Why I chose the Nintendo Wii over the PS3 and 360

In the current generation, three home consoles were released. First came Microsoft’s ”Xbox 360”, then came Nintendo’s “Wii” and then last came Sony’s Playstation 3.

Most people would most likely choose the two HD consoles, the PS3 and Xbox 360 over the Wii. Some reasons, HD games, a wealth of online features, many big name games and more. I own all three consoles as of now.

The Wii on the other hand was not HD, an underpowered console compared to Sony and Microsoft’s console; online features were not all that great. The Nintendo Wii focused on motion controls to control actions in games. There focus was on gameplay and expanding their focus to people who don’t usually play games like older people, parents etc. The Wii had a lot of crappy games that had no real creativity. These games just packed in motions and made money or sometimes failed. Considering this, why would I choose the Wii over the other two. Let me explain.

The main reason was because of the games, yeah the games. I owned a PS3 around 2007 and yeah there were a few good games for the PS3 but not a lot. My problem with the HD consoles was first there were just so many shooters coming out and so my games were concentrating on online play. Not saying online is bad, online is great but I wanted long, quality single player games like I played and loved so many on my PS2. After a year or so a massive variety of games came to the PS3, I’m mainly talking about the early years. The Wii gave me those and a good variety. The console didn’t do as much as the HD consoles in terms of multimedia and features but for me it was just pure gaming,

Games

I was very impressed by Wii Sports, had a blast with it. Made me buy a Wii, at this point in time I was fairly new to Nintendo, I got into Pokemon during the Gamecube and GBA. Never really played any of the other first party games other than a bit of Mario, Zelda and a bit of Metroid Prime. I played Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and loved the game. I began playing Nintendo’s first party entries on the Wii. Some examples are the Metroid games, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Mario games, Zelda games, Punch Out, Donkey Kong and a few more. As I played many of Nintendo first party titles I realised that Nintendo’s first party franchises are quality and have a lot of variety. I look forward to playing Nintendo franchises I have yet to play like F-Zero, Starfox etc

Then came the third party games. Now like I mentioned before there was a lot of crap released for the Wii console but there were some very quality games. Some of these games were the No More Heroes franchise, Madworld, Cursed Mountain, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, Red Steel 2 and others.

Motion Controls

Motion controls is what made the way unique. Being able to do motions with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk (main controllers for the Wii) and they happen in the game. The were alot of game which used them badly but there were also games that used them very well. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was by far one of the best uses of the Wii remote. Metroid Prime games are first person and Samus’s arm is what you see pointing forward, pointing the Wii remote forward would be like your arm. Controlling the Wii remote synced very well with the Wii Remote. Red Steel 2 used it very well, using it the Wii remote and Nunchuk to perform various sword attacks. There were many more examples.

Graphics

The Wii was underpowered compared to the HD consoles so there were a lot of games which looked awful. Then there were games were the developers used a clever art style to make a game look good. I was more impressed with games that looked good on the Wii than games on the HD consoles just because of the sheer difference in power of the HD consoles compared to the Wii.