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Resident_Hazard on 02 July 2008
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yushire said:
Resident_Hazard said:

 

 

After ROB fizzled, Nintendo had only one major pack-in for the NES and it was Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. The SNES pretty much always came with Super Mario World (mine actually had Mario Kart added to it as well). The Game Boy either came alone or with Tetris. Other bundles were far, far less popular and typically unnecessary.

The only way to improve how the Wii is selling is to leave Wii Sports in there and just add something else because I can almost guarantee that any new adpoter will be happy to have it [Wii Sports] because that's one of the games that's being spread by word of mouth--or rather, hands-on-play. If Nintendo left Wii Sports in the Wii bundle until the end of this cycle, I don't think there would be any ill consequences. Sure, they could make a Wii Fit bundle (in fact, I pretty much expect it by late 2009), but it would still be highly beneficial to leave Wii Sports in as a pack-in game along with Wii Fit. If they left Wii Sports out or replaced it, you'd end up with some disappointed consumers--at least oustide Japan where Wii Sports is a standard pack-in and now expected by consumers.

Wii Sports does not need to be replaced.

And Nintendo stated that there are no plans to make a Wii Sports 2.

There is however, Wii Music coming down the road and that other one that was theorized to be either a new Pilotwings or some kind of spiritual successor.
I've never thought that the NES killer app Duck Hunt and Mario Bros. was also a pack in, never played a SNES before when I was young so I really never know but Super mario World, also a killer app was also a pack in? And Tetris too a killer app for the gameboy was also a pack in. Do you mean that the only killer app that Nintendo need was Wii Sports?

 

 

 

 

Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt, Super Mario World, and Tetris aren't killer apps. They're introductory games and they did their jobs perfectly--they got people addicted to the consoles. They showed them off.  They gave other developers ideas as to what the systems could do.  They were glorified tech demos to sell a console.  That was really their only job and in that regard, they were all extremely successful. Just because Wii Sports has seemingly high sales doesn't mean it's a killer app, it means it's a successful, bundled, introductory title.  The major difference between Wii Sports and SMB or SMW is that Wii Sports is barely more than "just a tech demo," while the Mario games were full-fledged titles.

A killer app is a game that both makes owning a certain system worthwhile and is often a major contributor to someone owning said system.  Super Smash Bros Brawl is a killer app.  Resident Evil Remake and RE4, along with Metroid Prime and Rogue Squadron were killer apps for the GC.  Final Fantasy VI, Donkey Kong Country, StarFox, Yoshi's Island, Contra III, and Super Metroid, in my view, are killer apps for the SNES.  The N64's killer apps were clearly Mario 64, Goldeneye007, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, Zelda: OoT, and in my opinion, StarFox64.  Tech demo titles:  Blast Corps, Mario64, Pilotwings64, Wave Race 64. 

Killer apps are typically original, AAA-quality, well-reviewed, high-selling exclusives--I only list RE4 for GC because, for all intents and purposes, it was originally an exclusive title and you'd be hard-pressed not to find someone who believed that to be a GC killer app.  As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the 3 games you should own if you had a GameCube (the other two being Eternal Darkness and Metroid Prime 1).   Go back to the Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog and the Phantasy Star games would be the killer apps.  Altered Beast was the tech demo title to sell the system.  Later in the SNES life, StarFox was both tech demo (as it was often playable in stores) and a killer app.

The first year of a system's life rarely delivers killer apps because these things take time to craft, so yes, it was foolhardy for people to dismiss the Wii early on for "lack of games" especially since of the current three consoles, it actually was the only one that delivered a killer app in the first year--Super Mario Galaxy, while it was well after a year before Bioshock, Halo3, or MGS4 hit stores for the other guys.  Anyway, the first year will generally have a lot of tech demo-style games intended to show off the system with killer apps coming after these newly discovered tricks are mastered.  For instance, in the first year of the SNES; SMW, Pilotwings and F-Zero were all intended to show off some of the feats possible therein.  Super Mario Bros was mostly intended to show how much more could be done on the NES than any previous console. 

Nintendo need not replace Wii Sports.  The only thing to do is add another game (or demo disk, preferably) to it in future releases to maintain momentum.

I think a big chunk of the confusion in this thread may have grown from you listing Wii Sports as a killer app which is exactly what that game is not.