what exactly innovative things has the wii done?
You're still moving up/down/left/right, just with a wrist instead of a thumb. There are games on PC which're breaking boundaries interms of graphics, feel, atmosphere, physics, AI, interaction, characters, level design etc etc, and this is just in the last year regardless of it's history of breaing boundaries. The wii has replaced the word thumb... with the wrist yet the games are (and I use this term again because it is so appropriate) flashgames. Seriously. http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/ has more innovation on it than the wii.

(also shadowtext, changing markets isn't innovation. Wii sports did NOTHING new, it may have appealed to non-gamers but that still doesn't change the fact that it wasn't innovative and hasn't brought anything new to games)

funny, the university that game me my degree in english never had a problem with my reading comprehension. maybe you know something they don't??????

I hate having to do this sometimes when political topics come up and I am like "yeah the UN has never done that" and someone says "I'VE INDEPENDENTLY STUDIED THE UN" and then I gotta link to my class I took done by a UN advisor but it is always very frustrating because it's always something like "how do YOU know" which is never good.

also I'm not replying to everything because I have early morning classes and some of us have to drink to sleep so the monsters won't haunt our dreams.

I actually bought my Wii just for Brawl. So yeah, I'm spending $300 to play one game and if that is the only good game that comes out on the Wii, I'd be satisfied.

do you not see that as harmful though? I can elaborate but really? 300 bucks for one game???

Isn't Rock Band $200?  (Yes, it is in Canada).  $200 for one game is crazy, too.  You might need to elaborate because, really, spending ANY money for solely entertainment purposes can be shown to be a wasteful expenditure.  Is it only not wasteful after a certain ratio is met (entertainment value/cost ratio)?  If that is the case, and since entertainment value is completely subjective, pointing out that spending $300 for a single game is stupid is just ...I don't know... stupid.

Isn't Rock Band $200?  (Yes, it is in Canada).  $200 for one game is crazy, too.  You might need to elaborate because, really, spending ANY money for solely entertainment purposes can be shown to be a wasteful expenditure.  Is it only not wasteful after a certain ratio is met (entertainment value/cost ratio)?  If that is the case, and since entertainment value is completely subjective, pointing out that spending $300 for a single game is stupid is just ...I don't know... stupid.

haha, are there really people out there buying Rock Band alone?

I have not heard of anyone who wasn't saying "yeah lets go halvsies or split this" but I guess I had too much faith in fiscal responsibility.

If Wii Sports brings nothing new to the table, how did it make these people play games? And don't say it was marketing, because I know firsthand that a very sizeable portion of the audience is people who started playing because they saw a family member playing it at Thanksgiving or something. That doesn't happen with most games no matter how well done the branding is.

marketing first off MAYBE ITS NOT JUST THANKSGIVING FAMILIES GOSH, cutesy imagery/lack of offensive imagery, incredibly simple looking game play, and the fact that the Wii is like an arcade machine. that's not an innovation it's a repackaging. it's a portable arcade machine and so it has a wider audience.

also marketing was a lot of it, by making a family console Nintendo increased the likelihood people would play their shitty little console.

christ talking to you is like molesting Ben 10.

asadfff hundley is not saying that the Wii has weak games, he's saying the Wii attempts to FOSTER weak games.

also you don't see the problem of purchasing something for one game? like yeah if you have the money, okay (who the fuck goes into debt buying videogames hahaha) but we're talking sound fiscal decisions and I'm sorry, three hundred dollars of your own money, unless you are really well off, for a videogame, does not seem like a great justification for a console.

Is it only not wasteful after a certain ratio is met (entertainment value/cost ratio)?  If that is the case, and since entertainment value is completely subjective, pointing out that spending $300 for a single game is stupid is ... stupid.

I don't see the problem of purchasing something for one game.  If the person purchasing it gets the entertainment value from it that he feels that justifies the cost, then it is fine.

I suppose so but its not a justification for anyone that doesn't jerk off over the game, and the point is that instead of paying a normal price for games, you pay what, seven or eight times more, for a single console, and then argue the console itself is still a good purchase.

even if you want to argue FOR ME IT IS (and really, it's not, and no one here seriously did buy the Wii expecting to play one game only on it or that only one game would ever redeem it), for the vast majority of anyone else it's a terrible idea and also kind of invalidates your opinions on things because you're clearly willing to spend an exorbitant amount of money on one game, which tends to make you look a little like a slobbery fanboy.

Well... I heard from someone that they won't have a good stock until the summer, and maybe not even then. I'll just wait for mine. Nintendo is dumb though, why not wait until enough are ready to send everywhere before a release?

marketing first off MAYBE ITS NOT JUST THANKSGIVING FAMILIES GOSH, cutesy imagery/lack of offensive imagery, incredibly simple looking game play, and the fact that the Wii is like an arcade machine. that's not an innovation it's a repackaging. it's a portable arcade machine and so it has a wider audience.

also marketing was a lot of it, by making a family console Nintendo increased the likelihood people would play their shitty little console.

When Disney does it, it's art.

When Nintendo does it, it's shit.

When Disney does it, it's art.

When Nintendo does it, it's shit.

I have never said anything of the sort. marketing is never art unless you want to be a fuck and talk about movements and Andy Warhol but shut up forever.

ps: the family friendliness of Disney's image nearly drove the company into bankruptcy, until Pixar brought them back from the brink by making jokes that would go over kid's heads but that adults could get and appreciate.

similarly while something like idk Marcus talks about Psychonauts a lot, while that game can be played without appreciating all that subtle mind shit, for someone who isn't a braindead retard/child it's very appreciated.

none of this has anything to do with the point that Nintendo marketing to families is nothing new or innovative thanks for the post EvilDemonCreature.

BUT MARIO EATS A MUSHROOM AND GROWS?????????

Actually, you can foster innovation in a marketing strategy, a big example of that is Apple's approach when ushering in and promoting the iPod or even Sony back in the day when the Walkman was king.  The Blue Ocean strategy (which has been part of Nintendo's rhetoric since the DS) is aspect of innovation in marketing as well.  Although Nintendo's attempt hasn't been the first to reach out to the kind of market it has tapped into, it has definitely been one of the more successful ventures for any console manufacture making strides in that area and managing find to that level market penetration - at least based on what we know at the moment after the system's first full year (and some change) on the market.

Marketing is not the wii. There is a difference between a product and how it is marketed. You can't call the Wii (as an entity) innovative because it was marketed differently.

In any case, even in regards to the games themselves, if it could be broken down as merely replacing thumb movement it's largely akin (with some examples) to the introduction of more options of input on controllers as gaming consoles have evolved anyway.  The introduction of shoulder buttons/triggers, force feedback/ rumble, a second analog stick, a second set of triggers... all of those additions in some way offered at least a few more options in game development even if to a complex degree to the end consumer and have had some impact on game development by simply offering more options.  Although I personally wouldn't place it in such basic terms, essentially the Wii's controller offers more options of input as well and to an extent, even the Sixaxis with the PS3.  How developers leverage that however is what will determine whether or not that yields more intuitive controls (in some cases, that has already been noted extensively with First Person games on Wii, namely Metroid and MoH: H2) let alone innovation in any particular area.

Let's single in on the FPS comment since I love FPS games. The wii is point at things with the remote, and move with the nunchuck. Essentially point at things with the G-con and move with the buttoms on the back of the G-con. Essentially point at things with a mouse and move with wasd. The notion of using the wii to slash in fp games is also nothing new. Many arcade games use that notion, many flash games (and annoying flash adds) A. make this topic go way off course and B. take up too much time of
 are built around swinging the mouse in a slashing style.
The remote is prettymuch too basic to do anything new (again I need to reference that guy who does crazy things with his wii as proof of what the wii could have been) and when it comes down to it the notion of MOVEMENT has already been done by arcade games, and to the extent used by most wii games by a humble PC mouse.

Well... I heard from someone that they won't have a good stock until the summer, and maybe not even then. I'll just wait for mine. Nintendo is dumb though, why not wait until enough are ready to send everywhere before a release?

Because...
A. The longer a system is not released, the more money they lose and the less market share they have
B. They didn't expect the wii to be so successful
C. they would lose third party interest as less companies would be willing to risk making games on a console which doesn't seem likely to come out.
D. more reasons I can't be bothered to write.

speaking of disney and their family friendly image

i am still patiently waiting for an uncut dvd of the black cauldron.

unfortunately disney hates their fans so this will never come.

Go into debt? From spending $300? I can make close $300 working one Saturday. Serving at restaurants is good money. I bought my Wii in cash. I paid Brawl off the same way.

ffff my point was that no one does buy a game or a game system unless they CAN afford it, and that it's kind of ridiculous to say WELL I COULD BUY IT ERGO ITS LEGIT.

And dude, you throw around "fanboy" way too much.

Final Smashes are awesome. I hear Captain Falcon grows a third knee when he does his.

Second, even if I was, just because someone happens to like a company doesn't make their opinion less valid than a person who doesn't. That's like me saying your opinion on your favorite band or director doesn't matter just because you like them and their work when I don't. How does that make sense?

oh I disagree entirely. I also recall you said HEH...YOU'RE INSULTING KEZAY and kind of ignoring the fact that he has 40,000+ posts on a forum that is gw's age, dealing almost exclusively in Nintendo facts (interesting info, the posts I could see were all sales figures). that's more than DS and myself combined. Kezay may act like I'm the crazy one, but you ask anyone who has been around for a year and they will tell you how many times he's posted SALES CHARTS to argue how superior Nintendo is.

you seem to think that being a fan and being a fanboy are somehow the same thing or that I'm implying they are. I have a friend who likes a great deal of Nintendo's work (and for the sake of brevity, I'm going to ignore the fact you compared a corporation to a band, and hope you realize it's ridiculous to ever have loyalty to any corporate entity). he posts on a Nintendo forum, Nintendorks. but I can talk to him about Nintendo's flaws and not be accused of being overly negative of bashing. he agrees that Nintendo has zero focus on storyline and that is a very very bad thing. no qualifying statement of "but they are still the most innovative in marketing and consoles...", it's an acknowledgement of a very crippling flaw, something very few people in this topic are willing to renege on.

the thing is, you can like something and not be a ridiculous tool. my current avatar and sig aren't good examples (even though the avatar is of a singer, identity is not the reason I chose it), but I've had Big L as my avatar before. Grin Tree once posted saying he hated L's stuff because it was overrated and he didn't have the best flow.

if I was like most of you dudes I would have been like YOU IGNORED HIS WONDERFUL WORD PLAY AND ALLUSIONS TO STREET CULTURE. I think instead I called him a dick (lightheartedly) and said I thought his flow was pretty good all things considered and guess what he's IMing RIGHT NOW about more rap stuff because when you like something, your capability to reason, argue, and understand doesn't go out the window.

but it's ridiculous how no one wants to admit that maybe the Nintendo business model isn't innovation or wonderful but in fact kind of terrible mass marketing that is harmful for anyone who wants to view gaming as a medium instead of a social activity.

and that is why I don't listen to a lot of people, because it's clear that they have loyalty to a fucking corporation. guys guess what I bet exactly zero people on Nintendo's board of directors thought the Wii was a great idea because it would influence gaming and instead looked at market research and decided to sacrifice hardware for a gimmick they knew people would buy. this same process occurs at Sony and Microsoft.

fuck this is too many words for something I don't care about.

Video Gaming is a strange blend of gaming AND a medium.  99% of games do not have stories, for example (like, say, Hockey and Golf and Hide n' Go Seek, for instance),  and yet in video games they are expected 80% of the time.  You could probably write a thesis on it.

I really don't have a point.  I just thought I'd voice this observation.