@peachbuggy I do take great pride in being an iconoclast.

I don't think the Wii is a religion just yet however much people worship it. Or are you referring to Wii music?

The former more than the latter. And it is a religion because you have people defending every little aspect of it even Wii Music while reviews would lead one very much to believe that Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Mario Kart Wii don't deserve to be selling as well as they are.


Another reason is you people that have been longtime Nintendo fans were actually indoctrinated into a slavish devotion to the console at an early age. Conditioned to think that Mario and Nintendo are all that.

Well, when I was a child the big dog on the gaming block was the Atari 2600 and we didn't trade them in for Colecovision's for innovations in controls etc as Nintendo claims is the reason people buy new consoles. We traded them in for Colecovisions because Colecovision had the power to make games look so much better than the 2600. Donkey Kong actually looked like Donkey Kong on the Coleco so did Jr., Pepper II, Buck Rogers and The Planet of Zoom, Burger Time, Zaxxon, a system that had enough processing power to give us all three levels of Venture and more of the levels of Donkey Kong and Jr., and for its time Smurf did a pretty good job of replicating the Smurfs' cartoon. Probably as good of a job as Mario 64 did in taking Mario into the third-dimension.

Okay, I guess this is my biggest problem with Nintendo. It seems that they are trying to limit what I can experience. See with the PS3 and even with the 360, there is the sense that they were both trying to expand what we could experience. But Nintendo chose to limit the processing power of their console and the graphical power of their console in order to release the lowest common denominator machine that they could. And, then they say we're doing this because gameplay is the thing and our system offers so much more gameplay with this new controller scheme; however, the real reason that they limited the graphical and processing power of their machine was because they couldn't afford to take another big loss in the console market by developing a super powerful machine. The new controller and expanding gaming to a new audience bit was just pr. It did work but it was still pr something they could say instead of, "We're limiting the abilities of this machine because we can't afford to spend money on what could potentially be another big loss."

By releasing a limited machine, then they are limiting my experience. Could games like Gears of War, Final Fantasy XIII, or Metal Gear Solid 4 be released on the Wii with the same level of graphics as they can on the 360 or PS3? The answer is no. The Wii doesn't have that kind of hardware under the hood. It is really just a souped up original xbox in that respect. Now Wii fans always say "Oh but we've got motion control." The PS3 and 360 though could both have motion control. All they need is the controller for it. No big deal to design.

So at E3 when I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt while waiting for the Sony conference to start, what happens. They don't really unveil anything that spectacular. And I'm thinking this Reggie guy is supposed to be an awesome person surely there's something more worthwhile than all of this stuff. And precisely at the right time he comes out and says, "We've got one more game to show you." And I'm thinking, "Hey, its going to be awesome, something that truly justifies the Wii, then just a few moments later it's like, "Oh my...what is this awful thing that these people seem to think is the greatest thing ever...I think I'm going to throw up this is so bad."

No matter how well Wii Music sells, Nintendo still dropped the ball with this one.

Look at this numbers from last console generation

http://gamerinvestments.com/video-game-stocks/2008/05/30/playstation-2-may-have-won-last-generations-sales-battle-but-it-lost-the-console-war/

Well, if Nintendo made more money than any other console in the last generation, then why didn't they release a much more technologically powerful machine with the ability to play Gears of War pixel to pixel with the 360 version or even slightly better? It seems that they still could have done that and implemented a motion control controller.

i've just recently learned not to say anything remotely about the wii

You just said it in your previous post:

"expanding gaming to a new audience"

For that you need a mass market price and of course Nintendo will never release a super powerful console at a mass market price because they'll lose money.

Umm, not sio much.

The problem with the industry wasn't Sony and Microsoft trying to compete with online games. Those were around in 2003 and are around now. They are never a cause of the current status.

What Nintendo saw was something going back to the gamecube. It because that gaming was too polirized. You either played them you you didn't, and games became so complex that only "gamers" could play them. The 360 and PS3 simply proved Nintendo was right. The industries idea was the bigger the game, the more money it would make. So the concept was of making big budget titles. Truth is that was never the case. Guitar Hero is a great example. It was a title that came out of the blue and it didn't have an amazing budget and deep story. It was a simple music game. But it beat out many of these big budget games. Yet the industry still moved in that dirrection.

Becuase of the stuborness of these companies, the industry might have colapsed with people still scratching their heads. Nintendo knew that in order to keep the market going, they had to make new players "gamers". This is Nintendo's stratigy, and it's working.