Wii Wii Madame

Welcome welcome Michelle. Eight years doesn’t seem like much but I definitely have a vastly different idea of “brand loyalty”. When I went HDTV shopping I would have loved to buy a Sony TV. However, they were about $1,000 more on each tier of size/features.

When buying a new unit of anything I value research over brand loyalty. I wish I could go with brands and not worry but i’ve been burned many times. ATI? Radeon 9800 pro sizzled while playing Gunbound (GUNBOUND!). LinkSys? Routers that go bad after 6 months. Microsoft mice? Funk out after 8 months.

So I sit here with my Hyundai 19inch TFT montior (works flawlessly), my Polaroid 32inch HDTV (gorgeous) Onkyo home theater system (sounds great). As for game consoles I eventually get all, but Nintendo is always last. Generally it works out since I enjoy far fewer games on Nintendo’s consoles since the NES. By the time I do get it it has a good amount of worthwhile titles. It is also worth noting that I am sick to death of Nintendo’s first party characters (sorry).

Although it is kind of sick that we view $250 as cheap now for consoles

congrats on the writing gig michelle. as if you didn’t have enough to keep you occupied already! ^_^

a lovely intro article. hey, you’re like the official chic on aelon now!

Dude it’s wicked sick that $250 is “attractive” and hey, is that the PS3 being nailed to the wall over there?

And I am totally with you on research too (ask my husband who often has to say “honey JUST make up your mind already for crying out loud!”), but that’s how I came to my brand loyalty conclusions in the first place though Nintendo is certainly an oddman out.

In my wallet, childhood nostalgia often goes a lot father than the simple will it work and will it continue to work formula. At this point I recall the “Ritual of the Cartridge” way more fondly than I should when at the time, I wanted to kick the crap out of my NES until it just loaded the stoopid game dammit!

So I’m not necessarily pigeonholing myself and my options when I don’t bother to consider another brand, or if I “blind buy” something but rather making the most comfortable choice after having already logged a lot of previous experience and committed a lot of time to research which now allows me to spend less time shopping and more time buying.

I think brand loyalty lasts until you get the feeling that the last item you bought from your preferred manufacturer was either a turkey or was mis-sold. The Super NES was the first console that I bought having previously been brought up with the old Commodore 64 and then the Amiga (the Atari ST didn’t even get a look-in due to my loyalty to Commodore). The Super NES was great and therefore I also bought an N64 (bit of a turkey) and then the Gamecube (oh dear…). It’s not as if either consoles were bad but the software and retailer support disappeared far too quickly and therefore my loyalty to Nintendo has eroded substantially. I really am more interested in the Wii than either of the 360 and PS3 but there’s a nagging voice in the back of my mind pointing out what happened last time…

To be honest, the only thing really keeping the Wii in the running for my money is that it won’t (allegedly) take very much of it. Both the 360 and PS3 are far too much money, in my opinion, and none of the games look particularly interesting anyway.

As for anything else in life, I don’t tend to have much in the way of brand loyalty - if the product fits what I need at the time then it will be considered.

Surprising no-one, the Wii would have been a no brainer for me even without the magic wand and nunchuck. As someone who loved Super Mario Sunshine and Windwaker (both received muted acclaim compared to their predescessors) I’m not worried about Nintendo’s ability to make great games. Anyone owning a DS can see that Nintendo deliver. They’re going to make games worth owning that system for, even if it wasn’t offering a whole new way of play.

At E3 when I hit the inner circle where they were keeping the Wii, I quickly glanced around to see which games didn’t have the longest queues and aimed to queue up not for the best games, but for the ones that used the controller in different ways. Did it work for racing games? Downhill Jam suggest emphatically ‘no’ in the state it was in on display, but Excite Truck was a reassuring ‘oh yes, racing games are going to control just fine’. Super Mario Galaxy wasn’t the game that had the biggest queues, but it should have been, and it made use of the nunchuck and the wand in a way designed to ease you into the new controls, and ease it did. Warioware had you holding the controller in just about every way possible, and either moving the controller, or your entire body, and the feeling was quite magical.

It might take Nintendo a while to truly use the controller to its full potential, but right away my $200 - $250 lands me a sexy looking mini gamecube and the virtual console. If the Wii launch titles are comparable to the DS ones, in terms of them feeling out the controls and special features, there’ll be enough other things to play on the console in the mean time.

The PS3 will be mine some day, once there are enough exclusive games that I want, and the price to get those games is reasonable, but with Nintendo I know that the asking price is going to be worth it.

You couldn’t have made the GameCube your main console, but I can’t imagine missing out on Pikmin, Super Mario Sunshine, Windwaker, Resident Evil Remake and Resident Evil Zero, Metroid Prime, Mario Kart Double Dash, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and a number of other titles. That’s why Nintendo have me. Great games guaranteed, and the Wii is if anything going to see that it has many more exclusives than the GameCube had.

I actually feel exactly the opposite. Sony may have less trust than them but I certainly don’t trust Nintendo to provide me with a complete system. Maybe Microsoft will-they did a decent enough job with Xbox. I know for a fact that today and tommorrow i’ll be very happy with a PC. Nintendo has spent almost 10 years dissappointing me and I don’t ever really expect them to be as awesome as they were in the 1980s where if you wanted a great video game you could expect it would be on Nintendo’s hardware even if it was made by someone like Tengen (made up of atari and Namco hardware makers in there own right)

And here’s the thing about the controller. If it works great good for them but frankly the biggest problems in gaming aren’t the controllers. Nobody was sitting up worrying about the controllers we have now as so terribly ineffective for controlling games except people Nintendo told to do so. Joysticks, Buttons, keys, and Mice probably will continue to be fine in the future. The kind of things I really want to see in games, more detailed action and most of all deeper richer, longer, better writen stories are the kind of things Nintendo has commented several times as being unessecary to this industry. Guess what for my enjoyment of it they are. I don’t want to waste time with different ways to interact with data for the rest of my life. Tell me a story, let me meet people, let me feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I don’t want to play with dogs, I want to cry over the game reguaraly, I want to laugh reguaraly not feel like an idiot swinging my arms around playing tennis.

Frakly speaking Wii is not going to impress the hardcore gamers like me bcos nintendo’s biggest problem is that most of their games are childish.
OK their controller seems to be great but if nintendo

I have a lot of problems with Nitnendo but I don’t see how Metroid prime is any more childish than most games? The only games i’d really reccomend for adults are primarily on the PC and are fairly text heavy RPGs like Planescape Torment because they deal with stuff, especially on a symbollic level that are goign to be difficult for kids to understand. I don’t see anything more childish about nintendo’s games than anything on an Xbox or Playstation. Unless you think shooters are really an adult concept rather than a juvenille power fantasy.

I think Ninendo knows that they cannot compete with PS3 & XBOX 360.Thats why they keep on saying that they r not in the graphics race but they want to make game play a fun.Ha ha ha,it reminds of a story
“Grapes r sour”.Well common nintendo just accept it that u have lost this console game battle.There r only two wariors in this console game war & they r PS3 & XBOX 360.Wii is just for kids & women.It can never impress the hardcore gamers like me.By the way who wants to play around with dogs? Not me!

In Reply to #8:
Well common Martin u know it that most of the nontendo’s games r childish.
The first & foremost thing a hardcore gamer looks for is graphics & action, but alas! wii does not have any such thing like that.Ok wii has remote sensing controller,but I think nintendo could have done much better with good action games & a little bit graphics tweaking rather than concentrating on a controller.
See the graphics of xbox 360 & ps3, they rock man.

Ben, you’re a nutter. How can you say that the Xbox360 and PS3 are the only two players in the console battle when the PS3 not only isn’t out yet, but continual problems means it won’t be released for quite some time?

Nintendo has access to the technology to make fantastic graphical games if it wants to - all it has to do for that is pay ATI more money. Gee, ain’t that great - then we all have to pay more for our Wiis and for each and every game we get. But no, Nintendo has realised that there is a market for cheaper stuff if it’s still high quality and entertaining.

On the PC, I love Civilization 4. It doesn’t have fast paced action gameplay, and it doesn’t have super realistic graphics. Meanwhile, Age of Empires 3 has plenty of classic AoE style action and the best graphics in the genre - and yet, which of those two games won a bunch of awards for 2005 game of the year? I believe it was Civ4. AoE3 walked away with practically nothing.

Not all adults (in fact, not all of any group of people) want what you want. Who is to say a hardcore gamer doesn’t want to have a fun evening with their friends playing a quirky game on the Wii? It’s a lot more social, and dare i say fun, than sitting there by yourself yelling at a bunch of smacktards over your mic on Xbox Live.

Nintendo has identified it’s market, and is about to release a product which I think will suit that market perfectly. You sir, are not in that market, so your criticisms of it are a bit moot.

In Reply to #11: Agreed. Hardcore gamers aren’t really that important because they don’t represent the majority of the market. As we all know, the most successful games are those that appeal to the most people and this is shown by titles like Nintendogs and The Sims, games that the “hardcore” shun but still sell bucketloads. So, following on from that, does it matter if the hardcore gamers aren’t interested in the Wii? Not a bit. It’s Joe Public that counts and if the Wii looks like its going to be fun then that’s what they’ll buy, particularly if the unit and the games themselves are cheaper than the competition.

All this said, both the 360 and PS3 are adding what might be called “value-added features” that extend beyond gaming so these also may be a factor in a consumer’s decision to buy. If, for example, the ability to play high definition videos is important to the consumer then the 360 and PS3 will become more attractive options. It just depends on what people want but it’s clear by the success of the Nintendo DS that sheer graphical power is not as important as some people may believe it is.

In Reply to #10:

If hardcore gamers were primarily interested in action and graphics then wouldn’t a game that’s slow paced, and has cartoony pastel graphics be a terrible failure that no hardcore gamers get behind. I mean no one would play a game like World of Warcraft right? Oh wait 6.5 Million subscribers atm; a huge number of them more hardcore than you can possibly imagine.

In fact most of the hardcore gamers I know like RPGs, adventure games and turn based strategy games the most and are kind of exasperated with the focus on graphics.

Kelmon conversely hardcore gamers are trend setters. And in fact if you go back and read message boards from 2000 you’ll find a considerable number of hardcore gamers bought the Sims before it became this runaway success. Just like a significant number of core gamers bought Nintendogs–the preorder numbers on it were reasonable. Casual gamers simply do not preorder in my experience so I think it’s reasoanble to assume there were a decent number of core gamers there. Don’t confuse hardcore gamer with message board morons they’re quite a different subset of people.

My comments will be on the flyish for a bit til my boss gets his stinkin’ ass on a plane and stops bothering me to find him standby (does standby even EXIST anymore?).

So, seems like while I’ll be worry free in my decision to promptly purchase the Wii upon release it seems like everyone else is worry free about their decisions NOT to buy it (’cept Plagiarize) - what’s the problem?

Anyway - in a general response to the pretty popular lackluster opinion on Nintendo, their abilities to compete with the “big boys”, and their spotty QA records: They ARE competing, they’ve always had amazing titles appealing to all groups just like Xbox and PS, and maybe it’s the nailpolish I’m wearing but aside from the NES cartridge ritual, I’ve never had a problem with a Nintendo system or any other system for that matter, except recently… with a 4+ year old PS2 which went buggy for a bit but I fixded it and it’s all shiny again!

Whether or not Nintendo is wiping the floor with Xbox’s shorts and polishing the can with Sony’s downy cheek, they’re in the game, they kickstarted the game, and they’re going to continue to be notable competitors regardless of whether they’re kiddie/family or balls to wall Hell biking badass mofo’s of hardcore adult gaming (that just sounds so naughty when you read it back to yourself).

And I’ll have to keep telling myself that Nintendo is for “kids and women” the next time I shank a villager with a chainsaw in Resident Evil 4 with the help of my trusty Gamecube.

—-> me hitting ALT /TAB

Brand loyalty is quite common, I think.
I find your commitment to the brands, that you are used to buy, is very normal like a tradition or some special sort of hobby.

In Reply to #14: My only real worry with the Wii is that I’ll get stiffed again like I did with the Gamecube. I’m not entirely sure where the problem with the lack of Gamecube games stems from but what I do know is that most software shops (bricks ‘n’ mortar or online) have a very small, if not non-existent, section for the Gamecube whereas the PS2 and Xbox gets bucket-loads of new titles. While the Gamecube had some really great titles, and many of the titles on the other platforms are a bit rubbish, I do worry about the level of support that the Wii will receive and whether Nintendo has the strength to ensure that it is a success. I kinda got the impression that they gave up with the Gamecube and that worries me for the future.

yes PS3 has not been released yet, but we know it will be the best of the best. Bcos it has the fastest processor (250 million transistors) & one of the best graphics engine(300 million transistors).
But u nintendo fans still don’t know the configuration of ur wiiiiiiii.Why isn’t nintendo revealing it? I tell u why,bcos they r so ashamed to reveal it. Despite all this u still support nintendo.Now guess who is moron?

Ben, we just argued that graphics aren’t everything, and that processing power is not the end-all be-all of good entertainment. So your counter-point is… more about power? Which we’ve already gone over?

Get some logical arguments happening, or find some other blog to troll.

In Reply to #17: Hey, if you can afford the PS3 then more power (literally) to you. Personally, I can’t justify the expenditure that the PS3 is apparently going to require for the additional benefit that it will bring. I don’t think that anyone is denying that the PS3 will be the most powerful console of the next generation, it’s just that some find it to be too expensive (like me) and others question what it will do that the current PS2 doesn’t.

Besides, at the end of the day, does the specifications for the a computer system even really matter that much? It’s the games themselves that are important and a high specification does not guarantee high quality games, although I’m sure that Sony won’t have this issue.

The other thing to bear in mind here is that a lot of us here are, well, a bit old and therefore we grew up with Nintendo and, in my case, remember then for their Game And Watch games before the NES was released. In this case it’s a bit hard for us not to be Nintendo fans. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the NES was a bit before your time so therefore you probably don’t have the fond memories of Mario that everyone else does. To be honest, if Sega was still making hardware (and I still lament the untimely demise of the Dreamcast) then we’d probably talk about them in the same way as well.

Hey #15 - I like your observation! It’s a nice way of putting a simpler perspective on what I was going on about.

Not so much hobby but we are all guilty of automatously buying and doing certain things out of tradition and habit and it’s definitely a bigger picture outside of games and televisions.

I want to recommend Holliday’s awesome piece “In Memoriam” to help punctuate this. Not only are many of us shopping blind and happy to do so (like me and Nintendo sittin’ in a tree) but we’re also going with the flow of a society that perpetuates the attitude and holiday observance is a great example of that.

In Reply to #19:

Actually, if Sega were still making hardware, the flame wars would be much more epic.

I would start in on how Mortal Kombat II for the SNES was better implemented than on the Sega Genesis, and you’d turn around and be like: BLOOD BITCH!

I digress.

I’m very much looking forward to the Wii. I have some reservations as to whether or not the controls for games like FPSs will work like how I’ve envisioned them, but other than that, I’m happy. I have no problem waving my arms around smacking virtual tennis balls, I’d imagine getting four people together in that kind of situation to be a real hoot.

On top of that, the Virtual Console nearly guarantees I can get games that I missed when I had the time, but no the disposable income to enjoy them, like Demon’s Crest.

However, that’s not to say the XBox360 or PS3 aren’t going to be great as well, just that I’m very much more interested in the Wii.

Great first article by the way.

Hi! its my first comment on this site.And I have a few questions about wii:

1)can we save the games on wii?

2)As it has a very small memmory(512MB), how many games can we
install on wii at a time?

3)And will the wii-game DVDs be region coded?

In Reply to #22:

This is generally just interweb speculation, but I’ll try my best to answer your questions:

1) The Wii has slots for GameCube memory cards and is supposed to be using SD cards for saving.

2) NES to N64 games are relatively small. You’ll be surprised how many you can fit on the 512MB. Rumors abound that the Wii will be USB hard-drive compatible.

3) Import enthusiasts hope so. Signs point to maybe. Don’t hold your breath though.

In Reply to #23:
Thank u Head881 for the answers.

Well 512MB memmory will be enough for the older games, but what about
the new games like “Medal of Honour:Airborne”,Call of Duty 3,
Metroid Prime 3:Corruption etc.?

In Reply to #24:

The Wii is supposed to have 512MB of flash memory. What is not clear is if that is storage memory analogus to a hard-drive for a computer/xbox360/ps3/whatever or if that is the system memory, like your computer’s RAM, or if it is some combination of both.

As far as the games are concerned, they are being designed for a system with X amount of memory, they should work fine. Also, remember that they are going to be stored on a CD/DVD/whatever, not on the machine’s local storage, so that really isn’t an issue.