REBUTTAL TO: Gimmickwii
E3 2006, a year that gave Nintendo fans more than mere delight. It gave them sweet ambrosia with which to deny their Sony-loving brethren. The $600 bloated behemoth that is the PS3, devoid of demos and the target of scorn for the weeklong extravaganza, was under assault. As the miniscule number of PS3 demo stations remained barely attended, the monstrous Wii lines threatened to engulf the show floor. Thus the year of the Nintendo began.
In less flowery language, Nintendo utterly dominated another E3 and Sony spent the entire week defending a console's price when they should have already moved onto getting people wild about their software. But outside of one highly-anticipated trailer, Sony still hasn't gotten out from under the shadow of the fact that nobody wants to spend $600 on a console even if it does the dishes, cooks your dinner, and ends the Gulf War.
So the new plan has not been to justify Sony's price alone. The new plan is to assault the Wii. The chosen slogan is "It's a Gamecube with a remote." These defenders feel that, by tearing down the Wii's features, it's easier to justify the massive price tag because Sony has supposedly bothered to upgrade their hardware. Some have even gone so far as to accuse Nintendo of swindling their consumers with a gimmick. This is a grossly unfair and weak argument that will be refuted.
Let's back away from the controller for this editorial. After all, a controller is, in the end, the input device. While every game has to use it somehow, it's not the be-all, end-all of the system, even if someone's competitor was so concerned by it as to try and incorporate it's features into their own input device. The point of this editorial is to prove the Wii to be a genuine console without simply falling back on its controller, no matter how innovative it is.
Nintendo is notorious for not providing numbers until practically launch day. However, an elementary perusal of the known features proves the Wii is running much more advanced software than the Gamecube was. For starters, it's running a stronger graphics engine than its predecessor. Despite claims that the Wii software could easily run on the Gamecube, the Wii demos have proven this to be a fallacy. No matter how off the chart the graphics of the PS3 are, Sony has still chosen to run many of its demos off of PC engines instead of their own hardware. While the Wii's graphics will never reach the intensity of the PS3 or the 360, it has already leaped well ahead of its predecessor. Super Mario Galaxy is a very marked upgrade from Super Mario Sunshine. Metroid Prime: Corruption is already showing far more visual detail and complexity than Echoes did.
But the real question about the graphics in the next generation is - how much is really needed? The Wii is capable of achieving realism and immersion. The PS3 is quite possibly able to do perfect photorealism, but strangely is not any more immersive than the Wii. Would seeing every tiny hair in Mario's mustache make his games that much better? They might look prettier, but the tremendous success of the DS over the PSP has proven that at a certain point, gameplay is trumping graphics. Also consider that for all the photorealism of the PS3, they still have to charge an exorbitant amount of money to sell the consoles. People are not complaining about how the PS3 looks - it looks fantastic. They are complaining because it costs as much as it looks. The PS3, compared to the Wii, looks like a bloated behemoth, while the Wii appears to be a well-focused system that also markedly upgrades the graphics. The features of the Wii have been chosen based on what will actually see use and the graphical upgrades have been chosen to be both technologically and fiscally sound. The comparison to the DS once more becomes valid - the PSP, for all its bells and whistles and PS2 quality graphics, still costs drastically more than its competition and as a result, the DS continues to outsell it.
Moving away from graphics, the Wii is also running a Wi-fi network, which Sony promised but only delivers in the $600 model of the PS3. The Virtual Console service is a bold feature that Sony is not offering at all. Where Nintendo is dedicated to supporting an online service, Sony has made only the smallest of steps, taking them only when Microsoft has proven that unified online service is becoming a necessity. The Wii itself is built with internal flash memory to run this software. The Gamecube had no online support, Wi-fi or otherwise.
Another important feature of the Wii is that unlike some consoles, it truly is backwards compatible. No spending extra money to buy another freaking add-on that is, once more, only available on the expensive model, just so you can transfer your saves to a memory stick that is also only on your expensive model and then praying the new controller works with it and still noticing that features are missing because somebody lost a lawsuit. Just put your old disc in, put in your old memory and your old controller, and... it works. Amazing that Nintendo is the only company in the current generation to incorporate that so seamlessly. Once more, the Gamecube is incapable of being backwards compatible, unless you count the Game Boy Player, which is a mere add-on product.
Now off the hardware, lets hit the software. Since this is an RPG site, let's focus on those. The gigantic Square Enix has thrown real weight into Wii development by daring to launch a DragonQuest title with the Wii itself. Nintendo already has the support of Monolith Soft for an unknown RPG, they're still making Fire Emblem games, they still have a Crystal Chronicles game with the potential to not suck the life out of you, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is still cross-platform and coming out launch day, and for those who like to blur the RPG line, Trauma Center has jumped from handhelds to the Wii. The Wii has also garnered more developer interest than the last two Nintendo consoles, with many previously Sony-exclusive developers announcing dual support. The outlook is very good for a brighter RPG future, especially if the PS3 performs poorly.
Notably, the PS3 can only count on one RPG in the launch line-up and it's cross-platform, unlike Wii's exclusive. The mighty Final Fantasy XIII extravaganza has no release date and no clues on the progress of its development. Sony is counting entirely on their third-parties to support them simply because they're Sony. Some of the same developers that make RPGs for the PS3 are also making separate RPGs for Nintendo. This is not a show of confidence in the PS3 - this is proof that the industry itself is being forced to gauge which console has the best chance of success and are deliberately banking some big name franchises on both systems. Square Enix has already shown they are willing to port a title in their franchise to a separate console if Sony's hardware cannot properly support it. This is a serious handicap that the PS2 never faced as it unquestionably dominating RPG lovers living rooms.
Now, for a brief touch on the controller. The Wii controller is a statement to all developers that every gamer that buys a Wii will possess the same features. Therefore, they have no drawbacks to utilizing it to its fullest potential. Consider the DS's touch screen. Even games that have the tiniest uses for it still incorporate it's features and generally make the games stronger as a result. For a game like the menu-intensive Phoenix Wright, the stylus is a godsend. Now back to the Wiimote. Pure touch sensitivity makes many games more precise in their actions. The PS3 remote, despite attempting to clone motion-sensitivity, has only managed to do so in a very crude method. The controller has also been loved by everyone who's had a chance to try it out - it's completely innovative along with the games that use it. Nintendo may be overselling the innovation concept, but its got gamers and developers everywhere excited.
In the end, it comes back down to affordability - the price of the PS3 has already caused concern in the gaming industry itself. Many gamers are simply not willing to spend $600 on a console alone and everyone knows it no matter how much the features in that system are really worth. Sony has seen its stock fall and its developers lose confidence in their ability to match PS2 sales. A game for the PS3 is not a sure sale now and everybody outside of Sony has expressed the same concern. A game for the Wii may not be a sure bet either, but the price of the Wii will be, at most, half the price of the cheapest PS3 model and still contain some of its most prominently missing features. The Wii is not a Gamecube with a remote no matter how much Sony's press would like you to believe such an obvious lie. Nintendo has made some costly mistakes in the past and their state in the market now proves that it takes very little to lose total market domination. Right now, the Wii is poised to at the very least take back much of Nintendo's lost ground. The PS3, on the other hand, is poised to lose everything. And where the PS3 has steadily lost momentum, the Wii has managed to keep it.
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