God I hope not. Load of free-flash-internet-quality nonsense. The complete of opposite of what fun long-lasting games are about.

I think I’ll get myself a 360 first, when the price drops of these.

Everyone does some first- and second-party development. Indeed, it’s the reason I’m someday going to swallow a pint of bile and purchase a PS3, as that darned Ueda and Co. are undoubtedly making something for it already. With Sega out of the picture, though, neither of the other two consoles is anywhere near the first-party domination of a Nintendo platform. If your product happens to come up against a similar Nintendo release, it dies, that simple. I feel the quantitative difference is so large that it’s qualitative too.

Every console has its own image, yes Nintendo has a cutsie appeal but then it expand out to the likes of RE4, Metriod Prime etc. all with different visual styles.

Xbox – which ever iteration is release its always going to be a mediocre hi-spec PC in one unit at a relatively cheap price for the mass market. And PS3…. I know ~George foreman has definitely got a run for his money.

Each of these manufacturers has their own in house developers or 3rd party splinter factions, these all shadow small developers anyway I don’t think its just an isolated occurrence with Nintendo. I do however believe that the type of games that are produced for Nintendo consoles appeal to a select type of gamer, either younger more mature or in the industry itself.

Your mass-market appeal is going to buy a playstation or Xbox as we’re looking at a rebellious, adolescent audience who want to steal and mod cars, shot people general chav’tastic game mechanics. I’m not saying its bad cause I enjoy this genre of game too, your average 14-18 year old aren’t really going to show their friends the latest Kirby/daxter game (even look at Viva Pinata), it doesn’t have the same kudos as say StangleHold or Crackdown

I am impressed with Nintendo going back to their roots though, the original NES had many different attachments for it (Zappers, Rob etc), they started trying to be competitive with other manufacturers but ultimately now have stepped back from the horribly titled ‘Next Generation’ era.

I personally say good luck and hope that it works, I don’t want to see another Sega on the horizon.

I was thinking more about the trademark (diligent and thorough|paranoid and overbearing) quality control processes, (family-friendly|kiddie) image, and most importantly the intimidating fact that a Nintendo console is the only place where a developer directly competes for dollars and mindshare with Nintendo’s own crushing talent and franchises. They’re all fairly painful and I don’t see Nintendo as we know it changing them any time soon.

Reply – Yes Jason this is a correct statement, one of the major factors towards this is the incredibly inflated Nintendo Developement submission fee to present a game concept. It puts a lot of developers off of supporting the format.

Give it a year or so and developers will become a little more adventurous, remember it is quite a high aim to become a launch title for a new console – look at Kameo and Perfect Dark 0, Kameo was originally scheduled for N64 release up until MS Game studios purchased Rare, same deal with PD-0. Heck, I know development studios close to me that are scrambling for next gen title releases.

Take PS3 for example, roughly around 90% of the launch titles are already available for purchase on 360 – considering there maybe a price drop and/or tech additions to the 360 around November I know which one I would prefer to buy as a consumer – and its not the one with a $600 price tag.

I say give Nintendo a year and Wii’ll be seeing intuitive games being created and released. My bets are on Wario Ware onwards.

As for myself, I’m still holding out hope that Red Steel will be combination-FPS-and-lightgun-y enough to justify purchase; we saw during E3 that most people were holding the remote like idiots, right? My biggest worry is that I actually liked the original gesture-command system a la Jedi Knight; I think going to direct sword control might have been a geeky mistake. Then there’s Trauma Center at launch, and Mario Galaxy later on. Elebits, Metroid Prime 3 and actually Pangya are also strong “maybe”s. For someone as jaded as I am, that’s a pretty impressive score at launch. Of course, we’ll see if they keep it up this time.

This is a much easier decision for me than for most folks, I expect, as I never got around to buying a GameCube – so for me, all the GameCube titles I’m buying up are Wii launch titles!

The thing is, about a year later, then the whole Eye Toy thing happened, and the rest is history. However, I think it’s rather interesting to note that most Eye Toy games or even games with Eye Toy capabilty could be classed as “Gimmicky”. Although for the most part, they were very fun gimmicks.

Nintendo are indeed stepping into dangerous territory with the Wii. They are risking falling into the same trap as Police 24/7 whereas the “gimmick” is fun, but the game behind is rather flawed. Now it could be as were just watching video footage here, and not participating that they don’t look fun, but whether a console can survive on games which are, essentially mostly going to be gimmicky, due to the whole controller thing – I do think Nintendo are trying a very brave – but could be foolish – thing.

Of course, some of the opus is on the developers to make the games more interesting and less well, “phoned in” as you put it, but I guess it’s hard not to take the easy route a lot of the time. On the positive side, I suppose it makes cursor -almost PC like- control easier on a console. But then, it is a question of whether it should be doing that.