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jarrod on 23 August 2010
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Rpruett said:
jarrod said:
Rpruett said:

.  What makes a Wii more appealing than a full-fledged motion control line-up of Kinect or Move?  

The same thing that made Wii a success in the first place: Nintendo games.

Wii Party alone will probably outsell all the (unbundled) Move and Kinect launch games combined.


I don't believe for one second that Nintendo games were the sole or even primary reason for Nintendo being in a success in the first place this generation.  I believe Motion controls and price take the top two spots. 

The Nintendo games just were after thoughts or benefits after the fact.  I say this because,  I have had a blast playing Nintendo games on every Nintendo console (Dating back to NES/SNES/N64/GameCube)  good games from Nintendo has been a constant not a variable.    Motion controls and price (relative to the competition) is a variable however. 

Software integration is key, and has been the real secret for Nintendo's success this gen.  Wii Sports sold people on the Wii, not the reverse.  Same thing on DS with Brain-Age and Nintendogs.  If the Wii released as is, without any Nintendo titles, it would've bombed harder than Gamecube... motion controls alone wouldn't sell it, it needed the right games for consumers to take notice.

Also, the quality of Nintendo's games (or at least EAD's games) has been very much in flux, with an appreciable drop during GC's formative years, which in retrospect was blamed on a shift in internal development philosophy (shorter cycles, more frequent releases) which was later reverted.  N64 was still rather successful all things considered (ie: most expensive games, barren 3rd party support, huge holes in library), pretty much on the back on Nintendo games alone.  Post-SNES, Nintendo's been the driving force on all their platforms almost single handedly.

If price were the driving factor, or even a chief driving factor, GameCube would've been dominant upfront last gen.  It had an even greater price advantage over the competition ($100 at lowest barrier to entry) than Wii did ($50 for the same standard).