Chime In: Wii Ennui

We’ve had some time to cool down after Nintendo’s big October conference, and I’m curious – are you still excited? I’ve come to the realization that I’m really not.

Like everyone else, I was excited for the Wii. I thought that the motion-control idea was a brilliant one. For a while, I was convinced. Twilight Princess was brilliant and Mario Galaxy was a masterpiece. I even bought third party titles that I might not have tried otherwise for their motion controls. Then, there was nothing. The excitement was gone. Sure, the fact that the Wii was seeing fewer releases than the other platforms wasn’t surprising; you don’t buy Nintendo platforms for the glut of releases. I think some of the disappointment came from two fronts. First, the third party support has hovered between mediocre and utter crap. This generation, the problem isn’t the number of releases. The Wii has seen a ton of third party games; it’s just that most of them suck.

The second problem is that first party releases have completely dried up. It isn’t like Nintendo is lacking titles to release. The Japanese side of the company has been developing and publishing dozens of games that have been utterly ignored for a US release. Where the hell are the games? Disaster has been confirmed for Europe, but the US side hasn’t decided. Nintendo of America passed on Fatal Frame. You can forget about Captain Rainbow. The DS side isn’t any better. Where is Soma Bringer? What about Mag Kid or theta? Hell, ASH was translated and given an ESRB rating before Nintendo changed their mind about releasing it. The future doesn’t look any better. Out of the last thirteen Wii titles and six DS titles announced by Nintendo of Japan, two of the Wii titles and one DS game have been confirmed for a US release.

I guess you could say that Nintendo frustrates me right now. It wouldn’t be as bad if any of the titles that they are localizing interested me, but they just don’t. At this point, it would take something awesome to get me excited about the Wii again. The interesting titles at the Japanese conference were mostly third-party developed, and who knows which of those will make it out here.

All right, you’ve heard me rant; now it’s your turn. Tell us how you feel about the Wii and Nintendo right now. Do you feel left out? Are you bored? What do you want out of Nintendo?