An open letter to Nintendo...

[Howard_Casto]

Ok, the honeymoon is over, as much as I love my wii, as much as I think it is already the definative winner of this round's console wars, I have some complaints. 

1.  Why do I have to go through the wii channels interface to play a game?  I mean, if the console is powered down (or in sleep mode) and I insert a disc shouldn't it boot the disc right up?  Ok fair enough, that might be confusing to some people (people who still eat paste) so how about this..... How about when you insert a disc and you aren't in any other channel (or the console isn't on) it automatically takes you inside the games channel with a "press any button to load, home to cancel" message.  Why the message?  We'll get to that next. 

2.  How come I have to use a wiimote to navigate the channels interface?  (At this point some of you are thinking "Why the hell would you want to?"  Well you guys are dumb, so just bear with me).  Games that use the classic controller or gamecube controller (including, oh I dunno every single gamecube game).  Don't really use the wiimote, but you still have to naviagte through the channels to select the game and usually still have that stupid safety screen on bootup, which you need the wiimote to get through.  Coupled with complaint #1 this is a huge error in an otherwise flawless interface. 

3.  No calibration screen for the ir pointer?  Come On!  Granted I know exactly why you left it out.  You built the system for little old ladies and children to and a calibration screen would scare them.  Also the games out (so far) don't need a pixel perfect calibration.  However I know how triangulation works, so I also know if the wii had a very simple (point your remote at the center/top-left/bottom-right area of the screen wizard and the wiimote would have lightgun quality accuracy.  Should it be optional?  Of course, but you should have still included it. 

4.  Do you guys have a battery tree over at Nintendo headquarters?  We sure as hell don't.  Granted, I know that there are some third party recharging stations coming out, but seeing as all they do is add a new face-plate with two contacts to it and a set of rechargeable batteries, couldn't you guys have included that functionality in the first place? Heck, it'll be so simple to do I might even make one myself... with proper resistance you should be able to recharge batteries via the usb port in the back of the wii.  That's why it makes me so mad that you didn't go that extra step for us.

5.  You want me to pay 5 bucks for nintendo baseball?  Did I read that wrong?  Come on guys, if you want us to fork over a few bucks for some real classics (notice I said" a few," which is three... not 5, not 15) we're ok with that, but half of the stuff you have on the VC is... umm playable at best.  Why not throw us a bone and give away some of the crappier titles for free?  Heck how about a "buy 3 get one free" deal?  Anything man, you are robbing the poor stupid masses, who don't know how worthless some of these games are, blind.  I thought you guys were supposed to be all nice and stuff.

6.  Where is Mario?  Christmas?  WTF?  I mean come on guys, you made us wait a whole year for mario sunshine, only to find out that it's a "eh it's ok" game at best.  When you delay Mario on your next system, it makes me a little nervous.  So help me if you screw up Mario this go around I'll hunt down Reggie and strangle him to death with my nunchuck attachment. 

7.  How about a NEW game by Nintendo?  We get it, make a mario, make a zelda, make a metroid, make all of the whored-out nintendo mascot games, make a fortune, call it a day.  It'd be nice though, if you guys would come up with a NEW game for us to play.  And no, wii sports/play/ect games don't count, as they are tech demos and aren't true, linear games anyway.  No, porting ds games onto the wii don't count either.  Mind you all of these games I've mentioned are really good, but it'd be nice to be suprised by a new franchise rather than just waiting until the next round of sequels come out.  Here's the plan....  give Miyamoto a bottle of sake, a pencil and pad and lock him in a closet for a weekend.  The man is so talented that that he's bound to come up with the next uber successful game franchise by then.  If he comes out with another Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, or other "non-traditional" game beat him and put him back in for a few more days.  Those games are interesting, but you don't get 40 hours of gameplay and a good story from them.


Ok, I'm done.  I just needed to post that somewhere to get it off my chest.  I'll now revert to trying to find the magical pixie dust deep inside the wii that make it run. 

[HaRuMaN]

 

Blowhard...

[shmokes]

I'm with you on the story, but you do get 40 hours out of Animal Crossing easy.

I am kinda surprised at the lack of a new franchise early on.  With Gamecube we had Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion right at or near launch if I remember right.  It really kinda bugs me that I have to confirm EVERYTHING I do in the Wii Channels.  For Christ's sake, if I click on the Forecast Channel I want the ---fracking--- Forecast Channel.  I wouldn't have bloody clicked on it if I didn't want to see it.  Why do I have to see an intermediary screen?  Why do I have to confirm my choice every ---smurfing--- time?  Is it possible that a person might accidentally click on the wrong thing?  Sure, but it's going to happen a helluva lot less than choosing the right thing.  It ain't going to kill a person to say, "Whoops . . . meant to click News but slipped up and got the Mii Channel instead.  I guess I'll just exit the Mii Channel and try again."  And it's going to happen maybe once a month anyway, so who cares?  Just take me to the channel I click on and be done with it.  Can you imagine if your TV's channel interface was so non-committal?  If, every time you selected a new channel it brought you to a bloody NBC or HBO title screen saying, "Are you sure you want to enter this channel?"  Retarded.

[versapak]

I like that a game doesn't auto launch when I place it in (it should be an option in settings though), but yeah, I do HATE that I have to confirm my selection after clicking on a channel.

Also...


I too hate the fact that you can't navigate the channels screen with other control options. Why the heck do I have to turn on a freakin wiimote, wasting my batteries, just to start a gamecube game that will not even be played with it.




 

[ChadTower]

Luigi's Mansion is awesome... one of the few games in recent memory I bought new and really enjoyed.  I can't believe they didn't expand that into subsequent games.  That game is a lot of fun, cool graphics, and the controls were complex enough to be versatile but without being too heavy to master for the nonmotivated old school gamer like me.

[versapak]

Luigi's Mansion is awesome... one of the few games in recent memory I bought new and really enjoyed.  I can't believe they didn't expand that into subsequent games.  That game is a lot of fun, cool graphics, and the controls were complex enough to be versatile but without being too heavy to master for the nonmotivated old school gamer like me.

Not to mention how incredibly perfect that gameplay would be for the wiimote.

[shmokes]

Don't mention Wiimotes around Chad.  He's afraid of them.   

[ChadTower]

I'm mostly afraid of the price to time of use ratio I'd get out of it, actually.

[lcddream]

granted it should have been a release title nintendi is working on a new game

http://wii.ign.com/articles/706/706715p1.html

[Howard_Casto]

I sorta liked Luigi's mansion as well, but I don't think it sold very well, which is why it never had a sequel.  That and poor old Luigi is the Daffy Duck of the nintendo world... all of the work, none of the credit.

versapak, speaking of wasting batteries, why in the world did they design the channels so that they rumble when you move over them?  Yeah it's a cool little touch, but that has to eat up almost as much juice as the ir camera.  You can turn rumble off in the home menu, but then you have to turn it back on later.  It should be a per-application setting.  

Another gamecube annoyance I've noticed is that that wiimote you have to use to start the game can't be used to stop it.  No home menu inside gamecube games.  It's not a major complaint but it seems silly to be required to have a wiimote nearby to start it up and then not be able to get out.


How come you can't send game saves, video clips and mp3's via email too? If they had a closed memory format I could see it as it'd be a security flaw (hackers could write exploits to write homebrew) but since the wii uses sd memory to get those things on it anyway, that security hole already exists.  


Not having a video/audio channel kinda blows as well.  I mean it can play those files via the photo channel, so why not give us a proper player channel for them? It'd take a nintendo developer a grand total of 15 minutes to write one.  

[ChadTower]

That was effed up.  I click the link, it gives the byline:

E3 2006: Project H.A.M.M.E.R. Details Nailed Down
Nintendo offers further details on the upcoming game for Wii.

And the image right below that is a half naked chick getting sliced open while the rest of it loads.  It's only a few seconds later you can see it's an unrelated ad for Saw III and not game footage or images.

[Howard_Casto]

granted it should have been a release title nintendi is working on a new game

http://wii.ign.com/articles/706/706715p1.html

Are you sure that this isn't a thrid-party game?  Looks very adult for nintendo (not that it would be a bad thing). 

Chad there's a small ad in the article but that's it.  Pics and vids are at the bottom.  Maybe its your browser?  I'm running ie7.

[ChadTower]

I'm running FireFox 2.0.  They are probably loading in a different order.

[MajorLag]

In regards to number 6: Waiting sucks, but remember what Miyamoto says: "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever". Since this is they guy who single handedly brought the market back after the crash and gave us OoT and Mario 64, I'm inclined to trust his judgment.

[ChadTower]

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever".

The first part is so not always true that the statement itself is never true.

[somunny]

I'll throw my two cents in here:

The VC games need to have demos available for them.  One level or timed.  Let me try before I buy.

[ChadTower]

A VC premarital snog.

[leapinlew]

Good feedback Howard.

[Howard_Casto]

I'll throw my two cents in here:

The VC games need to have demos available for them.  One level or timed.  Let me try before I buy.

There's a reason they don't offer demos of the vc games.  For many of the games the time you want to spend with them is so short you'd just download the free demo and never play it again. 

[Tahnok]

Personally, I love the rumble when moving over buttons. I think it gives good feedback when positioning the remote. You can 'feel' your way around the menus and keyboard, just like a real keyboard (although a USB keyboard update would be even better).

[lcddream]

granted it should have been a release title nintendi is working on a new game

http://wii.ign.com/articles/706/706715p1.html

Are you sure that this isn't a thrid-party game?  Looks very adult for nintendo (not that it would be a bad thing).

yep i'm sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_H.A.M.M.E.R.

[Glaine]

ok I usually disagree with Howards opinions on things, but I think his article is 100% spot on here. Some of that stuff I laughed pretty good on, like the battery mention. I've thought Nintendo signed a contract with a battery vendor ever since the rumble pack came out for the 64 and required batteries for no good reason at all (I bought a 3rd party rumble that didn't require batteries and it worked as good or better). I can't really see a flaw in your logic on this one.

[ChadTower]

The original rumble packs needed batteries for a very valid reason.  Controllers at that point were still mostly passive devices - they didn't have a power line to feed a secondary device.

[Howard_Casto]

The original rumble packs needed batteries for a very valid reason.  Controllers at that point were still mostly passive devices - they didn't have a power line to feed a secondary device.

Yeah, those third party rumble packs really put a strain on the n64's puny 3.3v power line.  The fact that they didn't fry up n64's on a daily basis is a testament to how well nintendo builds their products.  The gamecube, on the other hand, had a dedicated 5 volt line just for rumble, and even used a smaller motor, which is why it didn't require batteries. 

[ChadTower]

Having the motor inside the controller, rather than just weirdly hanging off the back, definitely works better.  Smaller motor, less current needed, more directly in the hand where you feel it.  Kind of like swapping out a subwoofer across the room with a transducer in your chair.

[bleemus]

2.  How come I have to use a wiimote to navigate the channels interface?  (At this point some of you are thinking "Why the hell would you want to?"  Well you guys are dumb, so just bear with me).  Games that use the classic controller or gamecube controller (including, oh I dunno every single gamecube game).  Don't really use the wiimote, but you still have to naviagte through the channels to select the game and usually still have that stupid safety screen on bootup, which you need the wiimote to get through.  Coupled with complaint #1 this is a huge error in an otherwise flawless interface. 

Know that you can use the classic controller to move around the pointer.  I haven't tried the GameCube analog sticks, but I do know that the classic controller right analog stick does move around the finger.  I actually like the classic controller better for UI movements, don't have to make my arm tired by pointing.

That only partially solves the problem, though, you still have a Wiimote in the mix; Que Sera, Sera.

[Glaine]

Having the motor inside the controller, rather than just weirdly hanging off the back, definitely works better.  Smaller motor, less current needed, more directly in the hand where you feel it.  Kind of like swapping out a subwoofer across the room with a transducer in your chair.

Indeed. The PS2 controllers IMO have the best rumble feeling, good and strong, in the core of the controller. N64 was ok but not as good. Dreamcast is probably the worst, simply because the pack weighed so much it was a constant reminder that it was there.

[Howard_Casto]

Actually the xbox controller had the best rumble feature and it's sorta non-debateable because it doesn't work like the others.  It had two motors of opposing torque and size that were combined to allow true pc-like force feedback.  The other rumblers on the market pretty much just have an on/off switch.  Of course not many games used it properly so many people didn't know that, but if you get one of the first party games like munch's oddesy it really shows. 

[pointdablame]

slightly off topic, but Munch's Oddysee wasn't first party was it?  I don't recall Oddworld Inhabitants ever being sold to Microsoft???

[versapak]

slightly off topic, but Munch's Oddysee wasn't first party was it?  I don't recall Oddworld Inhabitants ever being sold to Microsoft???

Nope, it was just published by MS.

[Howard_Casto]

At the time, the two companies had a partnership.  I miss-spoke anyway, what I meant was a launch title.  Most of the xbox games after the launch were multi-platform games and thus they used a suckier ps2 rumble scheme. 

[hypernova]

I propose an addition.

You've always made outstanding controllers that were insanely rugged.  I had an N64 for around 8 years before selling it and the controllers with it.  The official Nintendo branded controllers NEVER went bad.  Not even the analog sticks.  Even after all those years, I STILL had the original sticks in those things, tight as they could be.

Now go to the Cube's controllers.  My sticks are wearing themselves out within a year.  And the ironic thing is I play LESS than I did years ago.  I'll tell you what it is.  That cheap plastic you've got in there.  Stop using that crap.
Even the shoulder buttons are acting a bit fruity.  You'll push them in, and in the middle of a drift in MK:DD, the drift will release, while you're still holding the button.  I'm not quite sure what the heck is going on there.  All my controllers are exhibiting that problem at random times.  These things just aren't made to last.

Haven't gotten a Wii yet, but I sure hope durability when it comes to the sticks and buttons has improved.

[ChadTower]

I had an N64 for around 8 years before selling it and the controllers with it.  The official Nintendo branded controllers NEVER went bad.  Not even the analog sticks.  Even after all those years, I STILL had the original sticks in those things, tight as they could be.

N64 sticks were notorious for wearing out.  I've had probably 50-75 of them from my yard sale travels/console work... most of them, by the time the consoles were sold, had almost useless analog sticks.  They are not repairable and use a very proprietary set of parts made of thin plastic.  The N64 analog sticks may have worked well but were not built to last.

[Tahnok]

I had an N64 for around 8 years before selling it and the controllers with it.  The official Nintendo branded controllers NEVER went bad.  Not even the analog sticks.  Even after all those years, I STILL had the original sticks in those things, tight as they could be.

N64 sticks were notorious for wearing out.  I've had probably 50-75 of them from my yard sale travels/console work... most of them, by the time the consoles were sold, had almost useless analog sticks.  They are not repairable and use a very proprietary set of parts made of thin plastic.  The N64 analog sticks may have worked well but were not built to last.

Definitely. Once the powder starts showing up around the analog stick, you know your controller is on the way out. Granted though, I think all my N64 controllers have powder, but they are still playable. They just keep getting rougher and less centered.

[ChadTower]

They become less precise, too.  The powder is ground off plastic from the two sets of rails that both hold the stick to center and read its position.  As the rails grind down, they don't hold it as fast, and they also can't read its position as well.  It's slop and a lessening of precision.

[Howard_Casto]

I wish nintendo would go ahead and switch over to a "real" analog stick.  Mind you the one's on the wii devices are a vast improvement, but compared, to say, an xbox stick they are still kinda cheap.

[ChadTower]

Nintendo isn't working on the "sell the hardware for a huge loss leader" model like Microsoft is...

[Howard_Casto]

Nintendo makes about 50 bucks per console... it's the only console that doesn't lose money.  They could have afforded to give us the 3 dollar sticks instead of the 1 dollar ones.  Besides, analog sticks don't come with the wii, just the accessories, which are virtually pure profit for them. 

The wiimote had a lot of r and d costs, but the classic controller and nunchuck were virtually free in r&d terms because the accelerometers in the nunchuck are the same ones in the wiimote, and the sticks are just standard gamecube sticks with a new rubberized top. 

[versapak]

Nintendo makes about 50 bucks per console... it's the only console that doesn't lose money.  They could have afforded to give us the 3 dollar sticks instead of the 1 dollar ones.  Besides, analog sticks don't come with the wii, just the accessories, which are virtually pure profit for them. 

The wiimote had a lot of r and d costs, but the classic controller and nunchuck were virtually free in r&d terms because the accelerometers in the nunchuck are the same ones in the wiimote, and the sticks are just standard gamecube sticks with a new rubberized top. 

The 360 doesn't lose money any more either.

Though that isn't really your point.

Yeah, Nintendo could easily put a little more quality into their analog sticks, and still be making plenty of money.

[pointdablame]

The 360 doesn't lose money any more either.

Do you have a link for that?  That's interesting.