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Phil Spencer: "I could never design a console like the Wii"

Yoshimitsu126

Yoshimitsu126

The Fallen
Nov 11, 2017
14,677
United States
I don't think I've ever been as excited for a console release as Wii. But I also thought the controller would be what the Wii Motion plus was too. Still upset Resident Evil 4 on Switch won't get gyro. Not gonna play Re4 without motion controls after playing it on Wii.
 
alundra311

alundra311

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,231
I loved the Wii. It was the first console I bought with my own money.

The Wii was revolutionary because it was the console that made motion controllers the default. I loved playing Monster Hunter Tri with motion controls.

Too bad not everyone wanted to make games that took advantage of motion controls because the majority of the audience hated them or were not interested in games that utilized them.
 

Deleted member 9330

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
6,990
There will never be a cultural firestorm of a launch game like Wii Sports. That shit felt like magic and no matter what happened with the system near the end of its life I feel like that first play of Wii Sports stuck with people.
 
NLCPRESIDENT

NLCPRESIDENT

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,969
Midwest
I have an utter disdain for the Wii, but I will always champion that type of risk and commitment over playing it safe.

And Phil Spencer is as safe as they come.
 
Forkball

Forkball

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,940
The company president pulled the console out of his pocket at a presentation.

Then Nintendo showed off an insane looking TV-remote controller

Then had the audacity to call it Wii.

It's definitely something only Nintendo would do. Imagine when Sony was planning the PS3 someone stood up and said "We should call it the Wii." That guy would be justifiably escorted from the premises. But because Nintendo went so outside of the box yet had a consistent vision, they reached a brand new audience and gave the existing audience unique experiences.
 
aevanhoe

aevanhoe

Slayer of the Eternal Voidslurper
Member
Aug 28, 2018
7,323
He isn't brave enough to change the controller for the next gen, let alone do the Wii.

And I say this as someone who just got a Series X and loves the controller.
 
Wilf Netherton

Wilf Netherton

Banned
Jun 20, 2019
2,638
I have such mixed feelings about the Wii. It was brilliant for forcing two significant technologies into console gaming: gyro and telemetry targeting. On the other hand the loss of control surfaces on the controller made porting games from other consoles a head scratcher that no one really solved and designing native games required developers to toss out the tried-and-true control language of dual analog controllers and wade into experimenting with this bizarre collection of binary buttons, one analog stick, a non-centering telemetry pointer and pitch/yaw/roll inputs.

In the end not even Nintendo could develop a consistent control language that extended across a wide variety of games. Sometimes they used gyro aiming extensively, sometimes they just monitored for big values from the accelerometers (waggle). Games had all kinds of different ways to use the damn non-centering pointer from precise aiming to sort of painting the cursor across the screen like collecting star bits in Galaxy. No consistency anywhere.

But on the other other hand Wii Sports was magical in the way it created the illusion of intuitive control, there's nothing else like it. Galaxy was really damn good at juggling all of the inputs to meet the high standards of Mario platformers and I feel the absence of the pointer in the Switch port.

I guess in the end, with regards to the controls, I'm glad someone did it and also glad they stopped doing it.
 
CristianTheWriter

CristianTheWriter

Member
Oct 29, 2017
357
The crazy thing about the Wii was that it was supper successful but at the same time it wasn't. Because it was so underwhelming in terms of power most developers skipped porting their games to it. The same issue plagued the WiiU. The Switch isn't that much different in philosophy but because it had such a good reputation developers did anything they could to get on board the hype train. It's kind of funny considering the WiiU and Switch have more in similarity than people would like to admit.
 
jroc74

jroc74

Member
Oct 27, 2017
28,992
I like that the big 3 all have their niche, their hook so to speak. Makes buying all 3 platforms easier.

I had a Wii and Wii U, and despite the better specs on the Wii U, I played the hell out of my Wii in comparison. I barely touched the Wii U.
 
Redcrayon

Redcrayon

Patient hunter
On Break
Oct 27, 2017
12,713
UK
RiOrius said:
I can think of exactly one Wii game that I preferred playing with the wiimote/nunchuck over the pro controller. Metroid Prime 3. But everything else I can think of, I'd've rather been using a traditional form of input.

Part of that could be that I'm left-handed, and pointing with my right hand was always awkward, but nunchucking with my right hand was also awkward: I'm trained to move with my left thumb since forever.

Wii had great games, because Nintendo makes great games, and obviously motion controls were very successful for them overall, but for me personally, it was a miss.
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I felt the same with Skyward Sword after paying for the motion+ accessory, in that it felt weird using the remote in my off-hand for the sword. Using it in my left hand meant Link carrying it across his body the whole time and just didn't work either, which just sucked when Link was largely previously depicted as left-handed but they didn't even offer a mirror-mode to let you decide which hand you want to use for the sword.

I loved the use of it as a pointer for light-gun style games (Dead Space: Extraction and House of the Dead: Overkill in particular), and I spent a lot of time with puzzle games like World of Goo too, but my favourite Wii game, and also the game I spent the most hours online with that gen, was Monhun Tri with a pro controller (the motion controls for it were a mess). Also, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, that used standard controls too.

The same went for Kid Icarus: Uprising on the 3DS, little regard for some left-handed players who might struggle with the precision required in the off-hand for motion/stylus controls.
 
jroc74

jroc74

Member
Oct 27, 2017
28,992
poindexter said:
So was the Wii U and you all shunned it.
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Ppl dont just shun, not buy a product en mass for no reason. No company is ever owed our money. That have to entice us to spend it.

No one really wanted it. Despite the low sales it still sold a boatload of first party games.

It was a misstep, that eventually lead to the Switch. Probably lead to the Switch coming sooner than they wanted, I dont think the Switch comes when it did if the Wii U is successful. It all worked out.
 
Turrican3

Turrican3

Member
Oct 27, 2017
781
Italy
Still, and by far, my favourite console ever. No system of mine comes even close to it, also in terms of owned games.

Almost everything felt magical and new, likely because... well, it actually was. Tons of quirky stuff never seen before, or at least not in a mass market product AFAIK.

And LOTS of 60fps games despite it could have been in Nintendo's best interest to push graphics instead, to lessen the admittedly wide gap from the HD twins. I'm glad they made this choice.

It was a revolution indeed and I'm still angry I can't play FPS/TPS/RTS with a proper pointer (that is, one that doesn't need to be recentered every 30 seconds), but I really really hope someday Nintendo will bring back a similar input method.
 
pswii60

pswii60

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,657
The Milky Way
Going from a year of 720p on the Xbox 360 to Wii was.. quite the shock. I'm sure many who got a 360 at launch and were lucky enough to have a HDTV will be able to relate, was a significant downgrade going to Wii.

So yeah even on day one I knew the console wasn't for me. But although it got very little playtime, I kept it primarily for MP3, which was still one of my favourite games of the gen. Really can't wait for the rumoured trilogy, and of course MP4.
 
poptire

poptire

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
9,971
EatChildren said:
Genuinely magnificent system.

- Pointer ruled and is still the best method of aiming on consoles, better than gyro, and afforded new ways to interact with games that are otherwise too clumsy with a control stick (eg: basically replicating a mouse pointer)
- Standard motion controls provided a genuine accessibility entry point for people who did not adapt quickly to traditional control pads, redefining "pick up and play"
- MotionPlus genuinely ruled and was a precursor to the level of interactivity now utilised by VR setups. Games like Wii Sports Resort, Red Steel 2, and Breath of the Wild really showcased the depth proper 3D motion tracking of a peripheral can add to design.
- Mario Galaxy and especially Mario Galaxy 2 are hot contenders for the best Super Mario has ever been.
- Donkey Kong Country revival that wasn't just welcome but also absolutely superb.
- Excite Truck is still one of the best arcade racers ever invented, and was the best of its generation. Excite Bots wasn't as good but you can play as a lobster car with a chef hat.
- Xenoblade Chronicles.
- Punch-Out came back and was really, really good.
- Birthplace of No More Heroes and our gamer king Travis Touchdown.
- Silent Hill Shattered Memories still has one of the most inventive interactive narratives in the entire medium.
- Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
- Endless Ocean 1 and 2 were legit good.
- Platinum's first game, MadWorld. While not perfect, still a lot of fun and totally unique in style.
- SIN AND PUNISHMENT: STAR SUCCESSOR
- Disaster: Day of Crisis was shitloads of genuine fun and super diverse and ya'll wrote it off because you SUCK.
- Dead Space Extraction was surprisingly legit. As was House of the Dead: Overkill. Can't fully replicate lightgun shooters, but did a good job of capturing the feel.
- Zack & Wiki was a super inventive puzzle game that looked gorgeous, and I feel its memory will be lost to time. Which is sad because it was genuinely very good.
- Metroid Prime 3 ruled, and the three games ported as a trilogy with pointer controls was *chef kiss*
- Battalion Wars 2 was good fun but slept on like most gems.
- Mushroom Men had a soundtrack mostly composed by Les Claypool.
- Tatsunoko vs Capcom
- The Last Story and Pandora's Tower were also both legit good, and together with Xenoblade Chronicles are a historical bulletpoint for how a public movement to see games released in other regions can actually sometimes work
- My mate once did a heap of ecstasy and stayed up all night, ALL NIGHT playing and mastering everything in Wii Sports without taking a single break and couldn't move his arm properly for a week.
- Mario Kart Wii is the worst Mario Kart. I just feel that needs to be said.
- Brawl is not the worst Smash Bros and remains unappreciated by you slobbering, uncultured chodes.
- You can hug the blob in A Boy and His Blob.
- Twilight Princess is the best 3D Zelda, even with waggle.
- Heaps of other shit.

Wii ruled. Motion controls were fresh. Pointer is the best thing to ever come to a console, ever forever. Nintendo opened the floodgates for weirdass lower budget B-games to re-enter the market while they otherwise floundered and killed studies on Sony and Microsoft's dick comparing platforms. Some of Nintendo's own best output is on the system. It genuinely helped bridge the gap between experienced gamers and those unfamiliar with what's out there. Probably has among the most diverse portfolios of software once all is said and done. Was affordable, and made a perfect companion system to PC/Xbox/PlayStation. And was easily one of the best homebrew setups I ever had. Having all my games installed to a USB HDD sitting on top of the system, and a super easy to use and visually appealing library interface that literally downloaded covers and details of installed games, while benefitting from faster loading, was just a magic time. MAGIC.

Chuds and Pissbabies hate the Wii because it didn't have their scripted paint-by-numbers cinematic storygames and military propaganda war sims. Real Chads and Kings know and appreciate true creative genius and triumph when they see it.

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This is a brilliant post. Almost as brilliant as the Wii, which was brilliant.
 
Epcott

Epcott

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,279
US, East Coast
I remember the reveal broke the EGM boards back in the day, Seanbaby and the miscreants calling the wiimote everything from "Egg with remote control" to a "woman's vibrator". But when released, everyone pretty much had been on board.

Looking back, it had the slickest console design ever, with that blue light small box shape. The motion control, Mii's, WiiSports killer app, and Virtual Console were the perfect combination for launch.
 
GMM

GMM

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,480
Terrible hardware saved by a great gimmick and design, the Wii is probably one of my least liked consoles as a player, but it's hard to deny that it wasn't a bold step in a new direction.
 
Lakeside

Lakeside

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,214
I appreciate the GameCube and Wii U far more. The Wii is probably the console I've enjoyed the least.
 
Scottoest

Scottoest

Member
Feb 4, 2020
11,326
iswasdoes said:
terrible is such an exaggeration. It was underpowered vs competition sure. But it had great features like backward compatibility, a sexy form factor, some truly great games (TP, galaxy) and a huge raft of software you couldn't get anywhere else
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BC is great, and it obviously had some great games. But I always, ALWAYS hated the actual console. "Waggle" controls were extremely inaccurate and almost always sucked. The console was also extremely underpowered for the time, and white the console itself wasn't offensively ugly or anything, it certainly wasn't "sexy" either, lol. It was a glossy white box with a stand that put it on an angle.

Like most Nintendo consoles in the last 15 years, I put up with it for the software. And that goes the same for the Switch too.

Some people feel differently, and that's fine. I'd also never take anything away from the Wii's success - it was basically the Tickle Me Elmo of it's time, and sold an incomprehensible amount in a short time. But I wouldn't blame anyone for holding the opinion that the console itself was terrible either.

I played Nintendo's big games on it, and Wii Sports several times with my parents and friends. Once that got old, it collected dust for years.
 
VeryHighlander

VeryHighlander

The Fallen
May 9, 2018
6,376
The Wii felt like a game changer. It was so hard to find it in stores and when you finally had it, it was worth it IMO. Wii sports alone was worth the price tag for the whole console lol.
 
Scottoest

Scottoest

Member
Feb 4, 2020
11,326
NLCPRESIDENT said:
I have an utter disdain for the Wii, but I will always champion that type of risk and commitment over playing it safe.

And Phil Spencer is as safe as they come.
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Nothing says "safe" like upending the typical console business ecosystem for your platform, and potentially catastrophically undermining the revenue generation of your major development studios by putting all of your games on a nascent subscription service - a gambit that could very well lead to an implosion of the entire Xbox division if it didn't pay off.
 
Marano

Marano

Member
Mar 30, 2018
4,893
Rio de Janeiro
Arthands said:
Yah, thank god there's Nintendo who's there to push true innovation in this industry
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But not without trade offs, every single strategy comes with a trade off of something else, with Nintendo hardware we all know what that is.

It is best if Nintendo innovates, it wouldn't be good to have all 3 hardware manufacturers following the same strategy, even MS and Sony have somewhat different strategies too.
 

Naphu

Member
Apr 6, 2018
729
Wii was really cool for the first couple years but god that thing was so weak it just turned into a depressing shovel-ware platform that couldn't get good 3rd party games. Or at least if there was a Wii version that wasn't the version you wanted to play.
 

Spine Crawler

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
10,228
Friskykillface said:
Wii was the biggest gamble ever in the video game industry by a major game company
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The DS was an even bigger one.
Naphu said:
Wii was really cool for the first couple years but god that thing was so weak it just turned into a depressing shovel-ware platform that couldn't get good 3rd party games. Or at least if there was a Wii version that wasn't the version you wanted to play.
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old disproven console war narratives
 
Aske

Aske

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,573
Canadia
nihilence said:
Is where I jumped off the wagon.

Own a Wii, U and Switch. But I've honestly played less than 3 games among them, total.
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Yep. It was the death of Nintendo as an exciting alternative console for me. The biggest issue was the lack of HD, and that decision introduced the Nintendo tradition of making not just underpowered consoles, but consoles that straight up weren't designed for the majority of TVs people owned.

It had some incredible games (Metroid Prime, Zack and Wiki, No More Heroes, RE4, Twilight Princess), but they were few and far between compared to the shovelware that plagued the system, and while those games used the motion controls to great effect, most developers had no idea what to do with them. And they looked like trash compared to PS360 games, because they were all riddled with aliasing, which the HD systems largely eliminated.

The Wii marked Nintendo's new pricing strategy: make games more cheaply than the competition, but charge just as much. There were a decent number of games I'd have bought, but which never felt worth the price compared to games on the other systems.

WiiU was a joke, and I only owned it for Bayonetta. The Switch is an amazing console, but it's also not for me due to a lack of competing software, and games which are horribly overpriced. I own the Bayonetta games for it, and that's it. Without that one franchise, I wouldn't have bothered with it, especially since I'm not into handhelds.

I genuinely dream of the day Nintendo makes anther console that's designed to compete with Sony and MS. Nintendo's innovation will always feel sadly wasted on outdated tech until they deliver a GC 2.
 

Ecotic

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,408
The Wii should never be held up as an example of what to do in business. The Wii originated because after years of mistakes Nintendo got outmaneuvered and pushed out of being one of the two mainstream video game console providers. It was Nintendo and Sega, then Sony and Nintendo, and finally Nintendo got pushed out and it became Sony and Microsoft. So then Nintendo was forced to come up with some differentiating factor and they had to bet the company on a massive gamble. Yeah it worked with the Wii, but the Wii U is a perfect example of how that strategy (when it doesn't work) can push your company into near failure. At one point in 2014 Nintendo's market cap was so low it was considered a micro-capitalization company - a speculative stock financial institutions couldn't even keep in their blue-chip portfolio. A controlling interest in the company could have been purchased for less than $10 billion.

Now, when the Wii was successful Nintendo should have retained all of their net income as retained earnings and used it to either build up the company to provide some stability, or at least kept it in its cash equivalent accounts as a strategic reserve to keep their options open. Instead Nintendo, under Iwata's leadership (a guy with no business experience to know these basic things), flushed it all out in the form of dividends. I had major disagreements with how the company was being run at the time, they're at least a bit better now.
 

Spine Crawler

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
10,228
Ecotic said:
The Wii should never be held up as an example of what to do in business. The Wii originated because after years of mistakes Nintendo got outmaneuvered and pushed out of being one of the two mainstream video game console providers. It was Nintendo and Sega, then Sony and Nintendo, and finally Nintendo got pushed out and it became Sony and Microsoft. So then Nintendo was forced to come up with some differentiating factor and they had to bet the company on a massive gamble. Yeah it worked with the Wii, but the Wii U is a perfect example of how that strategy (when it doesn't work) can push your company into near failure. At one point in 2014 Nintendo's market cap was so low it was considered a micro-capitalization company - a speculative stock financial institutions couldn't even keep in their blue-chip portfolio. A controlling interest in the company could have been purchased for less than $10 billion.

Now, when the Wii was successful Nintendo should have retained all of their net income as retained earnings and used it to either build up the company to provide some stability, or at least kept it in its cash equivalent accounts as a strategic reserve to keep their options open. Instead Nintendo, under Iwata's leadership (a guy with no business experience to know these basic things), flushed it all out in the form of dividends. I had major disagreements with how the company was being run at the time, they're at least a bit better now.
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WiiU actually followed the HD gaming mantra. They put out a console that basically was just a more powerful wii. They wanted to make it like what the switch ultimately became back then but they lacked the technology and went with a good idea that was terribly executed.

I also think Nintendo is known for its warchest. I definately think they could use it better though.
 
YukiroCTX

YukiroCTX

Prophet of Regret
Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,994
I don't even think the current Nintendo would even design a console like Wii. I feel most of it going forward is going to be more iterative on the Switch model design, not much games have really utilized motion in any meaningful way since but the tech hit sort of at the right time innovative for what it was, Parents bought it for Wiisports and brainage seeing first hand the influence of Wii on a completely different target audience for gaming. Personally being the only console I had for that duration made gaming less enjoyable at the time.
 
nekkid

nekkid

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
21,823
Puffy said:
LOL by who? You?

Owning only a wii in the later years was painful.
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I had a 360, so I didn't only have a Wii. But I sold mine in the end, way before the U was released, because it was just mountains of shovelware in the end. I have fond memories of the first few years of it, though.
 

Spine Crawler

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
10,228
Aske said:
Yep. It was the death of Nintendo as an exciting alternative console for me. The biggest issue was the lack of HD, and that decision introduced the Nintendo tradition of making not just underpowered consoles, but consoles that straight up weren't designed for the majority of TVs people owned.

It had some incredible games (Metroid Prime, Zack and Wiki, No More Heroes, RE4, Twilight Princess), but they were few and far between compared to the shovelware that plagued the system, and while those games used the motion controls to great effect, most developers had no idea what to do with them. And they looked like trash compared to PS360 games, because they were all riddled with aliasing, which the HD systems largely eliminated.

The Wii marked Nintendo's new pricing strategy: make games more cheaply than the competition, but charge just as much. There were a decent number of games I'd have bought, but which never felt worth the price compared to games on the other systems.

WiiU was a joke, and I only owned it for Bayonetta. The Switch is an amazing console, but it's also not for me due to a lack of competing software, and games which are horribly overpriced. I own the Bayonetta games for it, and that's it. Without that one franchise, I wouldn't have bothered with it, especially since I'm not into handhelds.

I genuinely dream of the day Nintendo makes anther console that's designed to compete with Sony and MS. Nintendo's innovation will always feel sadly wasted on outdated tech until they deliver a GC 2.
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a game with lower budget is not automatically a bad game. There are so many games with huge budgets that look good and play like shit while some smaller games bring much more enjoyment due to better polish.

The wii had a lot of games like that. Boom Blox is probably one of the most innovative games EA made in the last 20 years and it works incredibly great. Konamis Pro Evolution Soccer on Wii allowed tactical football play that was not possible before and has never been recreated since. Tower of Shadow was probably one of the best puzzle platformers and the best game Hudson made in the last 20 years. Muramasa was the start of the vanillaware resurgence. No More Heroes was also low budget but full of personality and charm. Many of those games would not have been made in an HD gaming only environment.
Puffy said:
LOL by who? You?

Owning only a wii in the later years was painful.
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No by the release calendar. That being said. Nintendo just ignored a lot of their own games and didnt release them. Pandoras Tower, Xenoblade and Last Story are just examples. You could add Reginleiv, Fatal Frame 4, Disaster day of crisis and Captain Rainbow for good measure.

all games that were published in japan and that simply didnt make it to NA because Wii Fit was selling gangbusters anyways.
 
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