I wanted to write something up about this, but at the time of the news I was too busy with my schooling to do so. But hey, better late than never, right? So little over a week ago, reports say that Wii sales plummeted. Iwata, the President of Nintendo, says that "the Wii has stalled" and that "games of high demand could not be continually released."

Okay, no, that's not the case. I think that Nintendo has just hit a wall and is pretty **** close to being out of ideas. Think about it, Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros Wii, The Metroid Prime Trilogy, what do these all have in common? The billion-dollar answer is that they're all rehashes of some sort. It might be because I'm pretty critical-minded, but I am the only one who thought that Nintendo was running out of ideas when they announced Super Mario Galaxy 2? It's like they're saying "we have no ideas for a fresh and inventive Mario title so we're just going to give you the last game only with more levels and OMG IT HAZ YOSHIZ!1!!1" And they already put out a remake of classic Mario so why must you make a Wii version? No new ideas to milk the Mario cash cow with? And the Prime trilogy, okay, if you can't see how this is a rehash then you should go hit your head against something hard. And let's not forget "play on Wii" or whatever it's called, porting Game Cube games with Wii controls, really, Nintendo? Nintendo has hit a dead end, a good amount of their fan base has left them for Sony or Microsoft, casual gamers (or as I like to call them, "those with the attention span of the Japanese public") seem to have gotten over the Wii and moved on. At this point, it really feels like Nintendo as just hit a brick wall, their casual cash-cows don't seem to be as interested in the Wii as they once were and too many disappointments have caused a number of Nintendo fans to move on.

I already wrote another blog talking about what I think Nintendo should do to try and get their fans back. So I'll keep those comments to a minimum. But with casual gamers getting bored and moving on, "core" gamers giving up and moving on and Nintendo running out of ideas, one must wonder what will happen to Nintendo. I believe that now is the time for Nintendo to get their heads straight and try and earn its fans back with the games that they want to play, not Wii (insert noun/verb here), but F-Zero, Star Fox, and other series. To me, it feels like Nintendo doesn't really know what do with their other franchises besides their three biggest money makers, Mario, Zelda and Pokemon. And even with those, their starting to run dry. As stated earlier, Mario has now become the king of rehashes, Zelda... well, okay, they're doing a great job with Zelda (PEOPLE DID NOT GIVE TWILIGHT PRINCESS A CHANCE) but Pokemon is pretty much the rehash god. So if they're running dry there, then why don't they actually give what fans are asking for and make new games from their other franchises? Actually, at this point it would be nice to see Nintendo put some effort out and actually make several new franchises rather than just making the same games year after year. However, that new Punch Out game was a step in the right direction. Ultimately boiling everything down, I think that if Nintendo doesn't get its act together, then by the time that next-gen rolls around we may find that the Wii ends up being Nintendo's last console.