Fyrdility

I like to play games. Don't play much, don't own many consoles. I do own a Wii. The Wii seemed very cool and exciting at first, and certainly has some cool games for it. I do not regret buying a Wii. However. What disappoints me is that there are so few decent Wii games, especially compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3. And yet it's the best-selling console of this generation. Let me give you some statistics from Metacritic, a site that takes scores on games from a variety of review sites, and then mashes them together into a single number. For "decent" games, I'll look at games that have at least a score of 75. Sound fair? Usually a game with a score of 75 is kind of a "meh" game that you would pick up if you could find it cheaply. So I think I'm being quite generous calling a 75 game "decent". Here are the statistics for games that scored 75+, as of September 17, 2007.

• Wii: 15
• PS3: 36
• Xbox 360: 110

I could draw a little pie chart to illustrate how frikkin' FEW Wii games this is, but for these numbers I really don't have to. It normally takes quite a lot for me to complain about something like this, but come on! There are more Wiis sold than 360's, and yet the 360 has more than 7 times as many games! I'd almost feel sorry for Microsoft. Didn't they have this "It's the games, stupid" mentality when they came out with the original Xbox? A (game system) generation later and they're actually taking an incredible lead in "playable" games, while the Wii outsells their system. Do gamers just not care that much about the games anyway? Yes, I know, the Xbox 360 has been out longer than the Wii has, so more games are obvious. But this many? And the PS3 was released at the same time, and STILL has over twice as many decent games. So really, why are things the way they are? Maybe there really are more playable games, but the reviewers are biased against the Wii? Maybe it's just too hard to make a good Wii game? Maybe developers are too lazy to put too much effort into making a great Wii game, knowing it will probably sell easily anyway? Maybe there aren't enough hard core Wii gamers to cater to? The first point is hard too imagine, the second is unlikely based on the handful of good games that DO exist...so I suspect it's the last two. The Wii is hot, and is being played by people young and old. Why bother making anything better than some cartoony mini-game filled piece of crap? Nintendo knows better than to really dumb down their games, but few other developers seem to really care about the needs of the real gamers. Surely I'm not the only one who feels disappointed by this? For comments, please post at Where are the decent Wii games? on the new Fyrdility blog