Former DICE CEO Describes Wii as "A Virus"

[Carnagath]

Got mine for free a few weeks ago and I visited a couple of game stores to get some of the good titles. I was shocked by the sheer amount of shovelware that exists for this console, it's just unbelievable, I was practically digging through mountains of obscure kiddie and gimmicky games in order to find the 10 titles that are actually worth getting. I was just speechless, I mean, when I'm browsing the PS3 or 360 titles I know pretty much every game I see, but with the Wii titles there is just so much stuff I'd never heard of. Who buys all these games? Do people actually go out and pay 40E for Cartoony Gimmicky Game A with a critic and gamer score of lower than 4? I don't get it. I'm also not very thrilled that I have to pay 80E for a Plus controller and a nunchuck, which is only slightly cheaper than the cost of the Natal, I mean seriously, that shit is waaaaaaaay overpriced.

 

[zamble]

I don't know why everybody assumes people either: a) dislike the Wii and won't ever get one or b) they got one but easily got bored, and don't use it anymore. If it is just by what people on THIS site (or any other site for hardcore gamers) say, it's just a biased information.

 

[Adzma]

Yea, it kinda is. Everyone has one, its REALLY hard to actually break it.

QFT. Last time I used my Wii was when NSMB came out. Then I realised it was crap and I haven't used it since. All it does is take up space.

 

[MrSnugglesworth]

Hey, thats exactly like my Wii.


Played once in a blue moon, when me and my friends want to play Brawl, or I want to play a Gamecube game.

 

[Shifty Tortoise]

Give the man a biscuit, he's right.

 

[samsonguy920]

First make an actual decent game, instead of remaking the same generic war shooter every six months - then you can criticize other people's work.

Oooo, Ice Burn!
I'm thinking this guy is suffering a bit of console envy here, and isn't letting the little thing called hipocrisy stand in his way. What I have seen of B:BC2 just makes me think its MW2 with more vehicles. Probably even the same engine.
It's all a matter of opinion, whether people see more out of the Wii or not. As to calling it a toy, I have to wonder what he considers the other consoles? Can hardly call them tools.

 

[MattZero]

I think this is pretty accurate actually. I bought a PS3 when it first came out paid the full $600 when all i could play was Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Resistance. I used the hell out of it ever since. Games Check. DVD's Check. Bluerays (When they became affordable) Check. Music Player Check. Social Networking Check. I was actually pretty satisfied because i used it to death right when the 250 gig slims came out.

My family = My mom and five little sisters. They own not one, but two Wiis. They have two Wii fit boards, eight Wiimotes. They have an entire stack of wii games. Basically all in the vein of Wii Sports or Wii Carnival. They didn't buy Mario Cart, Zelda, Smash Bros, New Mario Bros... No they bought only the shitty dime-a-box dross the wii is famous for. Both of these Wiis are currently sitting on their dining room table covered in a full half inch of dust. Why? They lost both Wii Sports disks and one of the Wii Fit disks broke and the other one got stuck in a CD player. My mom and teenage sister now get their workouts.... on the treadmill. They found out that it was way more fun and cheaper to just watch TV and jog on the treadmill than it was to do Wii fit and spend a shitload on batteries for all the Wiimotes.

So yeah wii is like an impotant virus. Everybody has one, hell some people have two. But for every one PS3 (or Xbox I'm not a hater I know alot of Xbox guys who have used the hell out of their system as well.) that gets near constant use and the gamer buys the big name games from the actual developers, there is apparently two Wiis that got bought because you were a bad mom if you didn't get one by Christmas and now isn't even used for WiiFit because freakin' jogging is more enjoyable.

And someone up above said the Wii market is hard to sell to because they demand things to be unique thus they are not a good market while the "hardcore" gamers will buy the same junk over and over. I don't think that's entirely accurate. I have a good half of my harddrive devoted to cool looking indie stuff i picked up on PSN and I put just as much time on any of that as Assassin's Creed 2 (More probably i blew through AC2) or Arkham Asylum. While you look at my families major titles Wii Sports 1 and 2 Shovelware knockoff of Wii Sports Shovelware knockoff of Rock Band Shovelware knockoff of Dance Dance Revolution (Played for five seconds) Wii Fit 1 and 2. They aren't exactly a discerning market demanding high quality innovation or unique art/storytelling/atmosphere/music/gameplay from any of their purchases.

 

[Acidwell]

-snip-

If by old people you mean people who are old enough to appreciate Nintendo's long running franchises.
And if the Wii is a toy, then similarly I could say the Battlefield franchise was a playground, since it has no single player or story to speak of, just provides a generic war setting and let people drive around and blow shit up.

No by old people i mean people over 50/60, that was the aim of the wii according to nintendos president and also i never said that the wii was a toy. Anyway the reason that the war setting is generic is a lot to do with battlefield 1942, on top of that the last 2 releases in the franchise did have a single-player and a story

 

[ma55ter_fett]

I agree but give us some numbers man, not just what a CEO an escapist News Room Contributor think to be the case.

 

[Jared]

I gave up on the Wii after trying The Conduit.

Same here...Its nice, but, forsomething lasting might as well look somewhere else...

 

[data_not_found]

I didn't know yahtzee used to be CEO.

 

[The Austin]

Yea, I go for periods of like, 4 months without touching my Wii.
(He-he. "Touching my Wii" Get it? I am of course, referring to my penis.)
The only time I ever play is when I want to play some Super Mario Bros. Which usually consists as multiple deaths and a rage quit.

Edit:

Translation:

"The Wii market is too hard to sell to; they won't buy the same Shooter Guy 3 sequels we keep shitting out. They aren't like the Hardcore (suckers) who just buy whatever we advertise to them month after month. They expect their games to be unique, interesting, and have lots of value, which we have no idea at all how to do. We're going to keep milking the basement dwelling Halo-tards until the market collapses while blaming piracy and used game sales for our lousy products."

WOA, WOA! Your talking about DICE here!
The guys who did Bad Company! That game was completely original!

Tell me, have you ever played a game where you outrun a Russian tank in a golf cart?
Cause you do that in Bad Company.

 

[DarkSaber]

Attitudes like Fredrik Liliegrin's are a disease slowly poisoning the industry.

 

[DarkSaber]

On subject, this is nothing new, really. Of course there are some good games on the Wii, but they are drowned by remake upon remake, and cheap cashin's, (see Mario and Sonic.)

Entirely unlike the remakes and sequels on the other consoles...

I never said that there weren't some bad remakes and sequels on PC's, 360's or PS3. It's just that whenever you think of remakes and sequels that never advance a series onwards, you will think of Sonic and Mario, who have both spawned awful games.

Actually I think of Halo and Call of Duty before those 2.

 

[CoronaryThrombosis]

Translation:

"The Wii market is too hard to sell to; they won't buy the same Shooter Guy 3 sequels we keep shitting out. They aren't like the Hardcore (suckers) who just buy whatever we advertise to them month after month. They expect their games to be unique, interesting, and have lots of value, which we have no idea at all how to do. We're going to keep milking the basement dwelling Halo-tards until the market collapses while blaming piracy and used game sales for our lousy products."

Pretty much.

I think the real "problem" with the Wii is that it excludes the 13-17 year old "Mall Ninja" market. They have no children, wives or girlfriends to play Nintendo with: Only their Mall Ninja friends. Think most people in that group would want their friends to know that they play Cooking Mama or Little Big Planet (or God forbid; Lego Starwars!)

 

[MorsePacific]

The problem isn't inherently in the Wii itself; it's in the developers who are making games for it.

The Wii is perfectly capable of having titles on it that would make it an even bigger seller, and actually keep people interested, but some developers just see that mindless shovelware sells well on it, since literally EVERYONE has a Wii these days. So developers make a whole bunch of crappy mini-game collections, and they sell like hotcakes.

I can definitely see where he's coming from with this point of view. The Wii isn't being taken very seriously as a gaming platform, rather it's being marketed to people just breaking into the gaming culture.

 

[Radelaide]

Notice how everyone who didn't make the Wii are slagging it off? I think people are jealous of the Nintendo money machine.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I <3 Wii. It is exactly what I was looking for...a console with fun games. 360 had graphics I didn't care about because I only had a standard def TV that wasn't going anywhere. PS3 was an awesome $600! when it came out and looked like a 70s sci fi prop.

I have a family and a job and I can only game a few hours a week, so I'll spend 3 months beating Mario Galaxy, Metroid, Brawl single player campaign, etc. There are enough awesome first person titles. My wife loves Raving Rabids, that is the first 3rd party game to really get the wii control scheme.

So yeah I guess I'm a "casual" gamer, and the Wii is the system for me without a doubt.