Email: Wii U not as powerful as ‘imaginary’ consoles

Hey Sean,

 

they’re back at it:

 

http://kotaku.com/5920931/the-wii-us-power-problem

 

so, apparently, the Wii U is ‘underpowered’ when compared to the upcoming Playstation and Xbox consoles. Never mind they don’t have even been unveiled, much less their specifications. But, more importantly:

 

WHO CARES?

 

The N64 and the Gamecube were the most powerful consoles of their respective generations, and see how well that went. The NES was a full generation behind its competitors and yet was a massive hit. I know I’m paraphrasing most of your comments from the past here, but it makes you wonder… can’t these journalist look a few years back and draw any conclusions?

 

Cheers,

The ReaderThe first thing that leaped out at me from the “article” was Totilo’s mistake of say Nintendo’s predecessors were underpowered. Only the Wii was since it focused more on the interface. And if someone brings handhelds into the discussion, Nintendo’s handhelds always steamroll their competition. It is like there is no fact checking with Stephen Totilo.

Journalists tend to lack critical thinking which would be useful when planning a story. A more interesting story would be, “Is Shigeru Miyamoto destroying Nintendo?” His baby, the 3DS, really hurt the company and forced the business side to sell it at a loss. He keeps putting out 3d Marios which don’t sell the hardware. He farms the 2d platform games to anyone and everyone because he feels they are beneath him (as well as those customers he feels are beneath him). He’s already driven Zelda into the ground with probably no hope of resurrection. His big mouth at E3 2008 announced Pikmin 3 whose development hadn’t begun and forced Nintendo to spend so many resources on an expensive game that won’t sell.

There are much more interesting and illuminating stories about Nintendo that need to be written instead of recycling anonymous third party developers opinions and writing as if they are an ‘authority’. Ultimately, the consumers will decide which console they like, and they haven’t chosen the ‘most powerful console’ before in the past thirty years. Now, that may change. There is also an assumption that the market demand will be there for these ‘next generation’ third party games. With this economy and falling gaming interest, I’d say that is not a sure thing. Aside from the Call of Duty franchise, there hasn’t been much going on in the third party games universe.

Soon, we will compare imaginary games to real games since we’re comparing imaginary consoles to real ones.

Until Sony and Microsoft announce something, consumers should just call the new Xbox and PS3 as ‘Unicorn Console’ and ‘Fairy Dust Console’. Their console marketing must be worried what Wii U will do a year (or more?) alone in the market.