disolitude said: @Sky Render I don't dislike the wii. I have it and see what it offers. It definitely is a welcome change but people give it far too much credit for "innovation". Its a nice social gaming system.
In any case, I wouldn't consider myself a minority preferring an xbox 360 and PS3 as those 2 consoles are splitting the market and combined will outsell the wii by a large margin. If EA came out with a similar console as wii (cheap, simple, fun, cheerful) wii wouldn't sell nearly as much.
The bottom line is that I want the best graphics, the best sound, best controlls and best games coming frmo a console and I'm willing to pay extra for that. We all know the wii doesn't have the best sound and graphics. Controlls while innovative only work 50% of the time...rest of the time you are just randomly shaking the wii-mote. And games are up to the gamer. If you are 12, and like familly friendly games...nintendo Wii is king. Not so much for the 15-40 year olds tho... |
That's still looking at it from an elitist gamer perspective though.
While the Wiimote has been primarily used and succesful so far with the casual games (specifically one casual game that happens to come with the system), it offers innovation all accross the range of games. This can be seen in the innovative, completely new way of playing games offered in Metroid Prime 3, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, No More Heroes and Zack and Wiki. No other system offers the type of experiences those games provide.
I may agree with you on the depth of play issue--the PS3's use of Blu-Ray discs means games can be much larger than anything on the other consoles (though that has yet to be used in practice--we'll see with MGS4 and it's probably 800 million okay to awesomely awesome cut scenes), but graphics, while something a certain percentage of gamers crave, is not innovation and has never been something that makes a system more attractive to people overall or conversely holds a system back. It's very easy to up graphics cards and create more lifelike (or, truth be told, more cinematic) graphics, but
such things do not a great game make (see Kill Zone, or Kane and Lynch, or hell, to stay somewhat on topic, the diminishing returns of every Madden game since 2005).
What people, specially hard core gamers, seem to forget is that the most graphically superior console is rarely either the best selling or best console. PS2 was the weakest graphically of the 4 6th gen consoles, yet in addition to the obvious sales advantage had by far the best game library. All XBox was able to get with it's amazing graphics was Halo, and as great as it was, one franchise can't make up for the overall better system PS2 was. Of the 5th gen sstem, the best graphics were on Saturn. Hell, fifth gen best graphics was probably either Neo Geo or Jaguar. Who the hell wants those systems?
Anyway, to try to get back on topic somewhat, an EA system would probably just be a half assed Xbox-type system. As stupidly as they're run, I doubt they'd be stupid enough to make a console. no one buys a system for EA games--people buy EA games that interest them for the system they have. Even the casual argument doesn't work, because EA has been busy making all of their casual games harder and harder for casual fans to get into (could nayone who hasn't played Madden for years be able to figure out how to play it well? I doubt it). Even buying Take Two probably wouldn't help, because once Rock Star's developers start being forced to work under EA slave labor conditions, they'll jump ship, and GTA and Bioshock will start to suck. Which is why I hope EA fails hard in it's takeover bid of Rock Star.
Atari 7800 (Sold), Intellivision (Thrown out), Gameboy (Lost), Super Nintendo (Stolen), Super Nintendo (2nd copy) (Thrown out by mother), Nintendo 64 (Still own), Super Nintendo (3rd copy) (Still own), Wii (Sold)
A more detailed history appears on my profile.