Serious Gamer - What Would Make Me Buy and Play More Wii Games

The Wii has been a tremendous success with casual, women, younger, and older gamers. These are three markets that the console industry had left largely untapped. But what about serious gamers?

Hardcore gamers are not completely ignored by the Wii, but they are certainly the one market that does not seem to receive a lot of attention. This definitely has not hurt the Wii's bottom line, but it does mean this is an area where the Wii has the most to gain at this point.

RPGs are often very good sellers, and people tend to want to own a copy rather than rent it (often due to the many hours it takes to complete an RPG). They appeal to more serious gamers with the character development, in depth story lines, etc. The GameCube actually had some very good RPGs. One very notable example was Summoner 2 (a game I actually played and beat on both the GameCube and PS2 because I like it so much and they had subtle variations).

The Wii lacks some high quality, serious RPGs. Zelda games are great, but they do not fit the bill here.

One of the most successful third party games for the Gamecube was Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (speaking of which, that game needs to be on the Wii Virtual Console). This was a very serious, psychological thriller with terrifying action and a very mature storyline. The game did great both in sales and critical acclaim. Why have there been no such games on the Wii? There are tons of adults that own a Wii, and they would eat such a game up with a spoon.

While games like Grand Theft Auto or Bully could potentially go against the overall reputation of the Wii, there is nothing wrong with a serious, mature rated game like Eternal Darkness. There should be games like this for the Wii.

This is near blasphemy from someone like myself - a die hard PC first gamer. But Perfect Dark is my favorite shooter of all time. I am not saying it is the best, but it is the one I had the most fun with. Perhaps it was timing or just something perfect about the game, but I have never enjoyed playing a shooter as much as I did playing Perfect Dark. The bots, the maps, the game modes, the weapons, everything was just, well, Perfect. I spent many weekends playing the game with friends (including my at the time girlfriend, now wife). The only thing wrong with the game is the fact that it caused physical pain. We called it Nintendo Claw. It is the shape your hand takes after playing entirely too much Perfect Dark for many days in a row.

Sadly, Microsoft bought Rare so we cannot have a sequel to Perfect Dark on the Wii. But surely someone out there could make a spiritual successor.

(NOTE: Perfect Dark Zero pictured at right only because it is a nice picture. The original Perfect Dark is the one that rocks.)