C’mon Malstrom! Because, in all my honesty, I can only sense very bad
vibes about it. At least from what I could see until now.
First off, it surprises me that you – of all people – would really
fall for that New Super Mario Bros. U game. Sorry but it will not be
your SMB.6, how can you be satisfied with this after New Super Mario
Bros. Wii (SMB.5 indeed)!?
The game doesn’t seem nothing like what it could be. It is clearly
lacking some effort (I can’t even tell if those are HD visuals – not
that I care, but look at the identical Wii character models for
example). The multiplayer with Miis is still a stupid thing, but even
worse is the fact that the multiplayer characters are still the same!
C’mon Nintendo! Is it really that hard to make a Super Mario Brothers
2-like multiplayer giving the players the unique choices of Princess
Peach (with her floating dress), Luigi (with his higher jump), an
overall Mario and ONLY ONE Toad?? And even for single player!
But instead, we’ll get NSMB.Wii again. Now with a few Super Mario
World twists (or should I say perversions) and a freaky squirrel suit.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii, as you very well know, was fine and even
great for a long awaited new 2D Mario console game. But we would
expect a sequel to be surpassing it IN EVERY WAY. We would certainly
love to see Mario Galaxy’s graphics in more developed and deep stages
(even playing at the background like DKC Returns brilliantly did),
orchestral music and a truly remarkable overworld.
Instead you are being treated as a 2nd class consumer by Nintendo (as
usual) and that’s now just fine? Because it isn’t for me.
As for the account system and “the ultimate backwards compatibility”,
although great and definitely an improvement over the Wii model, it
shouldn’t be anything to get anyone to buy a new and expensive
videogame console. It’s a supplementary thing and one that Nintendo
had nothing but the obligation to have already made for us.
Pikmin 3 will be irrelevant and you know it. Or do you know anyone
really excited about it? I don’t.
At the moment, the undeniable bottom line still is: the WiiU will be
nothing more than a PS360 with a tablet for main controller.
The thing is for re-sell many ports of PS360’s games, it will be
infested with paid DLCs (I’m so gonna laugh when I see this even in
the future Smash Brothers for any third-party fighter they can squeeze
in) and will have the consumers pretty much at mercy of this dying
hungry monster that is the current game industry.
Let’s also not forget the most important, the failing expectations for
a new Nintendo console. Nintendo ultimately did succeed in ruining the
Wii, not delivering the potential it was promised and now completely
changing direction. Motion controls will not go much further because
of that tablet, there will be perhaps strange experiments like that
‘Megazord-like’ controller type with the Zapper, the tablet and
Wiimote altogether as show in the debut video.
And I still can’t figure out how much of a project fail is that a four
player Super Mario game has suddenly to be moved out of the TV
(because someone wants to watch it of course, thanks for the concern
Nintendo) to a maximum of two tablets’ screens, leaving the other two
players completely out of what could have been a very fun match.
Tell your nephews about all that and let’s see if they still cannot
wait for the WiiU. Maybe they’ll even start crying.
Even if NSMB U turns out disappointing, how is that any different from Super Mario World? Super Mario World was disappointing to the 2d Mario fans at the time which allowed Sonic to gain popularity. Everything I’ve seen about NSMB U looks solid unlike NSMB 2 which will fail.
Pikmin 3 looks fine for an encore game.
Keep in mind it has been over half a decade since we have seen a home console launch. It’s good to regain a sense of perspective about how console launches work. Console launches always ‘suck’. Launch games are never the console’s ‘best games’. Did you see what the Xbox 360 launched with? Yech. Or what about the PlayStation 3?
Due to NSMB U, I keep thinking of the SNES launch. The SNES had a pretty decent launch. It had Super Mario World, F-zero, Pilotwings, and some third party games. Where the console went after that is what makes the system interesting.
I don’t know where the Wii U will go from launch. It will either rise to heaven or sink to hell. Pikmin 3 we knew was coming as was Super Mario Brothers Mii (U’s old name). I cannot tell what direction Nintendo intends to take its software. I think Nintendo is smarting from the 3DS failure which is causing changes of thinking throughout the company. What Nintendo does next remains to be seen.
Launching a game console is incredibly difficult. Gamers think they know how difficult it is, but they have no idea. The reason why launch games are poor is because they HAVE to be released at the console’s launch and the development hardware keeps changing on them (since the console hasn’t launched yet). We could have gotten much worse from Nintendo than NSMB U or Pikmin 3. We could have gotten a Luigi’s Mansion. We are getting Nintendo Land unfortunately. But something like Nintendo Land is not unusual for a launch game.
Wii U is not going to launch like the Wii did. Wii U is not going to launch like the 3DS did either. When I say, “I have good vibes about this,” I mean there is nothing going on that would cause me to run away screaming from the console…
-unlike the 3DS.
-unlike the Gamecube.
-unlike the N64.
I do not consider the Wii U to be a hostile platform as, say, the Virtual Boy or 3DS are. And even if the Wii U fails, I can still turn the Wii U into a quasi-NES, quasi-SNES, or quasi-Wii.
Xbox Live, alone, scares me from the Xbox consoles. I’m glad the hardware issues of the Xbox seemed to have been sorted out finally.
Playstation 3 becomes more attractive as it goes down in price and has more games. But is it worth buying a console for Dark Souls? Might as well just get it for PC which is the superior gaming platform.
2d Mario is a game that performs miracles in the console market. Wii U is launching with it. If the console is going to fail, it will be due to what Nintendo does after the launch.
So yes, I do have good vibes. If I do not buy the Wii U at launch, I would like to own it eventually. It looks like fun (unlike the 3DS).
Let me warn people about the habit of the ‘last hardware release’ coloring all perspective about the upcoming hardware release. Everyone assumed the 3DS would be a success, not unlike the DS, except for me. I had some reservations about it since it was showed off at E3 (isn’t the 3d overshooting the market?) until I flat out came out against it right before it was released.
Now that the 3DS has been a failure (how else to define failure but a product that causes the company to LOSE money?), everyone is using that to color the Wii U. I don’t see or sense any of the elements that turned 3DS into a hostile platform for the market present on the Wii U. This doesn’t mean the Wii U is free from problems. I don’t sense anything in the hardware. The software, with all that bullshit social media, is a problem. Until I use it, I cannot determine how ‘big’ of a problem it is. If Nintendo makes many of those things optional, then it will be no problem.
PS360 games? You mean those games that were ported from PC gaming? Also, keep in mind there were several PlayStation 2 ports that sold well on the Wii (Okami) or Gamecube ports (Resident Evil Wii). Every console that launches has ports from other systems at first just as the Xbox 360 and PS3 did. Why does everyone forget how console launches work?
The nastiest thing I see from the Wii U is if it pushes social media on us. Xbox Live is eventually going to turn into a liability for the Xbox if it isn’t is already.
It is not about social media. It is about playing with your friends. The DS and Wii succeeded in great part because you could play with your friends easily (such as Wii Sports). Online gaming succeeds also because it allows you to play with your friends.
My fear is that marketers are injecting themselves in between the gamer and his friends. Already, people are looking for alternatives and solutions to Xbox Live to free themselves from the marketing. (If Microsoft thinks Xbox Live paid membership will last forever, they should just talk to the cable companies who everyone is unsubscribing. And cable offered much more than Xbox Live ever could. Anyone think Microsoft is stupid enough to try to turn Xbox Live into cable? I do.)
Nintendo is making online gaming more complicated than it is. It requires nothing more than what ICQ did when it appeared decades ago. All I need is…
-Notification when my friends come online and can see them online.
-Communication with those friends.
-Being able to jump in and out of multiplayer games with friends quickly and painlessly.
There is no room for marketing bullshit. If you wish to sell your console, put out great games for it. In the end, everything revolves around great games.