Wii Won’t Stay on Shelves

That’s right, you read it. We are still in this ooze-trickle of Wiis entering North America after a year and a half of Nintendo claiming that they will fix the problem. Worth waiting for? That’s up to the individual. What I’ll tell you to do, however, is to vote with your cash. The Wii isn’t such a unique product that it can’t be replaced on your gaming shelf. For instance, there is this cool thing called Xbox Live, and it has all kinds of online services that don’t time out (too often) and adult games with blood and guts and everything.

“NO,” you say. “I am waiting for the Wii, it is the first gaming system to bring unique controls to this generation of games.” That is a comparatively true statement, until you play Mario Kart, which feels cookie-cutter, and all the way this time. The Wii Wheel? Get out of here. Wii Fit maybe? It’s an interesting premise, but the critics don’t seem to think it’s the bee’s knees. As a person that ACTUALLY works out, Wii Fit only breaks a sweat for the truly casual exerciser, so the ‘revolution’ may be getting gamers to drop ninety bucks on a mini-freight scale.

“But, it’s unique, dammit!” Fine, I’ll play your game. Perhaps too unique? What developers are really using the Wii for anything special? Wii Sports was really cool (when the boxing actually responded), and so was Rayman: Raving Rabbids. Anything else ring a bell? Where are the Wii’s deeply immersing games that glitz the eyes and expand our expectations? Enjoying Smash Brothers for the third generation in a row?

“You are a brute, and anti-Wii.” Not really, friend. The truth is that this generation has been so sorely lacking in the innovation we were expecting by now that the first sparkle on the horizon is the one we follow. The Xbox 360 has been little more than a perfecting of the last Xbox’s brilliant online strategy. The PS3 is almost vaporware, with a line-up that is almost mocking in its second generation repetition. The Wii just offered something unique where everything else was bland, and people bought it. Why? We are conditioned to buy video games at this point: a conditioned luxury, like cars and cellular phones. Never fear, Nintendo, that can change at any time. Unlike Bear-Stearnes, no one in the gaming world is too big to fail.

So, what about this whole Wii controversy? It doesn’t matter. It’s possible Nintendo is just pulling a Sony and keeping shipments artificially low to represent a ‘buy’-mentality to the American consumer. Maybe there are a lot of pirates in the Pacific this time of year? Either way, dollar-voting is the only way to go. If Nintendo can’t get their shipments right, buy an Xbox 360. Or, you could always just play games on your PC. If we, the gamers, don’t demand REAL innovation in our products, then any demand for the products that SHOULD be available is just hysteria.

It’s not that the Wii sucks, or anything of that sort. Here it is though, our innovative magic-wand system that no one can get. Then, when we do get it, Nintendo gives us last-gen ports and prays third party developers (who are still used to the norm of last-gen) will pick of their slack and do something amazing.

Listen gamers, if you are comfortable with the Wii Sports that came with your system and all of the other crap that isn’t the awesome Mario Galaxy, ignore crazies like me. If, however, you are mad as hell at these supposed ‘revolutions’ every generation, and the two-year wait that accompanies them, WALK AWAY. Perhaps the next time someone hypes a product to be ‘next-gen,’ they’ll have a few more available so we can give them the money to prove it.