That’s what a lot of people think at least and I’ll try to explain why. I’ll also try to figure out what made the Wii such a hot seller but died so fast.
DISCLAIMER: I will rip apart every console in this generation as I believe they were all a bunch of garbage. If you happen to be a blind fanboy that thinks your console of choice was perfect, go away I don’t need your business. I do appreciate however constructive criticism and civilized arguments independently on whether you agree or disagree with me.
After Sony’s enormous dominance on the market for two consecutive generations, everyone was looking up to the follow up of the PlayStation 2, but what they got instead was a really arrogant Sony with a console that didn’t really know if it was a console or a really expensive multimedia device.
The PlayStation 3 was a huge step from the PS2 in terms of media playback. It could play CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray and a wide variety of digital formats from either the internal HDD or an external USB drive and it had the ability to install Linux and turn your PS3 into a semi-decent PC, this was nice as from the start Sony was supporting homebrew and code execution on the PS3 officially and it was the main reason the console never got hacked, until Sony played the asshole game and removed this feature. Like fail0verflow said it themselves, the only people who really used linux on the PS3 was hackers, take that away from them and you’ve successfully pissed off the people you shouldn’t be pissing off.
I really liked this and I’ve used my PS3 for media playback on the living room a lot of times and I was a big fan of otherOS, but the problem was that they didn’t centered on the games and the console was really expensive.
Just like with the PS2, Sony used backwards compatibility as a way for people to migrate from the PS2 to the PS3 without loosing their catalog of games, and it allowed the system to have a really decent library of PS1 and PS2 games before actual PS3 games started to come out. The difference here was that for PS2 playback earlier models had to use both the PS2 CPU and GPU, basically this means that there was an actual PS2 built-in into the system, this amounted for the cost of the system. Eventually Sony made the PS3 cheaper by removing the PS2 CPU and having it emulated, and eventually they removed PS2 support altogether.
The PS3 was a hell of a mess. Expensive, not centered in gaming, and a year later than its main competition. That’s right, Microsoft pulled the Xbox 360 a year earlier than the PS3.
This was Microsoft’s attempt to outtake Sony, release their next gen system before them. Due to the system being released earlier it meant that they couldn’t focus too much on extra stuff other than the main gaming aspect, this cheapened the system down compared to the PS3 and made it look like a gaming centered console that appealed to a lot of gamers. But I digress, the system was a load of crap. It was yet another beta product that Microsoft released way too early. Users all over the world were suffering from overheating and many other faults resulting from the lack of development put on the new hardware.
The PS3 also suffered from this, but not on such a grand scale and it usually took a few years for the older systems to start failing, while most 360 units started failing months, and even weeks, after being bought. Microsoft tends to release most of their products in the beta phase, that’s why Windows Phone looks like an early deprecated first generation smartphone OS rather than a modern updated one, it’s also why Windows Vista sucked so much.
But this is not the reason why I hate this console, Microsoft did a great job with later units addressing most of the issues and they were nice replacing people’s units, they even extended the warranty from 3 months to a whole year (which is what they should have done in the first place). I hate them for the type of gaming they brought up to the mainstream. With Xbox Live being a decent success with the original Xbox, and being a big reason for gamers to get the 360, online gaming became the norm in this generation.
With this we eventually saw the rise of games like Call of Duty that profited off of releasing the same crap every year but changing the online maps and weapons, because online was all the rage with the 360).
This also meant games had shorter storymode, because single player is for freaks living in their mom’s basement, online is awesome dude. With online also came microtransactions on FULL PRICED GAMES, day one DLC that were (and should have been) on the disc but was cut on purpose to be sold separately, not to mention content that was actually on the disc but was locked until you paid for it.
I remember back when this generation started the main points most 360 fanboys brought up when defending this bullshit of a machine was “Xbox Live, Gears of War and Halo”, that too me translated into “online shoot ‘em up, online shoot ‘em up and online shoot ‘em up”.
The Xbox 360 brought brodude gaming to the mainstream, allowed for companies to do corporate bullshit, and it eventually made worldwide Japanese companies westernize their games, making franchises like my very own Metal Gear loose their Japanese charm and start looking like another bland western online shoot ‘em up.
And of course we can’t forget about the Big N. Ever since the release of the original GameBoy, Nintendo have been monopolizing the portable console market, but when it comes to home console, they hadn’t done a real dominating console since the NES. One can argue that the SNES was a huge success, and it was, but it was pretty evenly matched with the Genesis, and the N64 and GameCube were both ripped apart by Sony’s respective competing consoles. In this generation Nintendo saw a market that wasn’t fully exploited in gaming and created its console to target it, the casual gaming market.
The Wii was a pretty primitive console compared to the other two. It used an upgraded architecture from that found on the GameCube, which granted it full backwards compatibility, but graphics wise it wasn’t as big of a leap compared with the other two. This was done by Nintendo on purpose to guarantee a cheaper price, a more robust and fail-safe console, and because they didn’t need that much power for what they had in mind and the people they were selling the console to. Perhaps the biggest novelty here as we all know what the motion controls. Many people say Nintendo innovated here, but that usually come from the mouth of people who have no idea that motion controls have existed as early as the NES era and perhaps even earlier. What Nintendo did here was make it bigger and somewhat better. Motion controls were really nothing more than gimmicks, used to create gimmicky games that were all the rage amongst the casual audience. Nintendo was really clever when they tackled this market, and it was what gave them the huge boost in popularity and sales that they haven’t seen in a while. Despite the casual market being what made them huge again, it was also their doom. With the rise of smartphones and tablet where casual gaming was the norm, people left the Wii to rot just when this generation was at its peak. Neither Sony nor Microsoft managed to catch up to the Wii but you have to understand that both of those consoles were sharing the same market, while the Wii was tackling a totally different one.
Nintendo aiming at a different market that wasn’t fully developed at the time, while Sony and MS continuing to battle in the same area, gave Nintendo the dominance they wanted.
But this is why I hate the Wii. When the Wii decided that it’s most important audience was the casual market, many core Nintendo audience felt backstabbed, and in the end, it was this core audience that would have always stayed with them. Nintendo should have known this, the casual market is a lot more volatile than your core audience, you never know where they will be centered at tomorrow, while your core audience will always be there so long you give them what they want. Now that the casual market is all about smartphones and tablets, Nintendo is struggling to gain back the core audience they lost with the Wii. There will always be hardcore Nintendo fans that will buy your system, but those who used to be on the verge between Nintendo and Sega/Sony/MS now have it easy to pick against Nintendo.
Personally I was this kind of people, I’ve always liked Sony consoles above the rest, but I also loved and enjoy the N64 and GameCube, but the Wii I felt that Nintendo didn’t need my business, so I passed on it, and I will most likely not buy the Wii U as a result of this.
Eventually the PS3 finally became the successor to the PS2 we all wanted to see, bringing new and excellent franchises as well as classic PlayStation ones. Lowering the price and offering a great console for a reasonable price. To the point where, despite being released a year after the 360, and despite having a really turbulent release, the PS3 still managed to catch up on the 360, which either tells me that the 360 greatly dropped sales over time or Sony did a really good job in bringing the PlayStation franchise back on track.
Still, with the PS3 initially not being the followup the PS2 deserved, the 360 bringing so much crap to the gaming community, and the Wii kicking out it’s core audience in favor of a casual market that ended up dumping Nintendo, I don’t think those that call this “the worst generation after the atari 2600″ are very far from the truth. What we need for this upcoming generation is for Japanese games to be Japanese again, online multipalyer to not be all the craze (I’m not saying it should die, it’s a nice feature but it shouldn’t be the main aspect of the next generation), companies to stop all the bullshit ( no microtransactions in FULLY PRICED GAMES, no day one DLC, no Disc-Locked Content), Nintendo to stop all the casual gimmicky crap, the PS4 to be a true PlayStation console, and Microsoft to die already.
Stay tuned for the last article in this series, where I will briefly give you my opinion on the upcoming generation that just started, I will conclude the series and I will make a special announcement.