Do Wii still care about Nintendo's all conquering machine?

The Wii. You love it, the ladies love it, the media love it and, hell, even politicians love it. But after been out on the market for nearly 2 years now, the question has to be asked, does it really deserve are love? For the Wii, in spite of all it's brilliance, has been failing to aspire of late although they are still harder to get a hold of than a greased up monkey.

So, why the disappointment? The main reason is that of the much lauded Wiimote motion sensing technology. Since it burst onto the scene, it's changed the way that we think of playing games and Wii Sports, bundled with the Wii as almost a tech demo, has provided hours of fun for, if they adverts are to be believed, grannies and young sex women the world over.

And then what happened? No seriously, what happened? Copies of Wii Sports have gone dusty and the number of titles that use the motion sensing as a pivotal gameplay mechanic has severly dropped off. Who's to "blame" for this? Nintendo. No, seriously, it's been rather interesting when you have a good look at the Wii's titles up close, particularly when comparing first and thrid party games.

Look at what awesome games have been released on it so far by Nintendo: Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, Meteroid Prime 3, Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros Brawl.

Alright, now compare the brilliant thrid party games: Zak and Wiki, Rayman: Raving Rabbids, No More Heroes, Resident Evil 4 and Boom Blox.

Now, with a few exceptions to the rule, it seems that in a weird twist of fate, the notorious 3rd party Nintendo titles have tried to do something fresh, innoative and exciting with the Wiimote's technology rather than having it require extra bits to play it "properly" or even just optional use. Even Wii Fit needs to have a balance board attached with it and MKW has the Wii Wheel.

As for optional use, it's alright with Mario Kart and it works well with Zelda but many reviews of Smash Bros have gone as far as telling you to not even bother using the Wiimote itself with Official Nintendo Magazine stating, "Quite simply, no" with the controls of the 'mote-nunchuk combo all over the place.

Now, certainly there ARE good titles by Nintendo that make full use of the Wiimote's capabilities and there are (a HELL of a lot of) bad ones by thrid parties but I just feel that despite Nintendo creating the motion sensing Wii, that they aren't taking complete advantage of making fresh titles, leading the way in it's development and instead using the motion sensing as a little add on to big games, making it as useful as Sixaxis, with this article also a relevance to Sony and their DIRE support of Sixaxis.

Let's hope Nintendo prove me wrong and I really do invite them to do so make the TECHNOLOGY, not the IDEA of the Wii as sucessful as the DS. Hopefully, upcoming Sam and Max, Okami and whatever hidden Nintedo title Reggie has hidden away continue with the Wiimote's brilliance.

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Why Metal Gear Solid 4 must succeed

It may seem a hollow statement on the surface considering early reviews are falling over themselves to praise the brilliance of Kojima and Konami but Metal Gear Solid 4 is about to make a bold statement, whether it knows it or not.
This is not about "saving" the PlayStation brand with the triple A, killer app title that the PS3 so desperately needs, this is going to be a statement about gaming. This isn't even going to be about fresh ideas in gaming because, despite MGS4's new innovations, it is merely building on a winning formula set out by it's predessors.

This, is about preserving the hardcore gaming market. Ever since the Wii and DS consoles have burst onto the scene, the casual gaming market has boomed. Wii Fit, Wii Sports and Brain Training are just a few names you can throw down of casual games and, don't get me wrong, they're great.

However, game developers have been long instilled with the bad habit of seeing a great unique idea and coping it, usually badly, and beating to death. Two easy examples are Resident Evil 4 and Grand Theft Auto 3. Honestly, how many more over-the-shoulder view games are we going to see? As for GTA, well, let's just say that there will be more clones to come.

Now, taking this into consideration, we need to look at the impact of the casual game. The brilliant Nintendogs has spawned.... Dogz (yes, there IS a "Z" there), Buzz gave birth to Chegger's Party Quiz (how did they think of that?) and, of course, Wii Sports gave way to Brunswick Pro Bowling. Not exactly stellar spawning compared to Resident Evil 4 begating Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto begating almost everything that has a sandbox environment.

Of course there have been some bad clones of hardcore games and some good clones of casual games but there is a balancing act in place between the two markets and either must tipped the other off the edge.

Things seem to be levelling out, post Wii fallout, with a great, and I mean GRRREAT, summer of proper, hardcore games we've had. GTAIV leads the pack comfortably with Mario Kart Wii nipping at it's heels and with as more to look forward to with Metal Gear in 10 days and Smash Bros at the end of the month.

It's these games that need to keep the balance going on the sales charts because, if they don't, people will stop making these brilliant, high production games and end up with poor looking, poor playing games which last for mere hours and have a difficulty curve that looks like a flat line.

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