SO WHAT?
Wii Sports Resort Won’t Replace Wii Sports
By Shaun Hatton - August 14th, 2009
One of the more popular articles on Toronto Thumbs this week was the interview with Nintendo of Canada’s Matt Ryan about Wii Sports Resort and Wii MotionPlus. A bunch of sites have picked up on the sound bite that there are currently no plans to replace Wii Sports with Wii Sports Resort – which is something I think many were expecting to happen.
What is interesting, however, is some of the reaction I’ve read about this elsewhere. But before I get to that let me chime in with my take on this.
My question to Matt Ryan was that since the Wii MotionPlus accessory is so small, and that the tech inside is also small, whether we might see that tech integrated into future builds of the Wii Remote. I was going to follow this up with the question of whether we’ll see Wii Sports Resort as a pack-in to replace Wii Sports, now about to enter its third year of pack-in service. Ryan, as someone who can tell where a conversation is being led, addressed that question before I got to ask it.
Wii Sports won’t be replaced because it offers an out of the box experience for new Wii Owners. I think this is a fair decision on Nintendo’s part since the point of the Wii is its simplicity. Wii Sports is simple. Wii Sports Resort is a little more complicated and, although you and I as experienced gamers have no problem picking it up and playing it, Wii Sports serves as a better introduction to the Wii than Wii Sports Resort. Ryan mentioned that Nintendo wants every new Wii owner to experience Wii Sports just as current Wii owners have. Again, I think this is fair.
I’ve read some comments that were along the lines of “why would Nintendo pack it in if they can sell it at full price?” and though they were written with blatant sarcasm, these are valid statements. Nintendo has no reason to pack Wii MotionPlus in with the Wii because one of the reasons of running a successful business is to make money. Wii MotionPlus is a good product. It works, and it’s $25. Yeah, it can get expensive if you’re outfitting all four of your Wii Remotes with one, but you can also just have a friend bring over theirs since most of the games are better when played with others. Complaining that Wii MotionPlus should be included with the Wii is also kind of strange because really, who doesn’t own a Wii already? They’ve sold more Wii consoles than there are people in Canada.
It would seemingly make people happy if Nintendo included more of their products with the Wii. Why not go to the extreme? A retail box that included the Wii, four Wii Remotes, four Nunchucks, four Wii MotionPlus attachments, a Wii Balance Board, and the last five Nintendo-published Wii games would be awesome, especially since it would be hundreds of dollars and everyone has that kind of money just floating around. I know I do!
For the record, I would love to have a Wii Remote with MotionPlus integrated into it. But if Nintendo is planning on this, they probably wouldn’t mention it so soon after the release of the stand-alone accessory. It would be like Apple tipping its hand about the next iPod’s features while trying to sell you on the current one. Still, I couldn’t help but ask.
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4 responses so far:Subscribe to the Toronto Thumbs RSS feed to be notified when new articles are published.
well we all have things we would love. I would love for more third party Wii remotes. I would love for Nintendo to actually use the innovations they create. Remember WiiSpeak how many games use it? WRONG! The answer is not enough. Every game should be using it. Like every game should be using online like GH. Turn on the game and bam you’re online. Remember how you can store your Mii in your Wii remote? yeah you’re not alone most people forget because noone uses it when EVERYONE should be using it. Why not turn all your games into Pokemon where if you transfer data to your friends you can unlock stuff. I look at all that and there’s no way WSR as a pack in even enters my mind. That’d be like the black Wii. My mind is still reeling on the fact that somewhere in the world Nintendo makes black Wiis. (congratulate me on resisting a penis joke)
I can’t speak for Nintendo’s ultimate result that they tend to not support their hardware well (WiiSpeak, Game Boy Advance eReader, others). But I have a hard time accepting the idea that Nintendo does not have creative individuals within the company who can think of great ideas like the ones you have mentioned.
Speaking from experience in a corporate setting, many great ideas are subjected to different levels of approval within corporate bureaucracy. With each of these levels comes a series of questions, changes, and decisions.
Should more games make use of WiiSpeak? Absolutely. I think it’s an amazing peripheral and one I’m very surprised works so well. But who knows if we’ll ever see a day when all new Wii games use it.
I get the hierarchy problems. I don’t like it but I can sorta understand how they affect things. It’s too bad. I always read about how the Wii can’t be a gamer console. It’s fine as a SECOND console but not a primary. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It COULD work. All the ingredients are there. Just some of the design decisions don’t work. Just small things like EVERY game having it’s own FC instead of a system wide number. *shake*. Oh well it’s my first free day by myself I think I’ll get back to some WiiWare stuff. (Lit or LostWinds)
@Wolfkin - Conrats on resisting a penis joke.
:)