WiiU as modern Atari 7800

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scotland
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Re: WiiU as modern Atari 7800

Postby scotland » September 3rd, 2016, 12:08 pm

To me, the Dreamcast was a forward looking console from a company that no margin or error left in their finances. It was Sega's memorable swan song that left Sega fans asking for years if Sega would re-enter the console market. The WiiU was looking not forward. it was not pushing social or tech boundaries, but instead focused on their first party games, isolated from much of gaming, or like amiibos, playing catch up.

The Dreamcast had untapped potential because it ran out of time (and money). The WiiU came at a time when Nintendo was flush with Wii dollars, and many adult gamers full of Nintendo nostalgia from growing up on the NES and SNES. Yet so much untapped potential because of how Nintendo poorly promoted it, how they poorly managed relationships with third party developers, etc.

The WiiU has not been a disaster, no, its not ben a disaster, but I think it will go down as a disappointment. If you had to make a ranked list of main stream consoles, would it even make top 20?

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scotland
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Re: WiiU as modern Atari 7800

Postby scotland » February 1st, 2017, 5:39 pm

In Nintendo's most recent earning's report, they detailed how many games were on every Nintendo platform. Polygon put it into a graph. One caveat - its physical games only, not digital downloads.
http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/31/14413160/nintendo-games-by-system-graphic

Games per Nintendo Platform.JPG
Games per Nintendo Platform.JPG (72.02 KiB) Viewed 1970 times


The WiiU is crushed by platforms like the Gamecube, let alone the really successful ones like the Wii, SNES and NES. Its even less than N64 games.

The good news is that the Switch already has like 75 games announced for it, many 3rd party. Of course, many of those will be digital downloads, so this chart may not be of much value going forward. The Switch could end up being a really great machine for cheaper 3rd party games and emulation (unless you, ahem, steer clear of things like that).

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Rookie1
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Re: WiiU as modern Atari 7800

Postby Rookie1 » February 10th, 2017, 3:45 pm

If anything, the Wii is the 2600. Tons of shovelware garbage. Literally like 95% of the 1300(ish) Wii games were just garbage. Just like the 2600 with them releasing anything they could put on a cart as fast as they possibly could.

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SpaceGuitarist
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Re: WiiU as modern Atari 7800

Postby SpaceGuitarist » February 18th, 2017, 9:51 am

I don't know if it's the 7800 or the Dreamcast, but I certainly feel the WiiU was a victim of perception, and wasn't able to shake off the bad reputation it got upon release even when great games were coming out at a steady pace. I think, between late 2014 and late 2015, the WiiU had one of the best years in recent memory, with Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 2, Super Smash Bros, Captain Toad, Splatoon, Super Mario Maker and Xenoblade Chronicles X.
It's pretty impressive but during that year, I believe Nintendo only sold 2 million consoles!? Maybe even less?! How do you not sell consoles with that kind of line up??

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Atariboy
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Re: WiiU as modern Atari 7800

Postby Atariboy » February 18th, 2017, 7:56 pm

I own 100 Wii games and I'd say that I easily enjoyed 90% of them. And I still have games on my want list to buy...

And that's without messing with some high profile releases that didn't appeal to me like Super Smash Brothers, Animal Crossing (I'm only now checking this franchise out, so that might change down the road), Xenoblade Chronicles and other rpg's, ports of HD games that I bought elsewhere like Activision's Call of Duty lineup, etc.

I bet if you bought every retail release that had some value, you'd easily hit 200 Wii games. Not every game is a blockbuster, but an awful lot of more modest games in the library have been some of my favorites. Some I've never even seen mentioned by other people.

snakeboy
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Re: WiiU as modern Atari 7800

Postby snakeboy » February 19th, 2017, 1:22 am

Rookie1 wrote:If anything, the Wii is the 2600.


You mean a really great video game console with a bunch of fun pick-up-and-play style games?

Yup, that sounds about right.

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Rookie1
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Re: WiiU as modern Atari 7800

Postby Rookie1 » February 19th, 2017, 7:07 am

snakeboy wrote:
Rookie1 wrote:If anything, the Wii is the 2600.


You mean a really great video game console with a bunch of fun pick-up-and-play style games?

Yup, that sounds about right.


I love my 2600, but there is no denying that they put out more garbage than fun games on that thing. I also love my Wii, but the same applies.


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