Holy shit.
I just saw the boxarts for NCAA Football 09 which will be out on pretty much all platforms, and the Wii boxart confirms that only kids are interested in Wii games. Here are all of the boxarts with the Wii version at the bottom.
If you think this is some kind of joke, feel free to check Amazon for confirmation.
This will most likely be an ongoing series (considering the quality of box art on the Wii).
He scares me 
… and there are colorful graphs to prove it.
“While every console of the past eight years (sorry Dreamcast) have seen their games average around 69-71%, the average Wii score is only 64%. Which leads to much hypothesizing in the piece about reviewers not “understanding” the Wii, theories on the impact of shovelware and how the Wii is short on AAA titles (Madden 07, for example, is still in the top 10-ranked games for the platform).”
- Kotaku
“While we’re glad that Rising Star will be distributing No More Heroes to Europe and Australia, some European (and yes, probably Australian) gamers might be peeved to know that the version of the game they get will be blood-free.”
- Nintendowiifanboy
Another reason to get a 360 or a PS3 instead… unless you really like dogs.
It is a rather known fact that Nintendo caters to a young audience, and the latest ESRB ratings confirms this accusation.
“Over 82% of the Wii catalog is either rated E or E10+. Only 3.2% are rated M, less than half the rate on Nintendo’s previous console, GameCube.”
- Gamasutra
Compare this to 17.6% on the Xbox 360 and 21% on the PS3 and it is obvious what the targeted audience for the Wii is.
First came the Wiimote which was meant to revolutionize the ways game are being played. Nintendo followed it up with a variety of accessories such as the Wii Zapper and the Wii Steering Wheel, which both lets you plug in the Wii controller to supposedly increase the sense of realism in your gameplay.
Now a prototype of the next Wiimote accessory has surfaced. The Wii Horse.
Support for Cruis’n has yet to be confirmed.
Midways new racing game Cruis’n for the Wii was apparently released yesterday, and it pushes the graphics hardware of the Wii to the max.
Creating a bunch of shitty driving games for the Nintendo 64 and Gameboy with an average rating of about 5/10 according to gamerankings seems to work out well for midway, since this game is getting released.
 |
 |
 |
It seems like Nintendo doesn’t have a very good environmental policy, at least not available for public viewing. A Guide to Greener Electronics from Greenpeace lists Nintendo at the absolute bottom of their list, scoring a minimum of zero points out of ten possible (with Microsoft scoring 2.7 and SONY 7.3 points).
“We first released our ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’ in August 2006. The guide ranks the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TV’s and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling.
The sixth issue of the Guide has been expanded to include televisions and game consoles.Market leaders Microsoft, Nintendo, Philips and Sharp enter at the bottom of the ranking of environmental performance with Nintendo being the first company scoring zero out of a possible 10 points.”
- Greenpeace
More information can be found in this PDF.
Nintendo’s Friend Codes are a huge mystery. They claim that they exists to let you “play safe” but really, is there a need for this?
PLAY SAFE
Your privacy is protected through anonymous matchmaking.
- Nintendo
A huge flaw with this is that you can play a random person online, and if you enjoy playing with him then… well it sucks to be you because you only know what he chooses to call himself and not his Friend Code which you would need to find him later.
Would it really be that unsafe to simply let users pick a username like on PS3 or Xbox 360 and then only allow communication with friends that you pick yourself? I assume that these codes are meant as some sort of Anti-Rape device to keep child predators away from children playing Pokemon but really… is there a need for this? There isn’t even any voice chat available, and communication in general is pretty much non existent when playing games online with the Wii.
The biggest issue though is that you are forced to use different “Friend Codes” for every game. Due to the pretty much non existent library of online games this might be a non-issue for now though.
Then there are of course the Wii Numbers. Apparently 12 digit codes aren’t safe enough when you are actually allowed to communicate with other people, so they increased it to 16 digits. That should keep you children safe from rapists!
And Friend Codes seem to be here to stay because according to Nintendo, the gamers “don’t mind” them.
But the way that we think about friend codes is, when folks are online, and they want to play, they typically want to play with their friends. And so, they want to keep it to groups of people they know. We’ve seen, in the feedback we’ve gotten, that people don’t mind the friend codes. They like them, because it keeps them playing with the friends that they do know, and it keeps their games “undisturbed,” if you will.
- Gamasutra
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that 99% of the people questioned didn’t mind them because of never using them, since there was a whopping total of two online-enabled games released for the Wii at the time of the survey (Pokemon Battle Revolution and Mario Strikers). How’s that for next gen!