Am I the only one burned out on gaming?

[Lagmonster]

I'm late to this party, but I did want to say something about age and gaming:

If you're over 35, you've probably found that the same thing you loved ten years ago is annoying now. And I don't think it's because the sequels get progressively worse, as I hear people whine. I think it's just "fuck you, you're old".

A 15 year old wants a 100-hour reiteration of the same thing he already likes, with a twisted plot that will take hours of reading hidden journals to understand and/or competitive online multiplayer with long, tense matches, because he doesn't have any fucking responsibilities or the need to get laid. A 40-year old is more likely to want something new and different from what he's played before, preferably that he can finish in four-to-five hours of heavily interrupted sitting, and doesn't require him to encounter a single goddamn 15 year old and for which he will mentally penalize the developer for every single mini-game and side-quest that artificially pads the distance between him and the end of the fucking story.

[TheFeniX]

Isn't VR just another extension of the graphics race? I don't see it inherently changing the focus on gaming. It's just more flops to render explosions and jiggle physics better. I honestly see it having more an impact in other fields. Hell, I'll bet it makes a bigger impact in porn that gaming.

I'm late to this party, but I did want to say something about age and gaming:

If you're over 35, you've probably found that the same thing you loved ten years ago is annoying now. And I don't think it's because the sequels get progressively worse, as I hear people whine. I think it's just "fuck you, you're old".

Kids these days have it a shitload easier than people in their 30s. If you started gaming early, you were stuck with balls out difficult games compared to what we have today. Even the original Super Mario Bros. has difficulty curves above that of most of what I play today. If released today, it would be labeled "The Dark Souls of platformers." Contra without the Konami code was BRUTAL. On PC, even adventure games were filled with save-scumming bullshit. Some like Shadowgate, even got NES releases. Beating the game took dedication and skill. You were not guaranteed to beat a game. And the hardest boss on PC might have just been installing a game that was on 15 floppies (fucking Monkey Island) or needed some kind of dark magic of software known as Expanded RAM or any of the other bullshit for DOS gaming.

I'm not saying it's the best design philosophy. But it's all we had and you learn to appreciate putting in the time to beat a game and be a bad enough dude. Those games, not accounting for nostalgia, could not compete with modern games and not because they are dated. It's because the current crop of big spenders have grown up playing games that are streamlined (in some good ways) to maximize their exposure. Very few these days dump the player off and say "do whatever" and you walk 5 feet and get railed by a Deathclaw. Fallout: New Vegas did this and was one of the less popular (sales-wise) of the FallScrolls games even though, from my perspective, it's the perfect example of how a game like Fallout should be handled. F4 is "WHAT'S GOING ON!? It's all blowed up, what ever will I.... oh shit, there's Codsworth, he'll explain it all, oh and point me to my soon-to-be Minutemen family WHO TRUST ME IMMEDIATELY."

The big problem I see is developers constantly heaping praise and admiration on the player. Building worlds that only react to them, not building worlds. I'm not bashing the kids: I'm bashing developers for pandering to them like they are ALL self-esteem generation jackasses with zero brains.

And really, it's not even that most games are bullshit easy or follow a tired formula: it's that those games and the publishers paying money to make them brutally murdered entire genres to get there. We had easy games when I was a kid, we had hard ones. We had Ninja Gaiden for masochists. We had non-Diablo clone dungeon crawls. We had Arena Shooters. We just had more.

Another problem is... hilariously, graphics. We've been so flooded with "graphics," you can't even get kids to play these older games. They won't deal with sprites or low-poys. They won't deal with dated (but sometimes better) UIs. Meanwhile, "Big Trouble in Little China is good, go watch it." There's nothing really worth updating. But I don't know about you: I would love to play back through Warcraft 2 in a modern Starcraft 2 interface because it's almost completely unplayable unless you find a way to reduce your resolution to stone-age levels.

[General Zod]

I just powered through Saints Row 4 and absolutely loved it. It did enough things different from the typical game that it was fun and refreshing. I don't want to play through another tired revenge story featuring an emotionally stunted white guy in their 30s that isn't capable of more than two expressions.

[Ace Pace]

Isn't VR just another extension of the graphics race? I don't see it inherently changing the focus on gaming. It's just more flops to render explosions and jiggle physics better. I honestly see it having more an impact in other fields. Hell, I'll bet it makes a bigger impact in porn that gaming.

Have you tried one of the consumer kits or even just Gear VR?

It's being in an X-Wing and not infront of a 19 inch screen or even a 30 inch screen.
It's moving around a room and actually painting or doing things.

Hell, I come across a fanboy and that's because I am, but looking at it as "just more pixels" is fundamentally missing the point of having a truly immersive screen.

[General Zod]

Isn't VR just another extension of the graphics race? I don't see it inherently changing the focus on gaming. It's just more flops to render explosions and jiggle physics better. I honestly see it having more an impact in other fields. Hell, I'll bet it makes a bigger impact in porn that gaming.

Have you tried one of the consumer kits or even just Gear VR?

It's being in an X-Wing and not infront of a 19 inch screen or even a 30 inch screen.
It's moving around a room and actually painting or doing things.

Hell, I come across a fanboy and that's because I am, but looking at it as "just more pixels" is fundamentally missing the point of having a truly immersive screen.

I tried out the gear VR in Best Buy and it was pretty amazing. I kind of want to see what a high powered one can do but I'm going to wait for a few price drops.

[TheFeniX]

I just powered through Saints Row 4 and absolutely loved it. It did enough things different from the typical game that it was fun and refreshing. I don't want to play through another tired revenge story featuring an emotionally stunted white guy in their 30s that isn't capable of more than two expressions.

Actually a positive point in the "we can't have nice things" catagory. Because "there was no room" for a GTA-clone, Volition pushed the series into absurdity and found fun while doing so. They fought the poor-mans GTA label for years, even though SR1 and 2 had every right to exist as GTA did. You CAN have two competing games in the same genre because people like to play video games.

Have you tried one of the consumer kits or even just Gear VR?

No. I did play some VR game back at some Dave and Busters knock off where you fired a pop gun at other people.

Jokes aside, I believe everything you're saying, but I don't see that improving actual games, just how they are presented. Now I will be more immersed in shooting monsters in closets as Sheppard talks about in his OP. I can watch Beth AI fail to understand ladders and Beth cut them out in all new VR format. I don't see VR saving games, I see at as another extension, another hook to just maybe improve what we have a little bit*. Though two things:
1. I like Third-person.
2. I'd kill to just fly a fucking X-Wing in-game again, but that series is dead dead dead to make room for more BF2142 with Star Wars assets and likely another atrociously terrible "Jedi" game.

*My dad talked about doing reports back in the 70s and 80s. It was some WW2 level shit as changes were made via typewriter and (literally) cut and pasted into reports. When they got their first Radiotrash PC, the speed at which revisions could be made accounted for a massive increase in QoL. But what actually changed? We're the reports more indepth? No, even today he does the same types of reports he did 40 years ago.

VR is pretty cool, but its area is graphics, which don't make a video game. Well... it shouldn't but that's where current emphasis is in the industry. I'd love to drive a mech in VR, but you can't even get a fucking good mech game. The last main-line Mechwarrior game was 15 years ago. No, AAA VR, if adopted in mass, is going to be more FPS tacticool shooters and maybe some flight sims.

[General Zod]

VR is less about graphics than it is immersion. It's the difference between playing games on a shitty CRT and playing games on a fifty inch OLED.

[Darth Nostril]

Doesn't matter how immersive the interface is if it's a shit game. It is still going to be a shit game.

[Zixinus]

Games have gotten easier, even factoring in things like accumulated experience. I don't usually mind. Even with free time I don't care to be frustrated as much. I find myself rage-quitting when I thought I would never do such a thing. Games also feel easier because better tutorials are made that do not require reading a manual to play.

People keep mentioning genres by title, but the thing is that people seem to forget that franchises have stagnated. They don't dare to innovate as much as they did in the past because they are afraid they'll lose what made the games successful in the first place. Change too much and they'll lose fans, so change is always safe change. Star Wars is not as popular as it was when Jedi Academy was released and even the new Battlefront was obviously made to milk film nostalgia as heavily as possible.

VR is interesting in that it should be a big difference but it is something that the industry is trying hard make happen. It's also so very new and it will take a while until its potential is explored. LGR (Lazy Game Reviews) used such a headset playing a WW1 dogfighting game and said that he was an average player that risen much higher with VR than without it.

[ray245]

I don't know. I think there's been very little advances in gaming technology. While many games have improved their graphics over the years, the game engine they are using basically stays the same. We have some minor addition of physics in video games, but the basic gaming formula stays almost exactly the same.

[MKSheppard]

F4 is "WHAT'S GOING ON!? It's all blowed up, what ever will I.... oh shit, there's Codsworth, he'll explain it all, oh and point me to my soon-to-be Minutemen family WHO TRUST ME IMMEDIATELY."

They should have put more emphasis on your character's background rather than a brief throwaway line or two scattered throughout the game.

[Zixinus]

I don't know. I think there's been very little advances in gaming technology. While many games have improved their graphics over the years, the game engine they are using basically stays the same. We have some minor addition of physics in video games, but the basic gaming formula stays almost exactly the same.

There has been a lot of advancement. There are several ready engines and stuff available for you. Games no longer have to be worked out from scratch. That's actually a step preferred to be avoided because how expensive it is to create an engine in the first place.

A big reason they basically stay the same is again, genre stagnation and risk-avoidance. New ideas are put out on the fringe and then see what happens. If it is a success, it is carefully standardized. Look at Mirror's Edge, originally a pretty original game and how later Assassin's Creed got built into that (granted, they were probably taking heavily more from Prince of Persia).

In terms of peripherals, they are trying but its all new technology. There is the Wii and the bandwagon every console tried to jump on with. VR is the brand new bandwagon and is a mayor difference. The main threat to it isn't that the technology won't work properly (a great deal of time and money went into making sure it does) but that there aren't enough games for it or that the price is too high for the ball to get rolling.

[Elheru Aran]

In terms of peripherals, they are trying but its all new technology. There is the Wii and the bandwagon every console tried to jump on with [snip] but that there aren't enough games for it or that the price is too high for the ball to get rolling.

This is part of the problem. Until new tech has been around for truly long enough that playing without it feels weird for the majority of gamers, it's going to be more or less a lost cause.

Take the Wii. Apart from mucking about with the Wii Sports stuff, how many players actually went and bought games that explored the full potential of the different peripherals? How many games were there that explored that potential in the first place? The great majority of them were pretty conventional and you just held the main remote like a standard Ninty controller or bought one to replace it. About the only thing that I can think of that was really a big deal probably was the steering-wheel addon for stuff like Mario Kart.

Don't get me wrong-- Wii Sports was pretty popular as a party game, and the Wii proved to be a great console for that purpose. But for 'serious' gamers, it was a fairly major fail, from what I understand. Probably the biggest thing it did was to make wireless controllers an industry standard (again IIRC) and pioneer the motion-capture or whatever you call it.

[TheFeniX]

There has been a lot of advancement. There are several ready engines and stuff available for you. Games no longer have to be worked out from scratch. That's actually a step preferred to be avoided because how expensive it is to create an engine in the first place.

id was licensing the Quake engine back in the late 90s. In fact, it was hard to find an FPS that wasn't based on it. The "Half-Life" engine was just a heavily modified version of.... Quake2 (idtech2, whatever) but I could be misremembering. Maybe it was Quake1. It's been years. Few teams actually built/rebuilt engines from scratch unless they had to and the smaller teams didn't have the time/couldn't afford to either way.

But "Advacenment" in engines has come a long way... in areas that are really only about visuals: physics, graphics, poly counts, rendering details.

Scripting is still way behind and it effects a whole load of things: AI is in the dumpster. It can't be to good anyway due to not wanting to demolish the player. RTS and FPS still rely on cheats to create difficulty. I think Halo was the last FPS I played to really dive into combined tactics in harder difficulties. FEAR also counts. Everything else just turns AI into aim-botting bullet sponges.

World-building is at an all time low. We're instead given set pieces with only trivial amounts of interaction between them. NPCs act more like MMORPG quest givers than actual people with lives. Everyone seems to just want to watch movies.

A big reason they basically stay the same is again, genre stagnation and risk-avoidance. New ideas are put out on the fringe and then see what happens. If it is a success, it is carefully standardized. Look at Mirror's Edge, originally a pretty original game and how later Assassin's Creed got built into that (granted, they were probably taking heavily more from Prince of Persia).

That's a big part of it. But nostalgia is also extremely powerful. I just picked up Heroes if the Storm. It's cool to play a Starcraft 2 mod with Arthas, Zeratul, etc. But the game doesn't really do much with the MOBA genre because it doesn't have to. There's new generations who aren't burned out on them. Also, for every moron who spends fucking $10 on one hero is just gravy for them and makes the game worth what little they had to put into it.

This is why new ideas are really only coming out of indie/smaller dev groups. Even historically. Hell, even some hugely popular games today came out of small groups of kids: Counter-Strike being the largest example. Left 4 Dead was a couple of guys playing a "Zombies" mod for CS with knives only and thought "This would be a cool game." This is a big problem when the guys in charge of everything just don't fucking understand video games or the people that play them. They look at what is already popular and try to capitalize on it in the laziest way possible.

To this day, I can't believe Dead Space came out of EA proper. I can believe EA proper drove it into the ground though.

They should have put more emphasis on your character's background rather than a brief throwaway line or two scattered throughout the game.

I think that was the least of the problems with the PC and family.

The backstory was such a cheap gut-punch. They would have been better served by having you and your spouse survive for a bit after getting out of cryo, then setup a situation where you were forced to lose them. Actually on an in-game time limit to keep you from power-leveling into a god before you deal with it. Like, you all find Codsworth, setup in Sanctuary and try to rebuild whatever life you can. They show up at X time no matter to kidnap shaun. If you aren't there, Codsworth is disabled and your spouse is killed because he won't give up Shaun. If you're there, you can decide to give him up and your spouse dies anyways because he isn't letting that happen. You then have to deal with the guilt as the player for failing. If you fight and lose, maybe they don't kill you, maybe they do: such is life in the wastes. Maybe you have to take cover and you get split up.

Either way: put the success/failure on the player. This cutscene bullshit has always been a crutch. But this wouldn't pass because gamers these days would throw themselves at unwinnable odds, die over and over, and complain that "there's no way to beat this part." They've come to rely on cutscenes for their decision making.

But the limitations of the story are even worse than that: no one does a fucking thing without you. A game like Fallout 4, with multiple different factions fighting each other should be using time variables, not "Brotherhood shows up when you get X far into the main quest." But the player has to be the catalyst for everything in modern RPGs. Man, how cool would F4 be if it turned into a survival type game as the Brotherhood or Institute pushes on your settlements and you have to fight them back?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I get what you're saying, kind of. I'm thinking mainly of the rebooted Tomb raider games, they drew critical acclaim yet when I played through them, I was like "Ehh, it's okay" but not as good as the last few games- for completing milestones and stuff the rewards are pretty worthless, all you get is some Steam achievements.

On the other hand, there's a new generation of games, whether original or continuation of an established series that I can't get enough of . Some examples are new XCOM 1 & 2- so far 1 is better IMO for replay value as currently there's no Second Wave option (btw before XCOM I'd never played a turn-based squad game). Another favourite is the StarCraft 2 trilogy, I've enjoyed each instalment.

As for GTA V, the checkpoints for that are pretty good- it's certainly better than IV.

[TheFeniX]

I get what you're saying, kind of. I'm thinking mainly of the rebooted Tomb raider games, they drew critical acclaim yet when I played through them, I was like "Ehh, it's okay" but not as good as the last few games- for completing milestones and stuff the rewards are pretty worthless, all you get is some Steam achievements.

I honestly didn't play enough of Tomb Raider to give an honest opinion. I was so turned off by the lackluster start and insane QTEs, I couldn't get into it. I lasted maybe an hour.

On the other hand, there's a new generation of games, whether original or continuation of an established series that I can't get enough of . Some examples are new XCOM 1 & 2- so far 1 is better IMO for replay value as currently there's no Second Wave option (btw before XCOM I'd never played a turn-based squad game). Another favourite is the StarCraft 2 trilogy, I've enjoyed each instalment.

I enjoyed X-Com. They really cleaned up the combat system and made it fun, even with the bullshit free moves by aliens.

But it's a pretty good case in the current gaming industry vs the old. The action is always the emphasis, but everything else is cut down. Single base, no worry about assaults (added in, but not really part of the meta). But really, it's how on-rails the game immediately becomes. The X-Com group comes up with a plan (that works mind you) from the start with no real set-backs. The game is as straight forward as the most linear of broshooters. It's got a "levelled" list as later Fallscrolls games do: once you hit X point, even the smallest of ships will pack Ethereals, which makes zero sense. And you can no longer use small craft to train rookie soldiers.

And they not only refuse to reward you for thinking ahead, but they even punish you at times. Such as taking live aliens is only useful one time. After that, all you get is their weapons: which you can't break down and can't sell except in those random "we we X" side-missions that pop up. Oh and, keeping primed grenades with a 0 timer in hand when fighting Crysalids. That being gone is a real travesty.

Fun game, I enjoyed it a lot, but it's like a lot of games now: miles wide, inches deep.

[biostem]

What I've found lately is that my tolerance for shoddy game design has dropped considerably. For instance, while I really enjoy Fallout 4, there are a few sticking points that just drive me up a wall, (for instance, molotov cocktails have this tendency to break open on invisible objects, thus severely injuring you, (or outright killing you if playing on harder difficulties).

My ability to stomach games with a lot of padding to stretch out the play time has also diminished.

[MKSheppard]

My ability to stomach games with a lot of padding to stretch out the play time has also diminished.

Try playing Wing Commander 1/2 and going through an asteroid field.

[TheFeniX]

This F2P shit is killing me. It's likely I deal with it so little due to gaming choices, I haven't been inoculated to it's gouging.

In Heroes of the Storm: Li-Ming (F2P this week) is my kind of character. With proper positioning, you can front load almost 2K damage, and back it up with a disintegration beam to effectively light up any non-tank into an immediate retreat or explosive death. If you're caught out of position, you lose a lot of damage and better start kiting or running. If they close distance, you're just dead unless a miracle happens.

But she's 10,000 gold (or $10). I'd consider just paying $60 for this game, but I think it has well over a thousand USD in shop items. I mean, you could spend about $30 on Li-Ming alone considering her skins. And that isn't even what gets me. It's that Blizzards purchasing scheme is obviously set up to play into your internal "bargain" mentality.

So, 10,000 gold heroes are $10.
However, a 7,000 gold hero (like Arthas) is $8.49. (Really, 49c? Fucking retail shopping bullshit).
Heroes in the 4,000 gold range are $6.50.
Heroes in the 2,000 range are $4.00.
So, there's not a liner curve. 1,000 != $1.

So, there's "no point" in buying Arthas when you get more bang for your buck buying a more expensive hero. Yes, I get the concept of better deals as you spend more money: but there's nothing inherently "better" about different heroes. You aren't getting more, just different and possibly more enjoyment based on play-style. The pack are just ridiculous. One is 70% off and is still $46. This kind of money thrown at a game that has ONE game-mode. You will be playing the same game over and over. Yes, it's enjoyable on a few levels, but holy shit people: go play DOTA. Oh wait, no, maybe LoL.. oh wait...... MOBA truly has become the cash grab center of the gaming universe (mobile games aside, but those are designed to fleece morons/kids with no concept of money).

Clever programming makes me smile. Clever marketing makes me sick. Heroes (MOBAs actually) also exists as another point where large publishers get their hands on an idea created by a small group and run that fucker into the ground as hard as they can, while making millions in the process. I honestly can't hate the publisher for this. I have to hate the people that seem to just vomit money directly into publisher bank accounts.

[Zaune]

Don't get me wrong-- Wii Sports was pretty popular as a party game, and the Wii proved to be a great console for that purpose. But for 'serious' gamers, it was a fairly major fail, from what I understand.

I don't think the Wii was ever really marketed at "serious" gamers to begin with, because Nintendo still primarily makes games for kids and/or the casual market.

[Elheru Aran]

Don't get me wrong-- Wii Sports was pretty popular as a party game, and the Wii proved to be a great console for that purpose. But for 'serious' gamers, it was a fairly major fail, from what I understand.

I don't think the Wii was ever really marketed at "serious" gamers to begin with, because Nintendo still primarily makes games for kids and/or the casual market.

Well, yeah, granted. Part of the problem is the control scheme of the Wii doesn't mesh well with games designed for other platforms. I'm not familiar enough with Nintendo's history to say whether, for example, they had Mortal Kombat games for the Cube or anything like that.

[Lagmonster]

Clever programming makes me smile. Clever marketing makes me sick. Heroes (MOBAs actually) also exists as another point where large publishers get their hands on an idea created by a small group and run that fucker into the ground as hard as they can, while making millions in the process. I honestly can't hate the publisher for this. I have to hate the people that seem to just vomit money directly into publisher bank accounts.

You're learning. If a product is shit, and goes away, that was the company's fault. If a product is shit, and they mysteriously keep turning out brighter and shinier versions of it year after year, that's the consumer's fault.

[TheFeniX]

You're learning. If a product is shit, and goes away, that was the company's fault. If a product is shit, and they mysteriously keep turning out brighter and shinier versions of it year after year, that's the consumer's fault.

Yea, and let's face it: Heroes is built off the SC2 engine. A modder could make that game for nothing. Blizzard just added it's signature polish when it comes to the detail work and animation. Like, Li-Ming's little sexy dance when she's porting is cute. It's an added little bonus. Or, with the addition of Chromie, her little intro.

But since Blizz is known for keeping their staff relatively intact and just shuffling them around, the money out for Heroes had to be nothing. They have to spend more on hosting than they ever did on development. So, they can just RAKE in cash on old IPs using the ideas set forth by original WC3 modders.

Don't get me wrong-- Wii Sports was pretty popular as a party game, and the Wii proved to be a great console for that purpose. But for 'serious' gamers, it was a fairly major fail, from what I understand.

I don't think the Wii was ever really marketed at "serious" gamers to begin with, because Nintendo still primarily makes games for kids and/or the casual market.

Well, yeah, granted. Part of the problem is the control scheme of the Wii doesn't mesh well with games designed for other platforms. I'm not familiar enough with Nintendo's history to say whether, for example, they had Mortal Kombat games for the Cube or anything like that.

Metroid Prime 2 was anything but casual, but that's not really the point.

Mortal Kombat "broke" the industry in more ways than just the ESRB. There had always been a certain amount of adult content in Nintendo games. Just look up the amount of nudity in some NES carts. The difference was (really: no internet, but also not really the point) that the NES was a "kid's toy" and so shouldn't have this stuff in it. As there was no ESRB and parents are always woefully out of touch with kids stuff, they just made the assumption that there was nothing going on. Mortal Kombat broke the lid off the whole thing. Mostly due to news coverage and just how blatant the over-the-top gore was. But also how easily accessible it was. You didn't have to play all the way through Zelda: OoT to get to the Shadow Temple and see blood-stains and crucifixes. You picked a character and FINISH HIM!

It didn't matter that the SNES version was sanitized to be a joke, the Genesis version had the blood code and parents (being uninformed) assumed their kids were now playing a murder simulator (well, they kind of were). And the media was ALL OVER THIS on a level such as Faux News vs the "porno game" known as Mass Effect because it had a 15 second PG-13 sex scene in it. They showed multiple videos of the fatalities (usually from the arcade version mind you, which had much better resolution and detail) and parents went "Won't someone PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?"

The ESRB came around so parents could ignore it to buy their 12-year-old M rated games because actually being a parent is out of the question. After this, Nintendo doubled-down on the kid friendly stuff while SEGA seemed pitched to just go whereever such as with Eternal Champions, but then they ended up releasing like 5,000 different consoles and add-ons and drove themselves out of the hardware market. Sony really just put them out of their misery.

At that point, Nintendo's insistence on strange controllers and storage mediums pushed them out no matter what. Rare did a fantastic job with Metroid Prime, however the "lock-on" ability added to the game was basically them saying "I give up" when it came to giving us an actual shooter. The Gamecube itself was a little beast, could render details much faster than the PS2, but was hamstrung by low-storage and a "WTFBBQ" controller. Also, losing the Final Fantasy license in the N64/PSX era did not help. But that's only semi-related.

Nintendo will just continue to do whatever they want and trolls will continue to chant for them to "fall fall fall fall FALL" and, hopefully, they won't because they're really the only guys out there not pushing GRAPHICS, MATURE ORRA MARINE ACTION! and other bullshit that makes console gaming so bland. But they can also kiss my ass for letting Metroid: Other Shit kill the franchise and for other crimes against Samus as a character. I really refuse to bother with Nintendo when Metroid is dead.

[TheFeniX]

EDIT: Not Rare. Retro. No idea why I said Rare, although they both did heavy development for Nintendo.

[Elheru Aran]

So is there any way the Wii could be a 'serious gamer' console? Or is that mostly out? (this is assuming Ninty has any interest whatsoever in going that direction, and of course they're probably coming out with a new console in a few years or less, but just roll with it)

I suspect one would have to start with a more regulation controller...