Sonic_13 said:
1) It may not be a year and a half, but it will most likely be a year.
2) You really don't think Wii U is going to sell very well?
3) Wii U is already seeing some of the largest 3rd party support a Nintendo system has had in many many years. Obviously sustaining that level of support will be important, but you can't use that old argument at launch.
4) No, it will not be able to play DVDs (or blu-rays), but that capability is of lesser significance with each passing generation. As long as Wii U can stream Netflix and Hulu (as well as maybe others), then it's basically a non-issue.1) Only one person can play? That is factually incorrect. Five people can actually play at once.
2) Comments from Ubisoft, EA, and others have all stated that Wii U's online is not terrible.
3) Overpriced? Ignoring the fact that the system has no price, value will vary from person-to-person.
The year and a half was only relevant because of the DVD boom, allowing the PS2 sales to skyrocket before the competitors came out. The 360 came out a year in advance too but it didn't help that system much at all.
I think in terms of money gained by the company, it'll sell as much as it needs to. But the Wii costed less when it launched and was a big, new thing. Now motion control is hardly new and a lot of people are sick of it. But when you look at Wii sales, the system has only recently started leveling off and falling behind the competitors. How much of that will be lost if the Wii U costs more than but is less powerful than competitors we'll have to see. I'm not sure it won't sell, but I don't think it'll sell like the Wii did.
The third-party support will be completely gone as soon as the next systems come out. It'll suffer the same issues companies have now with the Wii; it'll cost them extra time and money to develop a separate game from the ground-up to work on the system's less powerful hardware. I think the WiiU will have a great first year, possibly two, but after that it'll be the Wii part two. It also remains to be seen if the system really can't handle some PS3 and 360 games, and how much that'll affect it.
I wasn't talking about DVDs like the WiiU not playing it is a bad thing. But a HUGE part of the PS2's success was that it was one of the cheapest DVD players available at the peak of the format's success over VHS, something Sony tried (and failed) to replicate with the PS3's Blu-Ray. Had the DVD boom not happened, I think it's very likely the PS2 would never have gotten off the ground and would've suffered the same fate as the Dreamcast. All I said was that the WiiU won't have that, so being out a year early isn't going to help it.
One person can play with a WiiU controller and four more can offer accessory support. It's like the difference between playing Call of Duty multiplayer on Xbox Live and playing the stupid piggyback mode on Call of Duty for Wii. Of course some games will put better use to Wiimotes than others, but the majority of games seem like four people can basically be an accessory to one other. I know the days of four people playing on one system in one room are faded, but it seems a little early for them to be entirely eliminated.
Companies said the same thing about the 3DS, but that system is basically just like the Wii: cumbersome friend codes, no first or third party support for features like adding friends in-game and voice chat, etc. The features are there but nobody is using them, I can't help but feel it's Nintendo exerting its world-famous control over how third parties use their hardware. But that's the 3DS and I may be wrong, so it's another thing I'll have to wait and see. Like I said before, most of my concerns are speculative, I'm still very much keeping an eye on this system.
Obviously value will vary from person to person. What I said was overpriced compared to its technologically superior competitors. At $300, it'll cost the same as or more than the Xbox 360 and PS3 but allegedly can't outperform either. This problem is set to double when the next Xbox and Playstation consoles launch, and I'm not sure how much a price drop will help the system in terms of support. As far as it relates specifically to me, I'm not sure the tablet control is worth that extra cost. I would rather have had a system I could buy and replace the need for an Xbox or PS3 entirely.
I own a Wii and there are games on it I love and I'm sure the WiiU will at some point pull off the same, but basically what I'm saying is I miss the days when I only had to buy Nintendo's system and I could play pretty much everything I wanted. I wanted a Gamecube and never even cared about the Xbox or PS2 (until Kingdom Hearts at least) but I couldn't buy just a Wii without missing out on a lot of great games. Obviously you'll always miss out on some, but with the Wii I was missing out on a lot and I feel like unless Nintendo is making another new system to compete with the others, I'll be missing out if I only buy a WiiU.
( Edited 10.04.2012 05:43 by justonesp00lturn )
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