Wii Review Channel

[Grey Acumen]

Okay, everyone knows that the Wii is the most sought after console right now, one of the cheapest to develop for and one of the most difficult to get good controls for. It also has perhaps the highest density of completely uninformed gamers in its userbase.

Nintendo has come out with their big 3 names already (Mario, Zelda, Metroid) and is going to be following up with some even more highly anticipated games still. (Brawl, Mario Kart) these have all shown incredible advances in the gameplay for each of these series, sometimes incorporating a large amount of the Wiimote's motions controls, and sometimes only a bare minimum.

But the same can't be said for 3rd parties. Games like ninja breadman and chicken shoot are just as likely to be bought as treasures like Zack & Wiki. What if No More Heroes ends up with just as cold of a reception?

Obviously Nintendo can hardly be held responsible for what 3rd parties put into their marketing, or what they DON'T put into their games, but Nintendo is still the one taking the heat for allowing crap games to exist and good games to fall to the wayside. Wasn't it the fact that Nintendo enforced restrictions and demanded quality from 3rd parties that caused them to abandon Nintendo for the easier to develop for and less restrictive Playstation?

So what is Nintendo to do?

 

I would like to see Nintendo start offering a user review channel so that Wii owners can submit detailed ratings, reviews, and warnings, about any Wii game available. Since this would only be accessible through the Wii console, it would mean only people who owned a Wii would be able to play and submit reviews. This would be set up very similarly to how the Wii Vote channel is set up, but instead of voting on questions, you access a database of games to give your ratings to.

To keep this from being hacked, this would also use your Mii as a sort of avatar, which would keep track of what ratings you gave to what games. The ratings you would see would be based on people that gave ratings to games similar to yours. This ensures that you have a more accurate idea of what YOU would think of the game, not what some 80 year old WW2 veteran, or what some housewife, or 8 year old pokemon freak, or reclusive antisocial FPS nerd thinks of it.
This means that if someone tries to hack the game and give a bunch of good games a really low rating, or bad games a good rating, it won't matter. If you gave certain games a high rating, and they gave it a low one, then their ratings won't have any bearing on what you're seeing games being rated at. You'll only see ratings from people that rated games similarly to how you do.

The rating system should also require you to register the game or at least have played it before being able to rate it. By registering the game, your rating of it would have more weight, but it would require you to punch in the pin number that comes in the box.
However, there should also be an option of accessing your gameplay data, as you receive an email that lists the amount of time you've played a game. As long as the Wii Review Channel can find data that you've played the game, then it will let you submit a lower weighted rating based on the fact that you've at least played the game.

Another option should also the ability to HYPE a game. Essentially, to have a list of games that are already out, and games that are yet to be released, but you haven't owned or played. By searching for the game and then giving it a HYPE hit, you can point out that game as something you are interested in even without playing it. HYPEd games would then be displayed to other Wii owners who have rated games similarly to you and perhaps also HYPEd games that matched up to other games that you have HYPEd.

This would allow users to support games they're interested in, creating a sort of 'super word of mouth' effect, and ensure that even causal Wii owners have easy access to see what games to look into purchasing and what games to avoid.

I was also considering the idea that clicking on a game would be able to access the internet browser and take you directly to sites about that game. Developers could even create a webpage specifically formatted for the Wii in which to showcase their game trailers. this would leave marketing and advertising in the hands of the 3rd party developers, but still give them some support.

 

What do people think of this idea? Does anyone see any obvious ways that this method could still be exploited? If so, do they see any ways in which these exploitations could be reasonably patched? Are there any other features people think should go with this?