Natal/Arc will Make Healthy Competition for the Wii

Motion control has become the latest rage in gaming and for around 3 and a half years the Wii has gone without any real competition. It has remained the only system with motion controls as a main form of control and has kept the price advantage. The lack of competition and support from all sorts of non-gamers, including soccer moms, the elderly, and even airline security (Link) have kept Wii well ahead of it's HD competition sales-wise. However, the lack of competition has led to Nintendo doing little to compete.

Nintendo makes a fortune off of each Wii sold (Reportedly up to around $50 per console back in 2007), and even with the price cut, the cost of materials has probably lowered and allowed them to continue to make a killing per console sold). The price is no where near to being as low as it could be. This is unfortunately probably the last thing that the competition will fix, as the accessory prices added to the price of the consoles will only further themselves from the Wii price. Perhaps we will see an SKU without the Gamecube hookups and such. However, outdoing the competition with a lower price is far from impossible, anyhow.


The Nintendo seal of quality is dead. Once a sign that a game is generally fun and well created to save and regain trust from gamers, it is now a sign that says that the disc fits in the Wii. They just stamp "The Nintendo Seal (Note, not "Of Quality")" on any game. With all of the heavy support from the big guys planning Natal and Arc games, Nintendo is going to have to step up its game, and reaffirm its stance on quality on games other than just ones containing Mario.
Another funny take on the Seal.

Proper implementation of the Wiimote is important to seeing games advance. The wiimote (As well as his cousin, the DS touch screen) has seen some positively bizarre methods of usage. For presentation purposes (And gameplay purposes), we must see the Wiimote be used effectively. We often see it used weakly as a waggle tool. Hey, we haven't seen many games running on the Natal or Arc, but I'd like to believe they have better ideas for using them than some of the retched uses of the Wiimote.

We can hope to see the competition of the Natal and Arc create some competition fpr the Wii and drive down its price (And accessory prices) while causing the standard of quality to go up. Wii can certainly hope.