Nintendo Is Letting Wii Owners Down (by Carl B.)

June 24, 2011, by Carl B. - With Wii U releasing just next year, the Wii is on its last thread of life. It had an amazing 2010, with tons of great first party and third party titles being released on the platform, but so far, 2011 has been a massive disappointment. Three Wii games of note have been released so far this year: Mario Sports Mix, Conduit 2, and Wii Play: Motion. The only game out of those three really worth playing is Conduit 2, and even then, it won't last too long. With only two great looking Wii games on the radar – Skyward Sword and Kirby Wii – now would be the perfect time to localize Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower in North America, right? Apparently not, according to Nintendo.

"When we look ahead to 2011, we see new portable technology and more great Wii games that need to be seen to be believed," said Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America, back in Janurary.

That statement alone got many fans excited for what E3 2011 would bring for Wii. Would Pikmin 3 finally be revealed? Would we finally get a new StarFox and F-Zero?

When E3 rolled around, though, Nintendo was mostly silent on the Wii front. The only Wii game that was shown at their conference was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and they really didn't even show off too much of that. On the show floor, several new Wii games were playable, thankfully.

Were these the games that need to be seen to be believed? Hardly.

The previously announced Kirby Wii was present, but that's an old GameCube game that has finally been completed and ported over to Wii. There's a new Mario Party title, Mario Party 9, which looks like more of the same – I was hoping the series was killed off with Mario Party 8. Then there's Fortune Street, a game that is literally a Monopoly clone with Mario characters thrown in.

Pictured: Fortune Street. Why exactly do I want this?
How can Nintendo really expect these games to hold Wii owners over until the release of Wii U? What are we supposed to play until Skyward Sword releases this Holiday season?

In our E3 2011 Predictions article, I was pretty confident that Nintendo would have something to say about a localization for The Last Story. They were mum at the conference, and during interviews other publications conducted with the Nintendo brass, the only word we got was the generic "nothing to announce at this time."

This is where the strangest part comes in: Xenoblade has already been confirmed for localization in Europe. If Nintendo is too lazy to translate a game like Last Story, then why are they doing it for Xenoblade? For a European release, they have to translate the game into several different languages. Then it does make sense, somewhat: Nintendo of America is picky about the games they bring over from Japan. Very picky.

North America didn't get Disaster: Day of Crisis, Trace Memory Wii, or Fatal Frame IV. I fear that Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower may befall the same fate. Nintendo of America is more interested in selling games that will sell millions of copies, despite being low in quality. Wii Play: Motion is nothing more than some mini-games thrown together, but it will sell millions because of the Wii brand name. Mario Party 9 and Fortune Street will sell millions as well, simply because they have Mario characters in them. Even though Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower all carry the super-popular Nintendo name, they won't sell well because they're niche games on a platform that hasn't been kind to similar titles.

Pictured: Don't worry, guys, we're getting Mario Party 9!
It's really frustrating, considering The Last Story was made by the father of Final Fantasy. Xenoblade was developed by the team behind the Xenogears series, and the fantastic Baten Kaitos games on GameCube. At the very least, we can hope for a European localization – Nintendo of Europe seems to be more open to these games than Nintendo of America is. We can always mod our Wiis to remove the region locking, and then import the English-text versions from Europe.

Or, we can all take part in a letter campaign to Nintendo of America. Follow this link for more details. Either way, we need these games here, and without them, Nintendo is really letting down the millions of gamers that still play their Wii on a regular basis.