is because the developer refused to re-design the interface focusing in accessibility. Take Call of Duty, for example. Modern Warfare uses most buttons in the Wii remote and nunchuck, but many of them could be removed if they were more thoughtful. Why grenades and special attacks not in the weapon cycling buttons, for example? Nintendo games are great sellers because they are accessible. New Super Mario Bros. is actually very hard but the controls are simple and most people can understand what's going on. That's why many non gamers can have fun with it. The Wii series games are all based in intuitive controls, reason why they are good sellers among the expanded audience. All this and an affordable price made the Wii the leader this generation.

The only problem with this is that there is no way to know whether a game is accessible before playing it. However the games and console is a huge success.It's the same argument I have over games that are fun. Noone knows whether the game is fun until they play it.

Is the assessibility spread through word of mouth? through marketing?

Another thing is that the Wii doesn't have as many sales as the PS2. If it expanded the market and on top of it attracted a lot of current gamers plus Nintendo fans, should it not have sold much better and faster? It's not even half.

I understand that the PS2 has sold for longer and has been at a cheaper price point for longer and that may be the answer. There's something missing.

 

One thought I had of Super Mario Bros is that it's clear where the difficulty in the game lies. You need to know how to jump and dodge things. It's hard but it's clear what you need to do to improve. In  some games the challenge is unclear which can be really frustrating. This is what adds to the accessibility of SMBWii.

The mere fact that Wii is in the title is what people look for to know if it's accessible.  And sales show this.  All 'Wii' titled games have sold double digits (save Wii Music which was the most successful failure ever).  

There are lots of other 'accessible' Wii games, mostly Wii Sports knock-offs which have some success (Mario&Sonic at the Olympics being the forerunner here) but none sell close to 'Wii' titles games.

Word of mouth helps, as seen in Carnival Games (being the first Wii Sports clone helped immensely) but mostly, casual gamers buy Wii titles and seldom stray although any widely know brand - Monopoly, Lego, Star Wars, Guitar Hero, Call of Duty can find success of Wii, if it's big enough to be known outside of gaming circles.