The Wii continues to sell like hotcakes laced with crack despite the common criticism that there are no good "hardcore" games for it. Even after two years with no price drop, selling at a profit, Wiis continue to fly off the shelves faster than they can be produced. I say it’s high-time we analyze the strengths of the system and where it could use some improvement.

The obvious strength of the Wii is its motion control, though I would argue that the crux of Nintendo’s success lies with its marketing. The Wii has been marketed towards the non-gamer; something for parents and children alike. It’s sold wonders to a non-gamer audience with such titles as Wii Fit and Wii Music (as well as Wii Play, though let’s be honest, we all know that only sells as well as it does because it comes bundled with an extra Wiimote at only a few bucks more than the controller would otherwise cost). From a business standpoint, this is genius, as it reaches a previously untapped market, though it’s reliance on family friendly minigame collections may leave us so-called "hardcore" gamers a little cold.

The Wii is quite possibly the most innovative console ever created due to its motion controls, IR sensor, and speaker in its controller, though game designers have hardly made use of its innovations in any meaningful way. Lets take a moment and analyze the "big three" Nintendo franchises: Mario, Zelda, and Metroid.

Zelda: Twilight Princess is perhaps an unfair example of the Wii’s potential as it was originally developed for the Gamecube, so it should come as no surprise that it would control just fine with a standard controller, just as it has in all past 3D Zelda games. The latest Metroid Prime game overhauled its control scheme drastically, allowing you to aim with the Wiimote. Though, when you get right down to it, that could also be achieved with dual analog sticks. Mario Galaxy allows you to spin Mario, his default attack, by shaking the Wiimote; something that just as easily could have been mapped to a button on a standard controller. There were a few levels where you’d have to use more precise motion controls for vehicular segments, but those were met with mixed reception, at best. The only true innovation in Mario Galaxy was the inclusion of the IR sensor, allowing you to collects stars, shoot them, launch Mario towards objects, or have another player join in on the star collecting fun. It was a masterstroke as it gave you something to do, even when Mario was walking from point A to point B with no enemies around, and it could only be achieved on the Wii. It was in many ways, Nintendo’s most forward thinking "hardcore" game.

As great as those games were, they weren’t on the whole particularly innovative, and with no new Mario, Metroid, or Zelda having been announced for the Wii, it’s safe to say these sorts of high-caliber first party flagship titles are few and far between. This leaves the rest up to third parties, who have had a notoriously hard time developing for Nintendo consoles. Since they often don’t know how to develop for the Wii, they’ll rely on the tried and true minigame collection. That, or they port games from other consoles onto the Wii to varying degrees of success. Though by and large, it seems that when this is done to last-gen titles (Okami, RE4) it’s met with praise, when done with current-gen titles (COD3, Dead Rising) it’s met with disdain. It’s not that gamers simply prefer graphics over controls. Rather that often, if a game is developed for another console with more buttons, analog sticks, and horsepower, shoehorning such controls and mechanics onto the Wii can often feel broken, or at the least "watered down."