My Reaction to Wii U
June 9 2011 2 Comments
I have had a few days to think about this and I think I’m ready to organize my thoughts into some state of coherence!
I’ve been reading a lot of reaction to the Wii U on the internets and I’ve actually been quite surprised. Back in 2006, when I think the Wii was properly unveiled that E3, it seemed like an amazing time to be a gamer. The possibilities of the Wii remote seemed unimaginable, yet endless. Nintendo made motion feel like the next logical step.
However, as the years went on, the way I ultimately ended up feeling about the Wii seemed to be the opinion of a large number of people: Nintendo forgot us. In this craze of trying to get Mom and Grandma into video games, with “casual” games that didn’t require a lot of investment on the part of the player, it felt like Nintendo had abandoned those of us who thrive on “hardcore” 70-100+ hour experiences. And third parties were providing no better content.
I said I was “quite surprised” about the reaction of the Wii U. It seemed pretty conclusive that most people felt motion controls were a terrible idea and that the Wii “had no games.” I feel the same way about Kinect as I do about the Wii.
With Nintendo’s conference this year, it’s like we’ve gone back to 2006 and we were just shown the Wii remote again. And rather than a collective “huh?” there seems to be a collective “NINTENDO WINS E3!” My problem is that Nintendo hasn’t addressed anything. They said they had listened to us, and admittedly there were games shown that highlighted Nintendo’s new commitment to third parties (game footage that was from Xbox and PS3 versions, by the way). But I didn’t see any games. I saw a controller. I saw a conference dedicated entirely to a controller. Nintendo didn’t talk hardware, and they didn’t talk games.
That’s where they lost me.
I feel like a lot of our problems with Nintendo lately is that they just aren’t offering the kind of content on their system that we want. And that’s why I’m entirely unimpressed with the Wii U right now, and its controller. I don’t give a shit about this controller. I want to see games.
Why should I care about Arkham City on Wii U when I’ve already decided to buy it for Xbox 360? Any of the big-name third party titles that come out on it, I’m going to want for the 360. They’re going to be a year old by the time they’re on Wii U anyway. So what reason do I have to want a Wii U? As far as I’m concerned, Nintendo didn’t show me any. As far as third parties go, I feel it’s “too little too late.”
Can you see how I’m feeling this is just a repeat of the Wii?
Here’s where I stand as a gamer. Right now my largest collection of games span two systems. The largest and still undefeated is the GameCube at a total of 37. The other is my Xbox 360 collection standing at a total of 27, with an additional 13 already released games and games still yet to come out that I have my eyes on. My Wii collection stands at 9, which is clearly less than the 13 Xbox titles I’ve still yet to buy.
You can see where I started having a problem with Nintendo, and the Wii U hasn’t addressed any of my concerns.
So why do I care so much? I grew up Nintendo. The first video game I ever laid my young eyes on was Super Mario Bros. There might as well have been an NES in the womb with me. NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, GameBoy, GameBoy Pocket, GameBoy Color, GBA, GBA SP, GBA Micro, DS Phat, DS Lite… I owned them all.
Ultimately the Wii became the first Nintendo system I stopped giving a shit about, and the Wii U will be the first Nintendo system in a long time that I likely won’t be getting on launch day.
Mind you, in Nintendo’s defense, I believe there’s one more E3 left to go until this system is released by the end of 2012. But I think they got it backwards. E3 2005 was all about Revolution, E3 2006 was all about the Wii remote. The controller was the last thing they hyped. I don’t feel they have the right priorities. On any system, I don’t care about the controller. Why is the controller such a big deal? I feel like they might have this really awesome sports car, and they spent the entirety of their time circle jerking over the steering wheel.
That doesn’t exactly inspire me. I see the potential the Wii U controller has, but the Wii didn’t exactly reach its potential either.
All they’re going to do is drive this sports car at 20 MPH.
I mostly echo your sentiments. I wasn’t blown away by what I saw, but I can see the potential.
I think that pirate ship demo was the coolest, where you could move the controller around in real 3D space and see through it as if it were a camera. I could imagine a whole game like that, where you walk around your house to explore the game world.
But so far, I don’t see a lot of innovation here. Basically, Nintendo combined a DS and a Wii remote. But like you said, they’ve still got another year to come up with something truly impressive.
I like that you can still use Wii accessories and games. Backwards compatibility with the Wii is really nice, particularly since it makes it really easy to play GameCube games in progressive scan — especially since it’s nigh impossible to find a GameCube component cable.
I’m concerned about the price of the controller, though. The Wii remote by itself is $40. How much is THIS thing going to cost? $100?
Overall, I think they just showed it too early. They showed it before they really had anything to show.
I think your last sentence really sums up what I felt. Next E3 will probably be a lot better! It really does seem like they tried to blow us away this year, but we’re at a point where a lot of people want to see games, not hardware.
Most people don’t even mind that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are going to continue pushing forwards. The complaints are all with the Kinect and Move stuff. I mostly feel like people have matured a bit, and like I said, really only want *games* …and don’t necessarily care about *what* those games are played on.
Wii U: interesting product, silly name, great potential….. wrong focus.
Also, there’s no GameCube support. That’s a pretty big knife in my chest, but maybe it’s not all that unexpected? I dunno. GameCube games through the Wii with component support was great, but through the Wii U with HDMI would have been awesome.