The Wii Might Just See the End of It

It's all too clear that Nintendo has had a tremendous success with their Wii and DS consoles. As soon as developers and publishers got their hands-on experience with the machine, back at E3 2006, everyone bet all their money on the new motion sensitive control. And why wouldn't they? Nintendo brought the most innovative game control ever and even people that hated games before are now hooked. But what exactly happened when Nintendo said: "OK, grab the Wiimotes and see what you can make of it?"

In a recent Bloomberg report, game developer and publisher Electronic Arts stated that they've been trying to catch up with the Wii since E3. What could that mean? It means that big time developers such as Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive and Activision saw the potential in Nintendo's console and rushed to support it. So now, little Wii has a good thing going on - huge title list and all the support a console can get, but most of the games are to launch only by the end of the year, or the beginning of the next. That's an awful lot of waiting time. It's more than enough for people to lose faith in the system and go for the alternatives.

And then there's another question to be asked. That big title list is eventually going to hit the shops, some day. OK, what happens after that? Developers are already behind schedule, so how will they make up for the lost time ('cause when it comes to game developing, time really is money)? 1UP gives the answer to that question: "rush job ports." Some of the currently available Wii games have obvious lacks and clearly needed a larger development cycle, but they rushed into launching them. Maybe developers were merely testing to see how people thought of motion sensitivity, who knows, but let's just hope that they do come out with some smash hits before the 360 and the PS3 take the driving wheel into their controllers.