What is Going on with the Wii?

So what is the Wii's problem? In a nutshell, all the games suck.

Just kidding, Nintendo fans. You can put away the pitchforks.

More seriously, one argument I've heard is that we as an industry are still trying to understand the Wii. Developers are having to put aside graphics to approach the hardware and its controller with different perspectives. Reviewers, on the other hand, have spent years lauding technical achievements and ever more realistic gameplay. Now they have to answer a question for which their training is quite possibly ill-suited: “Are these games fun to play?”

moscalloutMaybe we still don't know what makes a good Wii game./moscalloutThe graphs of review scores above are one bit of evidence, but let's take it a step further. Which Wii games appeal to the hardcore gamers, to the people who have been writing reviews for the past decade? I'd venture games like Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 3, Super Paper Mario, and Madden NFL.

Those titles comprise six of the Wii's top 10 reviewed games. The lowest score of that bunch is Madden NFL 07 with an average of 81%.

Now, how did the professional reviewers view games which utilize the Wii controller extensively and have sold well in the past year? Wii Sports, the pack-in game that everyone loves, has a lowly 76% rating. Wii Play, which sold nearly as many copies as Halo 3 last year, has a 61% review average. (Aside: Has there ever been a game that reviewed as poorly as Wii Play yet sold so well?) And Carnival Games eked out a miserable 59% from reviewers.

Maybe Wii games have lower review scores because we, as an industry, still don't know what makes a good Wii game.

This isn't proof mind you – we probably won't know for a long time, if ever, why Wii games rate so much below par – but a failure to understand the platform and its potential is one possibility. Even if you dismiss that explanation, the fundamental question still remains: Why have games for the Wii, darling console of the media and the public for well over a year, reviewed so poorly and sold so well?