It's official. 2007 is dead and gone. We are now in the New Year, and there are many questions left yet unanswered for 2008. Release dates are up in the air, new announcements are still under wraps, and all sorts of other surprises are left in store for us. Yet there is some baggage we carry from 2007 into 2008. That baggage needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. In the spirit of the New Year, here are some resolutions for the "big three" console manufacturers that must be remedied before Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft begin work on their list of mistakes for 2008.

• Downloadable Wii Demos – While it may not be possible with every single release, it would sure be nice to have the occasional demo show up in the Wii Ware Channel. Sure, the demo video channel is nice, but anybody who wanted to see that content could just as easily look it up on the internet in higher resolutions. So why bother? Instead, Nintendo could get some demos out for download. It wouldn't be possible for every game due to space limitations, and you might have to clean out all your Wii Channels and move a couple dozen Virtual Console games to the SD card slot, but wouldn't it be worth it to try out a new game a month or more ahead of time without having to go stand in line with the drooling kids at Wal-Mart (or E for All)?
  
• Get voice chat in games, even with Friend Codes – Friend codes are one of the worst ideas ever, but we all know Nintendo is never going to get rid of them. So let's make a compromise instead. At least get voice enabled chat implemented in games for people who are on each other's friend lists. The DS can do it for a couple of games, so why not Wii? Denying friends the right to trash talk while playing Smash Bros. is already a sin in and of itself. Don't make the same mistake for Mario Kart.
  
• Open up the SD slot - Perhaps Nintendo doesn't think space on the Wii memory is much of an issue. The main offerings now are Virtual Console games that fall in the 19KB to 5MB range, with a few large exceptions. But what are they going to do once those 150+ proposed Wii Ware games start to pour out the floodgates in April? You can bet they will require more space, and you can bet people are going to start running out of space really quickly and wonder why that SD slot is really on the front of the machine, anyway. It's a real pain in the rear to have to delete your games or move them back and forth from SD cards every time you want to play something that won't fit in the system memory. Worried about piracy and copy protection Nintendo? Fine, just update the software every couple of weeks and show us how that RSA encryption is actually worth something. At the very bare bones least, Nintendo could offer some sort of official retail copy protected hardware memory expansion to give people some room to breathe. 512MB of memory just isn't a whole lot of s[ace anymore, especially when a chunk of that is reserved for system operations. Something has got to give Nintendo. Don't punish your millions of honest users (like the music industry does) as if they're cheaters who would never bother to download Virtual Console/Wii Ware games anyway. The real pirates are already too busy playing their massive ROM collections to bother with the Wii.
  
• Cut the Crap - The Wii is seen by many as a novelty. There are the traditional core games that cater to the Nintendo fanbase, and they are as top-notch as always (Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros, Mario Kart), yet the majority of the library is made up of low-class filler garbage (Chicken Shooter) that wouldn't have been welcome on the Tiger Game.com. It also hurts that a lot of Nintendo's "treasured" non-gamers are buying the machine for the included copy of Wii Sports and leaving it at that. Nintendo has to do two things. First, stop allowing garbage to be published on their console. Even an inexperienced gamer knows when something is a piece of crap. Second, start to advertise to those non-gamers in places they would traditionally look. Want more soccer moms? Throw an ad or two in Good Housekeeping. How about forking the cash and supplies to get Oprah to give a copy of Wii Fit (and a Wii) to her audience like everybody jokes about? A console can sell and sell and sell, but if nobody buys any games after purchasing the box, then the machine is still just as dead as if it hadn't sold a single unit. If Nintendo wants more non-gamers, and to maintain their momentum in 2008, they've got to go where the real casual market lies.
  
• Pander to the core gamers – Nintendo's franchise regulars like Mario and Link are always going to be welcome in millions of gamer's homes, but they don't appeal to everybody. There was a time when the gamer that now traditionally owns an Xbox 360 also owned a Nintendo console, but that time has passed and the market has been segregated. It's as if Nintendo knows that a core gamer is traditionally not going to want to share company with a casual or non-gamer, so Nintendo isn't even going to try to lure them. Why is that? We were perfectly happy sharing space on the NES? We even happily co-existed on the PlayStation and its successor. There seems to not be a console this generation that seeks a middle ground that appeals to both casual and core gamers like the PS2 did such a relatively short time ago. The Wii could very well be that machine if Nintendo would reach out beyond the non-gamers and their own fanbase, but that window of opportunity is closing fast. The PS3 is set with one of the most killer years ahead of any console ever. Core gamers have taken notice as PS3 sales have begun to climb rapidly. If Nintendo ever wants more than the frivolous, flighty, and disposable casual gamers market, the time to act is now, or not at all.

The Wii is seen by many as a novelty???? This comment is a year old. Whose the 'many' your talking about???

i agreee with most of your post, specially with the games, there is indeed a lot of garbage wii games, i dont know if they are exclusive wii title or multi platforms, but plz get rid of them!. Open the SD card completely, that means also to save GameCube saves into it. Voice chat should be priority! many games will benefit, specially FPS, and it wouldnt hurt to Mario Kart. About the core gamers, i think nintendo is very weak in that area, thats why they released the wii right? so they dont have to compete directly to 360 and PS3.

IMO something they must do, is to assure the quality of the games, QUALITIY>quantity, to keep it up this year.

Sorry, but after Nintendo got snubbed by the 3rd parties, I don't see Nintendo doing anything more then releasing platinum level 1st party games and letting other 3rd party titles fall to the wayside.

To the "Cut the crap" arguement. One of the reasons Nintendo lost a lot of third-party support over the generations is because they turned away a lot of games/companies. Crap games are common on the console with the largest install base. PSX and PS2 had plenty to go around, but there's always a fair share of gems on any console.

Really the consumer should decide which games to buy. If money doesn't go to the crap games then they'll be less likely to put out crap games.

isn't that what nintendo did with the n64? I think that attitude (plus the whole carts>cds) is what lost them the lead in the industry.

all the consoles that 'won' their generations had a higher ratio of bad to good games, especially the ps/n64 era.I don't think we'll see and end to the amount of poor software on the wii, if anything it'll get worse.

I agree with the point made about the sd cards, we should be able to play VC directly from them and also use them for save files including gamecube. gamecube save files should also be able to transfer to the internal memory, its not as if gamecube memory cards are still widely available.