Is Nintendo's Wii U An Inevitable Flop?
Feature
The unveiling of the Nintendo Wii U was met without the praise that was expected. Will this continue on to reflect the sales of the console due to the abandonment of Nintendo's causal market and their needs?
Why, Oh Why? (cntd)
While we are on the subject of the controller, the camera being directly on it, rather than one attached to the console, looks like a big mistake. Putting the microphone on the controller is understandable, as it is relatively close to the player's mouth and will pick the sound up much better, but when you're playing with a friend, you don't want to be staring up their nose the whole time. They will probably be looking at the TV with the controller in their hands and his elbows on his knees, which means that the camera will be pointed straight up into his booger-factory. Another thing that causes me to doubt the success of the controller is the screen. It is supposed to allow the player to keep playing even when the TV is off, but is that really something that the market has been waiting for? Plus, having it work as an extra screen that displays information about the character's health, ammo status and such, will undoubtedly ruin any sense of immersion due to the player having to look down every time they need to check this information. Although the controller looks very nice and features a lot of impressive tech, I fail to see how any of it will serve to sell a console.
Behind the Times
When it comes to saving games,8 GB of internal memory may be enough but it is absolutely useless to store whole games on. The PS3's SATA HDD is probably the best idea any console maker has ever had when it comes to storage. It proved to me as a consumer that Sony thought about my comfort as well, allowing me to buy a cheap 40 GB version of their console, find myself a used 500 GB laptop HDD and easily switch the drives. The Xbox 360 also has an HDD, but they chose to go the typical corporate “we only care about profit” route of forcing console owners to buy -their- HDDs. With the current trend being Digital Distribution, you won't be able to fit many games onto an 8 GB flash drive.
Nintendo must understand that console owners want to be able to play films on their consoles as well as play games on them, but for some reason they have opted to bring a new disk format to the market rather than spend a few extra bucks on Blu-Ray drives and by doing so enabling the console to play films and thus vastly increasing the market for their product. One would have thought they would learned their lesson the first time around with the Wii's DVD support fiasco.
A Greedy Mistake
Nintendo appears to be acting like a fat kid at a birthday party. It already has nearly half the cake on its plate and is reaching over to grab crumbs from the other kids, all the while leaving its enormous piece unguarded and, more importantly, uncared for. Of course, little is known about the games that will be available on this machine or how its software will ultimately work, but as things stand right now, I would be yelling “SELL, SELL, SELL!!!” at the top of my voice if I had money riding on the steed named Nintendo.