The Wii is not dead or dying.

[gumby_trucker]

As a Wii only owner who just recently bought a high-end PC I would really love to see some more unique, quality titles come to the system. Unfortunately, it looks like even Nintendo is more or less ready to drop support and move on to their next home console. Heck, at this point I'd expect them to move over any projects they have been developing internally to the Cafe even if the Wii could handle them, simply in order to give the new platform more appeal. (see: Steel Diver)

What really annoys me is all the talk coming from Reggie and Iwata about how software is Nintendo's main focus. If I understand the current situation correctly that just isn't the case, or else we'd be seeing a renaissance of software releases now from Nintendo, as this is their biggest home-console audience EVER. On the contrary, it seems like they feel there are no games worth being made on the platform any more.

A few months ago Iwata was saying "there are still many ideas that can be fulfilled on Wii", and suddenly at the recent investor relations conference he was quoted saying "Nintendo has announced a new console because developers feel they are no longer able to deliver surprises on Wii". It's either one or the other, which just means the first statement was regular BS that comes before a new platform is announced in order to not lose sales.

I get this kind of feeling Nintendo were caught off-guard with the success of the Wii and never intended it to be this big. Maybe if they did they would have designed the platform differently, as well as invested more in their online network and services, not to mention better third party relations. What's funny is some of the moves made by Nintendo to support the console have been very good, such as partnering with Capcom on MH Tri or partnering with SE on DQX, but these aren't enough to generate the hype needed for other publishers to make their own efforts to grow the userbase on the console. The only company with any tenacity in this respect would be Activision with the FPS genre and they should be commended for that. Ubisoft as well with the Dance genre, but I still don't like them very much.

I love the Wii but still feel sad about its untapped potential with regards to diversity of genres and new experiences it could have brought. To me personally, up until 2010 I felt like most games I was playing were too similar to GC games from a design point of view. Some of the original experiences brought to the console last year really opened my eyes and showed me how much potential Wii had, if only it would be tapped. Games like Endless Ocean 2, Red Steel 2, Trauma Team, Other M, Crystal Bearers, Sky Crawlers, Zack & Wiki, Fragile Dreams, Silent Hill and others felt like trail blazers to me and deserved to see their ideas expanded on with bigger sequels. I felt like it had taken time for the industry to understand Wii and that now we would see some great games for it, similarly to how DS took 2-3 years to really get a fantastic library going. The announcement of Cafe just cut my dream short, unfortunately. I was hoping Motion Plus would finally open the door for the promised Wii experience but now it just looks like a missed opportunity. Even Skyward Sword is not going to be enough this late in the game since third parties won't try to copy the Zelda formula on Wii no matter how successful it is, not with a new platform arriving so soon after it releases.

It's possible things would have looked less grim if the economy hadn't taken such a hit this gen as publishers would have been more willing to accept the Wii's philosophy of trying new things and finding new audiences. Instead they were mainly concerned with surviving the financial crisis as best they could by deviating as little as possible from what has been proven to work. Or in other words, they were too worried about the market shrinking on them to care about trying to expand it at a time like this. To me it feels like this line of thinking has finally started to affect Nintendo as well, which is why they're moving on to the next platform.

The ultimate irony for me is that had they not decided to end this gen of consoles, it probably could have continued for another 2-3 years as far as MS and Sony are concerned, which would have given us gamers the longer hardware cycles we always wanted. Everybody knows the best games on a platform are usually released in its heyday, and that the quality of releases tends to improve across the board, too. Now once E3 is over everyone will be pre-occupied with next gen, including MS and SONY. Thus the cycle of new hardware - bringing with it the usual 2 years of mediocre early games - will begin again... And all this from a company who supposedly cares more about software than hardware..

Phew! guess I needed to vent

edit: added another paragraph with some examples to back my point.