The value thing is not up for debate. There is no explanation for it. Like the DS still selling depsite being underpowered and having PS1 looking graphics, nintendo are cocky and stubborn like they were when they decided to keep the n64 stuck with carts or to keep the original gameboy and the NES alive for as long as they could rather than progress. (remember how long the gameboy still continued on as if the gamegear, that nec handheld, and the lynx were in competition?) They are hoping to slow progress down for home console in a similar fashion. (with the hope that the masses are not hardcore enough to care to want the higher end system. When people see the price they will think "hey that's good value"
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As for the component cable and not making the GC version usable. This goes back to the idea of making everything incompatible so you buy the same things more than once. So long as people continue to pay the high prices, prices will keep being high. (ie buying mods in oblivion, paying for roms, paying money for online gaming, needing to buy a remote to watch a dvd movie (xbox 1), the general price of the memory card in the pre-HDD days etc)
This is why they can still sell GBA games at DS game prices despite the system that plays them being inferiour in hardware. If the fan of the game wants to play it, he will eat the cost because he is genuinely not value conscious, just interested in wanting to play the game. The hardcore buy more games and want the cuttinge edge first, but the masses are less focused on specs and overall spend less time in the day on gaming. (all the wierd sub-genres and non-game games and sims are an attempt to appeal to them. I'm surprised that budget titles like brain age are actually selling when imo this is something people should have as an inbuilt feature of the system)
So much bad news. (I hate paying so much for hardware and peripherals) I hope they make a core system like what they did with SNES (no super mario world, just snes and a controller) and do the same thing with the Wii in future by getting rid of the demo. If what others have said is true and the demo boosted the price by $50 it would be good to also have a deal where you can get a system with no pack-in, to bring the price down more for those who aren't interested in it. (then use the savings to go toward proper cables)
It reminds me of all the bundles EB force on you when you buy a console when all you want is the console itself. I'd much rather wait till things go in the bargain bin than be an early adoptor of launch titles that require paying for them at full price. (barring the must-have titles)
Apart from the gimmick wand gameplay
But it can also be a sword, axe, club/baton, gun, steering wheel, lightsaber, spear etc. I got this idea that if nintendo could just clone shenmue and make a "shenmue with a sword" epic fighter/adventure game I would seriously buy the system for that. Make it episodic and like an american tv series, if is tanks they can just drop the sequels and minimise some risk.
Instead of pushing buttons:
x horizontal slash
y vertical slash
x+Y diagonal slash
directional pad to direct the flow of the move.
Every single motion would have to be tied to the wiimote so anyone can just jump in and not memorise any kind of button mapping or config setting already put in there by the previous player. The mini-games would be inbuilt into the game but there would be a larger living world to explore. (marry the living world genre to the "fighter/weapon-based/lightgun gimmick" arcade genre. And every single motion like opening a door, punching a guy in the face, working in a mine by holding a minepick etc would all relate to this wiimote.)
I think that in a sports sim like golf, its obvious that having 3d controller can be beneficial as the movement in 3d can translate well to the ingame action, (making sure to keep your body straight) but I also want something that involve interacting with many
different objects with the wiimote in a single game rather than just being tied to one object. Instead of making me play 5 different sports games, why not have one single "living world" game, with virtually unlimited numbers of objects to interact with which have a purpose?
Games like Trauma Centre I think had the right idea, (where it was gimmicky but made you feel like it wasn't a half arsed attempt at tying the control to the game) but why not tie the idea into a living world game instead of only limit you to that one thing that you do in the game? The biggest criticism of gimmicks is that these types of games are shortlived and for many people they would not try them just based on the fact that they don't know if they would really pay money to play an experimental game and run the risk of not liking it that much and having wasted money. (we are creatures of habit who hate change and find comrfot in things that are familiar to us) But if they tied as many things into a large game that used the wiimote for almost everything in order to properly play it, people would warm up to the magic wand much more and feel it set some kind of standard for third parties to follow when they consider making future games. Existing games were better when they had thier respective peripheral to control them:
-fighters are better with an arcade fighter stick or pad.
-FPS shooters will always be better with mice and keyboards
-rpgs benefit more from keyboard interface vs menus/submenus
-RTS mouse+ keyboard
-Racers best with steering wheel
-2d shooters are better with good ole fashioned digital dpad
etc
but if nintendo are serious about this controller they need a game where every action requires the wiimote such that it feels like you are focused more on the gameplay in the game and not what the button mapping are to operate different equipment and objects in the game(which requires reading a manual for every instance that the controls change for the respective vehicle, machine, tool etc) but you just play the game for the story itself and using only human motions so there is virtually no learning curve. You either stink at it because you controlled it improperly, or practiced and did the move properly; satisfying the conditions for a successful execution of the move. No excuse for unresponsiveness or poor factory "default" button configs. It would be like comparing a lightgun, over a dpad to control aim. The dpad sensitivity could be blamed for feeling sloppy and slow but the light gun so long as it shoot stright and is calibrated, gives you enough freedom to not have any excuse for poor performance.
In summary what I want is a single player game, where the wiimote is almost an extension of your own hand/will and not feel as if the visual feedback oncreen is your only frame of reference in terms of distance. If In a First person hack n slash, if I want to thrust my sword into the enemy I don't have to look at where the point of the weapon is to know how deep I cut pierced into something to know what future adjustment I need to make to "correct it" to get deep enough for a kill. Instead I just know how deep towards the screen I can thrust and retract my arm back into defensive posture. But all on the first attempt, just by knowing how far the controller was, regardless of whether I saw onscreen where the point was to judge distance which is how we normally would do it - making minor adjustments after we already did the move a few times. FPS always have the sight centred so if you held a sword and clicked, the character always strike at that point where the crosshair was. This way though is the other way around: you would literally move the controller at the point that you want to strike in 3d space, taking into account depth/distance, with the character following what you did. Any error is due to poor excution by your own movement. The action itself is not scripted.
It's just a different way of playing but with a requirement of the player to be more precise if they want to take advantage of the finer motions (not "scripted attacks" mapped to a button) that 3d control could bring. It's just that I think a scripted attack is likely what we are all used to from our days playing simple arcade games where the attack never varies by our own fault, because the in-game character always does it perfectly. Having the ingame action tied to your hand, with more room for error, will mean more choice for you, and a more descriptive way of doing the same thing. A vertical slash is not just a vertical slash anymore. it your choice to only begin to feint a vertical slash if you want to and add a slight diagnal angle to the motion to alter how your ingame character moves to becomes more unpredictable. If most games choose to use a "scripted action" it will run the risk of being gimmicky but only because the ingame software chose not to allow much room for error/choice in how (the description, the adjective) the action was done.
In Goldeneye for example some have surgical precision aming the crosshair manually because it allows freedom to shoot things beyond what computer designates as "the targets" to ahead of a target and confuse or predict where they might be ahead of time. Even though there is more room for error in manual targeting there is more "choice".
With autoaim, it rapes you of choice but less room for error. Having less choice means you might not be able to do a more advanced thing like go for the head shot instead of the body at close range. (because the computer is fighting for control from you)
Having a 3d wand might mean we get games where there is more choice and more room for error, (you don't merely push a button to do a "scripted action" anymore, you have to guide the action in 3d space) provided the games that are made do not over-simplify those in-game actions and make them forgiving just to appeal to a beginner. (its the same reason people should all hate the Easy Mode on the GC version of capcom vs snk 2, because it takes the purpose of special away from special moves, where it is a discipline to memorise the movelist and simplification can upset the gameplay for experienced players)
It all hinges on the how much the software and the gamedeveloper wants to allow for the raping of choice in-game vs "let them figure it out and decide through trial and error how good they can be at doing any given action manually".
If I do fail to cast a spell in an first person RPG on the Wii because I stuff up the movement stuff to get the spell exactly right, then I should be no more pissed than a person who had to study the movelist in 2d fighter to do a hadoken or a pull off a 360 motion on the joystick mid combo to tick stun the opponent in time to buy time to grab them as a I led them against the wall where they can't escape the corner trap. (ie it should be treated as a genuine part of the gameplay that requires skill right from the begining in making the fighting/spellcasting engine as opposed to a "gimmick" or afterthought to appeal to kiddy gamers who are looking to press the "win game" button to defeat a boss because they can't perform the spell or move in time. Experienced players don't want a crutch.)
If I want to perform a combo where a series of moves must be used in quick succession, I don't have to look at a movelist of 90 different moves, I can ignore what is on that page, and execute those actions from intuitive muscle memory rather than reading. Complex button combinations require practice but also a good memorisation to use them, or you end up neglecting the finer points of the game. But most people find it unintuitive. Try to find an intuitive equivalent in 3d and you eliminate the learning curve, and less of the time is spent knowing how to do something and more on how skilled you are playing the game. Errors and mistakes will come up and have more to do with you performing something too slowly or inaccurately where timing is off, and less because you forgot how to execute it because the button mapping was not to your taste or you forgot half the moveslist just from not playing that character in practice mode for ages.
In the shenmue type adventure I imagine, this would just be applied to every single weapon or tool you can use and there would be hundreds of moves but not treated as a seperate scritped action. Some would be scripted specials, but the majority of gameplay would be your common sense approach to using something in any given situation with no prerequisite going into it. Just like arcade games of the old school days where you picked up the conept right then and there and the character/vehicle was an extension of you. You screw up if your timing sucked, you made a bad choice at a certain time, didn't factor in the enemy behavior under a given conditions, was focused too much on collecting powers instead of fighting etc and not failing due tohaving not read a 20 page manual before starting. (becomes a barrier with time-conscious players) If you failed it could only be blamed on skills which weren't refined and less on knowledge about the game before beginning. More people would play a game that makes immediate sense and which they already know enough about than to 'persevere' with a game whose controls they struggle with for a few hours before 'getting it'. But if you cut out that learning curve there is more chance someone will approach a game without the whole "do I have to take 1 hour of my time to learn and get used to this shitty configuration to start to play, just so I know if I'll like it? What if it sucks and I will have wasted my time?" attitude of a casual gamer. They would just play something knowing 100% what needs to be done as if it were obvious and every object was immediately understandable and a matter of common sense. Using it skillfully would come with practice but the minimum is they could still use it with no prior knowledge and be second nature. The reason being that there would be hundreds of things you could use, grab, interact with, equip, use as a weapon etc and that there would be several actions tied to any single object. (a rock could be thrown, used, pushed, dropped, picked up, kicked, examined, stacked onto a shelf, buried, cut, used in the making of a weapon etc)
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto
