Topic: The Wii Era Is Over. Thoughts?

[Caterkiller]

Some would argue the Wii was over and done a long time ago, but officially the U era begins this Sunday.
So what are your thoughts on this past generation? What did you hate, everything? What did you love, all of it? Sound off below!

Let's remember some fond memories. And don't mind any over excited people in these videos. I am sure he they have all matured as the years went by...

Remember the long lines? Will it ever happen again? Probably not this generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WBz4-0tzq4&feature=related

[broodwars]

Coincidentally, we at NFR recently did a podcast about this very subject: link </shameless plug> 

Suffice it to say, my overall impression of the Wii was that it was a console with potential, but no one was really interested in tapping into it. It had some great games & some good games, but a lot of terrible ones as well. It's a console where Nintendo gave up on their principle of always having great controls that worked 100% every time you needed them to, so long as they had some gimmicky waggle to sell consoles.

It's also a console where the bar was set so low that anything moderately competent tended to be severely overrated (especially when it came to motion controls), but I had good times with it and the Virtual Console was amazing, even if it didn't have all/many of the games I wanted from the SNES and N64.

[Adrock]

I really liked the Wii. I had a lot of fun with it. I understand that my gaming habits are far more conservative than others. It came out in a transitionary period for me. I had 1 more semester of college left and have had a full-time job for years now so I've been playing fewer games this past generation. Still, I bought around the same amount of games as I did on GameCube. I never really felt like my PS3 was compensating for a dearth of good titles on the Wii. Besides Castlevania and Resident Evil, I mostly bought Sony 1st party titles. And honestly, I mainly use my PS3 for Netflix.

I'm very much looking forward to the Wii U and it will probably be the only next generation console I own for a while. Along with 3DS, it should be enough to meet my gaming needs at this point in my life.

[MrPhishfood]

It should have started out with Wii Motion Plus. It had a fairly good run. Not a lot of games used the limited motion control well enough but there were some very good ones like Zack and Wiki and Pandora's Tower.

[Caterkiller]

I should really listen to the podcasts.

I agree, lots and lots of potential, that hardly anyone really got right. If a game that played like Skyward Sword came out sooner along with Motion + there might have been more worthwhile motion games.

I will say that I absolutely loved pointing and dragging for gravity and Yoshi's tongue in the Galaxy games. I loved pointing for Goldeneye and Metroid and thought it was so much better than dual analog.

Though I loved NSMBW and especially DKCR, there should have been an option to use only buttons. I didn't mind shaking for the most part, it never killed me like some of you, but yeah it was really not necessary as the only option.

I will say though that aside from a few games it seems like every Gamecube game looked better than what was offered on the Wii. Even Brawl now looks a little more dated to me than Melee. After playing Melee recently I realized it was a little brighter and more cartoon like, where as Brawl got even more realistic. To me Melees character models stand up better today than the washed out colored models in Brawl.

Sega was just about the only developer who could make games that didn't look like dated PS2 games. I suppose because they really worked on the gamecube so Sonic always looked great on the Wii.

[Kairon]

Definitely one of my favorite Nintendo consoles, and that's me as a life-long Nintendo-only gamer. An INTENSE amount of experimentation happened with the Wii (not all of it successful, granted), and it was a great time to see Nintendo reach back out to a lot of people who hadn't played games before, or had and "lapsed," a lot of whom were people who had played in the 80's and early 90's but who got left behind or ignored by the rest of the industry.

The Wii also basically reinvigorated Nintendo as a company with a defined and unique outlook on the challenges of the present, and proved that gaming still has many more avenues to explore and frontiers to discover outside of conventional genres and figurative boxes.

[NWR_insanolord]

I wish Nintendo had known how big a success the Wii would be when they were designing it. They could have built something with tech on the level of the 360 and put Motion+ in there at launch, charged more for the hardware and still had them be impossible to find for a year. They'd have gotten a lot more third party support, and the deeper controls of Motion+ would have been explored a lot more.

I think that's the story of the Wii, a console that will be remembered more for what it could have been than for what it was. It's a shame, because there were some truly brilliant games on the thing, as good as anything else in the industry this generation.

[Luigi Dude]

The Virtual Console alone makes it the greatest Nintendo system ever.  Before the Virtual Console, buying certain Turbografx games would have cost you around $100 per game and some like Dracula X: Rondo of Blood much more.  The fact that I can buy old Turbografx games for under $10 is the deal of the century.  As well as finally being able to download Chrono Trigger for under $10, something that would have cost well over $60 to buy used copies of before the Virtual Console. 

And for those that say these games shouldn't count because they were made for other systems, go **** yourselves.  If I haven't played it before then it's new to me so a lot of these games I got to enjoy for the first time because of the Wii.  Plus like I said earlier, many of them I never could have gotten without the Wii since I don't have the money to afford them like all the Turbografx games that cost well over $100 before the Wii.

[Adrock]

When I was a poor high school student (as opposed to the poor adult I am today), I begged my mom to buy me Chrono Trigger used for like $55. She actually did. Then, I paid the Square Enix tax and bought the DS version like 8-9 years later. I never bought a Virtual Console title, but damn, that was a nifty idea. Had I not already had 2 copies of Chrono Trigger, VC would have been the way to go.

[Bizzy_Fatso]

I agree completely - do you think the same will happen with Wii U?  Granted, it's coming out first this time so it'll have competitive specs until late next year, but long term prospects seem potentially similar...

To answer the original question:  I'll always remember playing RE4 on my Wii (and finally finishing it, which I never did on Gamecube).  I'll also fondly remember Metroid Prime Trilogy - I REALLY can't wait to see what Retro does next.

I wish Nintendo had known how big a success the Wii would be when they were designing it. They could have built something with tech on the level of the 360 and put Motion+ in there at launch, charged more for the hardware and still had them be impossible to find for a year. They'd have gotten a lot more third party support, and the deeper controls of Motion+ would have been explored a lot more.

I think that's the story of the Wii, a console that will be remembered more for what it could have been than for what it was. It's a shame, because there were some truly brilliant games on the thing, as good as anything else in the industry this generation.

[Ian Sane]

Maybe I should start with the good stuff since I'm pretty down on the Wii.  The VC was great, not just for making old games accessible in their original form to younger gamers but also for getting some import titles their first NA release.  The Mario Galaxy games are near perfect and bounced Mario back after Mario Sunshine.  Xenoblade!

However I overall see the Wii as Nintendo's nadir.  It was a fad console that basically offered last gen games with crappy controls.  Nintendo also somehow found a way to have the market leading console and yet get the WORST third party support.  Nintendo's new interest in casuals and non-gamers meant that they were now making games that were not aimed at my demographic in any way at all, where as before even if I personally didn't like all their games it seemed that 99% of them were designed for people like me.  The huge financial success of the system also meant that Nintendo was effectively encouraged to cut corners.  My displeasure meant nothing to them, where at least with the Gamecube, they seemed to suffer for incompetence, which suggested the possibility of them learning from their mistakes.  The Wii overachieved, making Nintendo lazy and borderline corrupt.  The whole general design of the system seemed like a con, to effectively resell the Gamecube with a new controller.

I hope the Wii ends up being an anomaly in Nintendo's history - a big financial success that does not hold up critically.  I want it to be one of those "what were we thinking" things.  The alternative would be this as the turning point for Nintendo, the point where they jumped the shark.  I want the Wii U to be successful but for all the reasons a videogame console SHOULD be successful.  I want a great product from Nintendo and the Wii was not.

With the Wii Nintendo lost me as a fan.  That sucks.  I liked being their fan and I want to be their fan again but I need justification to be one.  Be the Nintendo I became a fan of in the first place.

[NWR_insanolord]

I agree completely - do you think the same will happen with Wii U?  Granted, it's coming out first this time so it'll have competitive specs until late next year, but long term prospects seem potentially similar...

To answer the original question:  I'll always remember playing RE4 on my Wii (and finally finishing it, which I never did on Gamecube).  I'll also fondly remember Metroid Prime Trilogy - I REALLY can't wait to see what Retro does next.

I wish Nintendo had known how big a success the Wii would be when they were designing it. They could have built something with tech on the level of the 360 and put Motion+ in there at launch, charged more for the hardware and still had them be impossible to find for a year. They'd have gotten a lot more third party support, and the deeper controls of Motion+ would have been explored a lot more.

I think that's the story of the Wii, a console that will be remembered more for what it could have been than for what it was. It's a shame, because there were some truly brilliant games on the thing, as good as anything else in the industry this generation.

It's going to be closer, at least. I don't see Sony and Microsoft going as nuts with the specs of their next consoles, since they're both in a position where they really need to start showing a profit and can't afford to take huge losses on hardware.

I think it's like the Vita's about as much more powerful than the 3DS as the PSP was than the DS, but the difference doesn't mean as much.

[EasyCure]

It's kinda sad to see the Wii era over to be honest, a lot of good memories from this system, great single player games, great multi-player games.. awesome times all around.

Yeah things could of been better but all the negatives out there won't outweigh the positives I've had. Without taking the few games I sold off into consideration, my Wii library is at least twice the size of my Gamecube library.. and that's WITH taking into the account the few Wii games I either sold off or gave away. Granted, the GCN came out while I was in high school and Wii came out when I had a steady stream of money.. Still, that money could of been spent seeking out the gems I missed on 'cube but instead went towards Wii games!

Honestly my only regret with Wii is not having played it much, and NOT because there weren't enough games on it. Personally I think you guys (ie the internet in general) focus way too much on "casual games and shoveleware" to enjoy the good games. I just didn't pay attention to that bull **** and enjoyed the games I knew were good, but my only problem was I didn't have the time to play all these games, so when I did I tried to rush through them and didn't enjoy them to the fullest extent. I still have some games I've come close to completing but haven't (Trauma Center, RE: Umbrella Chronicles) and with Wii U just around the corner.. chances of me going back to these games any time soon is slim.

I will say this; I've had more free time recently and have been dusting off the Wii to continue games like Rune Factory Frontier (best game on Wii IMO), and even bought Xenoblade Chronicles just a few days ago and waiting for it to ship.. so I do plan on keeping my Wii plugged in and enjoy those games, saving the Wii U for Wii U only games.. don't want to wear out my disk drive from too much playing the first few years like I did with my first wii

[BranDonk Kong]

Pretty sure the Wii era ended when Conduit was a flop.

[TrueNerd]

Well, like most things in life, the Wii was a mixed bag.

As others have said, we had to wait five years for a game (Skyward Sword) to tap into the potential of the Wii. At least the potential that I was always interested in. That's really a shame. It should have happened a lot sooner. Instead we got lots of Wii Sports type games and dancing games and things that simply are not for me. This was disappointing. Also disappointing, the complete absence of franchises like Pikmin, Star Fox, and F-Zero. In addition, there were things like lack of online play and lack of high definition that just felt more and more dated as time went on, but that was known going in.

As Ian touched on, the Wii got almost nothing in the way of third party support. It's possible I'm crazy, but I think this was the first generation where you couldn't have at least gotten by with only a Nintendo console. You simply would have missed out on too much great stuff elsewhere and the first party stuff had what seemed like worse dry spells than any time on the GameCube or N64. The two years in between Mario Kart and Super Mario Galaxy 2 was a ROUGH time to be a Wii owner.

On the other hand, the Wii has what is probably my favorite library of platformers. As this was the genre that got me into video games to start with, this was a big deal as they had been mostly absent since the N64/PS1 era. (I don't count Ratchet and Jak as platformers.) They came back as a whole this generation, but the Wii has the best of em. The Super Mario Galaxy games were the most fun I've had playing any video game since at least Super Mario 64, maybe ever. The Wii would have been worth it for those two games alone.

In the end, the Wii was another post-SNES Nintendo console. Come for Nintendo's first party stuff, stay for Nintendo's first party stuff. The first party stuff was a little more narrow this time and the third party stuff slimmer than on GameCube, but it ended up being what we thought it would. Which will probably always be okay with me.

Also I'm probably saying goodbye to the Wii with Xenoblade which is the PERFECT way to say goodbye to this system.


EDIT: I forgot to make a "Next Gen doesn't start until I say it does" joke. Oh well.   

[rlse9]

I think the Wii will be remembered for cluttering our living rooms with record amounts of white plastic.  Wiimotes, nunchuks, racing wheels, balance boards, Wii zapper, classic controller, not to mention all of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band instruments.  So much plastic, that's the Wii's legacy.

Seriously, I'll remember it for the great gaming experiences.  Both Mario Galaxy games were as much fun as I've ever had with a Mario game.  Okami (even if it wasn't originally a Wii game) is one of my favorite games ever, to me it took everything that's right about Zelda and added an excellent personality to the game.  Wii Sports, though it looks dated and shallow looking back, was so much fun and so innovative when the Wii came out.  I'll never be able to enjoy a golf game using traditional controls because Tiger Woods on the Wii is so much more fun.  Kirby's Epic Yarn had perhaps the best style of any game I've played in a long time.  There may not have been as many great games as many of us would like, but those that were there provided truly memorable experiences.

[Spak-Spang]

I think the Wii was a great product and move forward in gaming.  However, with several moves forward many mistakes and mishaps occurred.

For Nintendo, the biggest mishaps was not including motion + from the beginning, and not putting more advanced tech in the nunchuk. 

People complained about the buttons and waggle controls, but I think all of that could and would have been better from the beginning if motion controls were as advanced and ready for prime time as it should have been day one.

Other than that, I have really great memories of the Wii, starting from day 1.

First waiting in line and just barely getting a Wii a launch day.  And then, playing some great launch games.  Wii Sports, Zelda, and Excite Truck really sold the potential of the system.  Those games were great.  Along side Ubisoft's first Rabbids Game...which was also equally fun. 

Playing Metroid Prime 3 and feeling the joys of pointer controls for the first time was amazing and truly an amazing experience...an experience that would be carried over to almost all Wii first person shooters. 

The party games made social gatherings a joy and every party ended up around the Wii, and it was always a good time...laughing and moving and playing.  Much better than static button gaming...Wii brought social interaction and laughs back to gaming parties. 

My first Guitar Hero experience was also on the Wii, and I learned the ropes and could play music games for the first time. 

The Wii truly was a great system with plenty of great games...and many games that were worth revisiting again and again. But to me my favorite thing about the Wii will always be those social interactions.  Even the Christmas Gift exchanges and secret Santa were awesome here. 

In many ways the Nintendo Wii is my favorite Nintendo system, and truly brought gaming bliss to me. 

[Spenczar]

I enjoyed it for the most part, but in all honesty the Wii hasn't really had any steam since Skyward Sword.  We haven't really had any notable games comes to VC in a while and the Wiiware has only had a handful of things.  I'm glad this era is over with. 

[Spak-Spang]

Yes, but we are looking at the entire life of the Wii.  The Wii generation...not the last 2 years.

And the Wii had some amazing content.  The Virtual console was a  dream come true for me.  It was amazing.  Zelda, Mario, cool motion controls, new ways to play games...and some fantastic experimentation...the Wii was a great system. 

Sure it could have been better, and arguably should have been better...but Nintendo took a risk and created a fun little system, that proved Graphics are not the end all be all of gaming...and I can't wait to see how Nintendo continues to show that...except this time with the power of an HD system to wow us.

[Plugabugz]

I enjoyed the Wii, but wow. It's 6 years old on December 8 (it launched in Europe then in 2006) but for me it died out after 2.5.

Nintendo made the mistake of throwing out Zelda, Metroid and Mario all in one year. And then followed it up with, (on the same scale....) nothing. From then the momentum is all downhill. Then they signalled the death lap in 2010/11 when all of their major developers went onto release nothing for Wii.

Everything has to click for Wii to have worked. Hardware, software, launch planning, release titles, developer management and so on. Too many developers were working similar cycles hence this massive drought we ran into. I still get the impression Nintendo is a collection of developers working schedules dictated by games readyness rather than what the lifecycle needs to see.

[Pixelated Pixies]

This generation was a mixed bag for me. There were plenty of enjoyable games released on the platform (and many more bad ones), but I really became exhausted with Nintendo as a platform holder. The Wii's services, release schedule, and third party support were, for me, pretty terrible.
 
This generation I also found myself becoming increasingly dissappointed with several of Nintendo's big hitters. For every amazing release (Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Sin & Punishment 2, Xenoblade) there were dissappointing ones (Skyward Sword, NSMB Wii, Animal Crossing, Brawl).
 
All in all, I'd describe my experience with the Wii as fun but ultimately unsatisfying. It's for that reason that I will not be upgrading to a Wii U or any other system until I get a clearer idea of what the next generation is going to look like.

[Oblivion]

You were disappointed with Brawl and Skyward Sword? 

[Drizzt]

     It's hard to believe It's been six years already! For me the Wii was awesome. It was the first home system I played that had online. I was finally able to play with friends who had long since moved away and have many fond memories of the hours I spent playing Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, and The Conduit. The Galaxy games blew my mind. Both entries in the Zelda franchise took the series to new heights, even if Twilight Princess was just a modified port. Metroid Prime 3 was an excellent game, the list goes on and on. My family got more involved with videogames thanks to the Wii and playing with a bunch of friends was a blast.
     The lack of third party support was the Wii's biggest weakness and even though I eventually bought a PS3, The Wii's stellar first party titles more than appeased me. While it's easy for some people to call the Wii a casual piece of garbage I can't. To me it accomplished what it set out to do, change the way people play games while at the same time providing those Nintendo games we've all come to love. If the Wii U can give me half the fantastic memories I had with the Wii then it will be well worth it.

[MagicCow64]

It obviously would have been preferable if the console hadn't totally dried up in the last two years, but I'm judging the console based on the best parts of the library. I don't play through that many games a year, so the general droughts never bother me that much (and there's been little on the other consoles that I've liked as much as the games on the following list).

For me, the Wii had some of the best games of all time, which trumps its other failings.

Mario Galaxy 1 +2
Zack and Wiki
Donkey Kong Country Returns
Little King's Story
Metroid Prime 3/Trilogy
Skyward Sword (not the best Zelda, but pretty damn good, especially when this type of game is hardly being made anymore)
Brawl (despite the criticisms, still the most fun fighting game this gen and one of the most content-rich games ever made)
World of Goo
Super Paper Mario (gets some hate, but I love it, one of the most interesting game design experiments of this generation with some of the best writing)
Dead Space Extraction (best light gun game)
Excitebots (best racing game)
Xenoblade Chronicles
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

And a large host of really good/interesting stuff that doesn't quite make the A-List:

A Boy and His Blob
Lost in Shadow
Cursed Mountain
Endless Ocean
MotoHeroz
Boom Blox
De Blob
No Mo Heroes
Madworld
Conduit
Kirby's Epic Yarn
Lost Winds
Sin and Punishment 2
Red Steel 2
Wii Sport/Resort
Bit.Trip
Trauma Center
Lit

This is just off the top of my head, but I'm sure I played more great and unique things, most of which weren't available anywhere else. Waggle might have harmed the Wii experience overall, but the HD consoles are where creative game design went to die outside of downloadable titles for the most part.

[Mop it up]

The Wii is kind of a weird system for me. From a hardware perspective, I don't like the Wii. I don't feel that it justified trading updated specs for a new controller, and it's easily the least durable system they've ever released, and the only one I've had issues with.

But despite that, the Wii has an amazing library of games, and so I try to not let the terrible hardware ruin that. I've looked into the Xbox 360 and PS3 several times throughout this generation, and I never find enough games that appeal to me to warrant a purchase, but the Wii has lots and lots of fun games that just don't exist anywhere else. The only system I have more games for is the Nintendo 64, and if it weren't for the hardware issues then the Wii probably would be my number-one system instead of my number two. Plus the Wii controller is the most comfortable controller I've ever used, so much so that I'm kind of disappointed that the next Nintendo system isn't using a similar design as its main controller, though at least it isn't ditching it entirely. I can't play shooters on any other system, they just feel so clunky now.

This generation also made me feel ashamed to call myself a gamer. Not because of the Wii, but rather because of the hate it gets. I wouldn't want to be lumped into the egocentric gamers who look down on people having different preferences than their own, so now I'm like one of those people in Nintendo's 3DS ads who proudly proclaim "I am not a gamer!"