Wii The Choice of Non-Gamers?

Is the Wii console really a good thing? I’ve been reviewing lots of Wii games recently and despite all the blabbing about the funky peripherals and potentially interesting ways to use them the majority of games for the Wii are seriously sub-standard and completely fail to use the Wii remote in any interesting way.

The Nintendo crusade to get everyone playing the Wii has rendered it hopelessly mainstream and the result is an awful lot of mediocre or flat out rubbish titles. Then you get titles like EA Sports Active which isn’t even a game. It’s a personal fitness trainer and, like Wii Fit, it is undeniably a good idea if you want to draw in an audience traditionally uninterested in gaming.

The contrast between gamers who tend to flog their Wii’s off after a few months when the novelty wears off and non-gamers who can’t seem to get enough Wii action is striking. The thing is that mainstream market is much bigger than the niche hardcore gaming market that Sony and Microsoft are scrapping over. Nintendo have cleverly managed to release the technically least impressive device with the largest profit margin for hardware and a novelty controller and they’ve captured the mainstream market.

There are still reasons for gamers to own a Wii but you have to choose carefully. Novelty titles and retro games are the best titles on offer, recently I enjoyed Let’s Tap and Punch-Out!!

There is no getting away from the fact that Nintendo have allowed an awful lot of rubbish to be released and personally I find it dispiriting and worrying for the industry that a lot of terrible titles on the Wii sell more than awesome titles on other platforms simply because the audience is larger and less discerning.