1. I value the quality of hardware and price I must pay to use hardware.  I have high expectations that demand cutting-edge hardware, with high functionality, provided at a fair and competitive price.
2. I value intellectual freedom, diverse ideas, and embracing gaming as a true entertainment medium.  I like to see third-party developers being treated with respect, encouraged to encorporate multi-plat games to help consumers enjoy a broad range of ideas, and watch third party developers fill a console's libaries with meaningful, different, and great games.
3. I value a company that respects me as an adult consumer and produces games around my high level of expectations. 
4. I demand high functionality from a console.  It must strive to provide me with as many features as possible.
5. I do NOT value childish franchises, marketing icons, and ideas that are devoid of depth, meaning, and fun.
6. I do NOT value a console that promotes simplistic and shallow gameplay as if it were the defining function and content of the console.
7. I do NOT value a console developer who shoves ancient products down my throat, robs me of choice, forces me to consume products that were made explicitly for children, and marginalizes the third-party developer community.
8. I do NOT value a console that butchers the depth and functionality of gaming as an entertainment medium.
9. I'm sick of ancient franchises, terrible hardware, watching gaming be reduced to a childish plaything, and being treated like a stupid consumer by a once-great company.
10. I demand the best possible games, provided at the lowest possible prices, and marketed through the most progresssive and consumer-friendly means as possible.

This is why I don't own a Wii.  This is why I hate the Wii. 

I also don't understand why you can't appretiate those characteristics that follow Nintendo games instead of putting down every aspect of their existance. It seems that your soul purpose is to tell everyone that there is, fundamentally, no reason to play any game that is a sequel ever. That makes no sense, especially for trillogies and such. I don't get why you hate this industry so much, but decide to stay wading in the deep end.

Trillogies are sometimes valid, but it's very hard for me to accept sequels beyond a certain point.  There exists an arbitrary "cut-off" point that divides meaningful content from commercialistic trash produced solely to milk a franchise label.  This can occur as soon a direct sequel, or take four, even five, renditions until it reashes that elusive point.  Nintendo games, considering the capabilities of current technology, have crossed that point (and then some) enough to make me sick at my stomach. 

Why do I hate this industry so much and stay wading in it?  Because nothing, on a strictly conceptual level,makes video games any different than other forms of entertainment.  Hell, I love the increased involvement video games provide for people seeking entertainment. I look at hardware today and see machines that can, quite literally, process entire worlds of content, information, graphics, and ideas.

But when I look beyond whatgames are capable of being and see what exists at the current time...

I see 20 year old plumbers jumping around childish worlds for no reason.  I see feminine elf-boys traveling through time for 10th time, in a world devoid of meaning, consequence, depth, and meaning.  I see cheap fighting games that amount to little more than the mass aggration of marketing icons.  I do not see meaning, complexity, depth, intellectual purpose, or "fun" in video games these days.  The potential is there, but warped consumer demand corrupts it.   All of this is fine, until...

I see people so mistaken that they actually embrace this horrible shortcoming as a great product and the "progression" of gaming as a whole.  And then, finally, it becomes out-right disgusting when I think about Nintendo's finacial plans and understand why they are doing what they are. 

the demands of children"  so good.  as for the prime series, the smash borthers series, and the mario series.  i think these new games will be the 3rd in about 12 years.  (the 4th if you include the ds titles).  not exactly thrown down anybodies throat.

Many Nintendo fans have no respect for how meaningful, origional, or complex the ideas that warrant a game are.  They see a new game with mildly new gameplay and think "oh gosh, new game," even if the game is warranted and centered around ideas that are ancient and childish in conception.

No, Smashbrothers, Prime, Mario, and Zelda are about as creative and meaningful as "The Land Before Time 12:  Little Foot Continues to Make You Buy these Movies to Shut your Kids Up."

and as for nintendo being anti consumer.  they keep gamers happier then anybody else.  and they don't just use gamers as a pon in their attempt to win the blueray hd dvd race. 

I suppose when Nintendo lower's the average gamers' standards so low that a game like Mario appears "fun," it isn't very hard to "keep people happy." 

No, those who turn their noses up at gaming are rational adults who see crap like a plumber jumping across the screen for no reason and go back to watching television or reading a good book while thinking, "oh gee, those silly video games and kids these days.  I remember the pac-man, video games, lol, chomp chomp chomp." 

[QUOTE="FoamingPanda"]Yes, compare ancient franchise to ancient franchise.  Don't you love when a console shoves 20 year ideas down your throat...coreygames

I don't like those franchises because they were sapped of depth, meaning, purpose, and fun over the course of 20 years.  The ideas and content of the genres made sense back when games were crammed onto 8bit carts, but I don't understand why the childish overtones, limited content, and intellectually boring ideas within the games did not evolve (into COMPLETELY new franchises) as the hardware evolved.

As Panda has told you, the Wii consumer cannot rationalize their support for a console that is clearly antiquated and regressive in terms of hardware quality.  They typically do one of three things:

1. Lose their good judgement among an endless sea of 20 year old franchise titles.
2. Re-order their values so things like graphics, hardware quality, functionality, and price/performance no longer matter and are no longer important for this industry.
3. Excessively worship the Wiimote as a form of innovation -- even though input these days can easily be converted to a USB device that could function on any console (if the industry made sense).

[QUOTE="4_Horsemen"][QUOTE="captainlouie"]the 360 and ps3 though have decided to shoot for the moon.  i would have prefered that they would have done a standard upgrade and put it at a reasonable price.captainlouie

Yes, compare ancient franchise to ancient franchise.  Don't you love when a console shoves 20 year ideas down your throat (20 year old ideas created around the demands of children -- at a time when a console could barely process an 8bit cart, at that) while ignoring and marginalizing third-party developers on their system?  Don't you just love when the quality of hardware is so terribly low that the chances of a decent multi-plat solution become far more scarce.  Isn't it great to see gaming dominated by games that are so simple, childish, and pointless in conception that most consumers turn their nose up at gaming as a whole?

I wouldn't expect much of a graphical or qualatative jump.  Nintendo is all about making money in the cheapest, most brutal, anti-consumer, and anti-gaming manner as finacially possible.

As Panda has always said, we should judge a console mainly by the quality of its hardware in porpotion to its price.   

Buy the Wii as an investment?  Are some of you implying that there are Wii games SO GOOD that might make up for the Wii's RIP OFF quality of hardware?

Care to point out something that isn't explicitly made around the demands of children?  Hell, I challenge you to find five games that don't exploit a 10+ year franchise tag in some manner.  I enjoy RPG's.  Please identify some RPG's.  Hell, Kudos to you if you can find me a good Wii space sim, turned based strat, decent shooter, or creative genre.  Again, I want these titles to be next-gen quality, if I am to spend my hard earned cash on the Wii, and use all of contemporary technology to its best abilities.

 I love artistic and developer freedom in gaming -- please point out some titles that show that third-party devs are working on cutting edge, innovative, and "risky" games (I don't count a mindless, dumb, murder-sim like Manhunt, by the way).  I like games that make me think.  Can you please identify any Wii game with some level of intellectual depth or creativity?

A wii is an investment.  An investment in a console that treats consumers like children who demand low-quality, simplistic, and crappy products sold strictly through franchise labels, simple gameplay, and child-like ideas.

Wii as an investment amounts to little more than something you might find in your local dollar store bargain bin.

Universal health care should be a fundamental right for all Americans.  The fears of cost are greatly exaggerated, and propogated by incredibly large buisnesses that have an enormous vested intrest in gouging Americans out of their hard-earned money.

The following is taken from Dennis Kucinich's website, one of the most progressive, well-qualified, American, and right-headed candidates in the 2008 presidental election,

Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right."
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Chicago Archdiocese

Our health care system is broken, and H.R. 676, the Conyers-Kucinich bill, is the only comprehensive solution to the problem. It is also the system endorsed by more than 14,000 physicians from Physicians for a National Health Program. Nearly 46 million Americans have no health care and over 40 million more have only minimal coverage. In 2005 some 41% of moderate and middle income Americans went without health care for part of the year. Even more shocking is that 53% of those earning less than $20,000 went without insurance for all of 2005. In fact, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 Americans die each year because they have no health insurance.

The American health system is quite sick. Pulitzer Prize journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele, in their stunning analysis of the health care industry, Critical Condition (2006 Broadway Books), insist that "... U.S. health care is second-rate at the start of the twenty-first century and destined to get a lot worse and much more expensive." Considering the following facts from Tom Daschle's article for the Center for American Progress: "Paying More but Getting Less: Myths and the Global Case for U.S. Health Reform":

• Americans are The Healthiest People in the World.
  FACT: Citizens of 34 nations live longer than Americans.
• The U.S. is the Best Place to Get Sick.
  FACT: The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. 37th in the world for health system performance. Countries like Australia and the United Kingdom rank above the U.S. Americans have lower odds of surviving colorectal cancer and childhood leukemia than Canadians who do have national health care. Americans also experience greater problems in coordination of care than the previously mentioned countries and New Zealand.
• Covering All Americans Will Lead to Rationing.
  FACT: Same-day access to primary-care physicians in the U.S. (33%) is far less available than in the United Kingdom (41%), Australia (54%) and New Zealand (60%). Per capita spending for health care averaged $2,696 in countries without waiting lists and $5,267 in the U.S.
• Global Competitiveness is Hampered in Comprehensive System.
  FACT: "Health care costs are not just a burden and barrier to care for individuals; they are taking a heavy toll on American businesses." The strain on employers in 2005 was staggering. "The average total premiums for an employer-based family plan was $9,979 in 2005 ..." Most of our competitors in the world markets finance their systems outside corporate taxes and employer mandates. Without Medicare for Everyone, the U.S. will continue to hemorrhage jobs.
• We Cannot Afford to Cover All Americans.
  FACT: We already spend enough to have universal health care. "The truth is, we cannot afford to not reform the health system." We spend about 50% more than the next most expensive nation and nearly twice per person what the Canadians do. On May 1, 2006 Paul Krugman explained in Death by Insurance how incredibly wasteful the current system is. The doctor he referenced has two full-time staff members for billing, and two secretaries spend half their time collecting insurance information on the 301 different private plans they deal with. This type of waste is easily 20%. Also consider that 98% of Medicare funds are spent on medical care.

IMPORTANT: The hackneyed -- and inaccurate -- mantra of Republicans when universal health care is introduced is to blame trial lawyers and malpractice cases for our lack of national health care. In fact, 0.46% of our total health spending is spent on awards, legal costs, and underwriting costs -- about the same as Canada and the United Kingdom and about the same amount we spend on dog and cat food each year. While "defensive medicine" may drive up the price, it hardly accounts for our stunning health care costs. The belief that citizens should give up their right to fair legal redress for legally proven medical mistakes in exchange for lower health care costs rings as true as the promise that if we must give up our civil rights to be safe from terrorists.

Even those with coverage too often pay exorbitant rates. The current profit-driven system, dominated by private insurance firms and their bureaucracies, has failed.

We must establish streamlined national health insurance, "Enhanced Medicare for Everyone." It would be publicly financed health care, privately delivered, and will put patients and doctors back in control of the system. Coverage will be more complete than private insurance plans; encourage prevention; and include prescription drugs, dental care, mental health care, and alternative and complementary medicine.

Perhaps the clearest and most eloquent explanation of the Conyers-Kucinich National Health Insurance Bill was given on February 4, 2003, in Washington, D.C., by Dr. Marcia Angell in introducing H.R. 676. Backed by over 14,000 doctors, this is the future of American medicine.

"We are here today to introduce a national health insurance program. Such a program is no longer optional; it's necessary.

"Americans have the most expensive health care system in the world. We spend about twice as much per person as other developed nations, and that gap is growing. That's not because we are sicker or more demanding (Canadians, for example, see their doctors more often and spend more time in the hospital). And it's not because we get better results. By the usual measures of health (life expectancy, infant mortality, immunization rates), we do worse than most other developed countries. Furthermore, we are the only developed nation that does not provide comprehensive health care to all its citizens. Some 42 million Americans are uninsured (nearly 46 million today -- updated figure) -- disproportionately the sick, the poor, and minorities -- and most of the rest of us are underinsured. In sum, our health care system is outrageously expensive, yet inadequate. Why? The only plausible explanation is that there's something about our system -- about the way we finance and deliver health care -- that's enormously inefficient. The failures of the system were partly masked during the economic boom of the 1990's, but now they stand starkly exposed. There is no question that with the deepening recession and rising unemployment, in the words of John Breaux, 'The system is collapsing around us.'

"The underlying problem is that we treat health care like a market commodity instead of a social service. Health care is targeted not to medical need, but to the ability to pay. Markets are good for many things, but they are not a good way to distribute health care. To understand what's happening, let's look at how the health care market works ... "

"Mainstream" writers like Ph. D. economist and columnist for the New York Times Paul Krugman now agree with those doctors and Dennis that "covering everyone under Medicare would actually be significantly cheaper than our current system." They all recognize that we already spend enough to provide national health care to all but lack the political courage to make the tough decisions that doctors, nurses and medical professionals must run our health care system -- not "for profit" insurance companies, who make money by denying health care.

It is time to recognize that all the civilized countries have a solution that we must adapt to this country. American businesses can no longer be competitive shouldering the entire cost of health care. Health care is a right that all Americans deserve.

Smart government spending stimulates the economy more effectively than consumer spending.  Smart government spending can generate more jobs, and redistribute wealth more evenly than self-intrested transactions in the private sphere.  It is a myth that, "tax cuts mean job growth."  This statement is only true if you dream of a government that collects taxes, tucks it into a vault, and sits on it like a hungry dragon.  Domestic spending counters this assumption quite easily.

Taxes are needed to more equally distribute wealth, in the form of government services of all types, in a society that is terribly unequal, unfair, and against the best intrests of the common working man.

Competition cripples the market and must be regulated, to an extent, to keep wages at a steady level.

Capitalism brings out the worst in human character.

The minimum wage should be a living wage.  If it's designated too high, small buisnesses might cut back on employees, but most large firms will only feel a soft "peck" into the sides of their disgustingly huge profit margins.  I'm sorry to wreck that 300% profit margin, boss.

I believe that people are naturally self-intrested, greedy, and often dangerous individuals that will do anything to "win" in the competition for scarce resources.   They don't care about the good of other people, ignore the suffering of their fellow countrymen, and neglect individuals who labor hard alongside them to provide Americans with a fair standard of living.

I absolutely hate capitalism, the values it creates, its core ideology, and how it views people. I consider it one of the lowest ambitions and value systems that humans can strive for -- the meaningless pursuit of excessive displays of wealth --  and hope it will become a relic of our greedy, backward, and disgusting time; however, until we can make resources more plentiful, it is a neccessary evil.  We should work together to make resources and a high standard of living so abundant that virtually all humans can enjoy a wonderful life.  Then we can shake off the meaningless and backward chains of capitalism.

Unfortunately, within the capitalist system, the working class is at a natural disadvantage in the competition for survival.  They find themselves bound by strict moral codes, which are cemeted in law, that prevent them from forcibly taking and redistrubting wealth when the upper-classes of society seek to deprive them of the fruits of their labors.  In a classical economy, the upper-classes have complete power over wages (wages are not "flexible" as so many developing economies depict every day) and had the power to, quite literally, work a person to death.  If we truely wish for a free economy and market, we should not bind workers to government-sanctioned moral laws.  A knife or gun could easily solve unethical treatment of workers in the work place.  But, most of us value human life, and the sanctity of life suggests that we should embrace a more plausible alternative. 

Labor has such little power under the classical views of Economy that humans appear little more than replacable machines to be used, exploited, and sacraficed as if they were cheap piles of equipment.  Government must exist to provide power for those who find themselves exploited and bound by moral laws at the same time.  Government must also prevent the greed of the few from exploiting and enslaving the labor of the many: supporting unionization, progressive taxation, and ensuring breaks, paid holidays, workers comp, unemployment, etc -- are only a list of a few things that Government must do to ensure a high quality of life for the working class.

The free economy cannot function in the long-run.  As the great 20th century English Economist, John Maynard Keynes, argued -- "in the long run, we're dead."  Wage-price spirals can absolutely cripple an economy, and without stimulating aggrate demand, the economy can operate at an ENORMOUS level of unemployment and poor PPP for a very-very-very long time (Great Depression is a wonderful example). People are so self-intrested and short sighted that the government must meddle in the affairs of an economy, if simply to ensure economic prosperity.