Wii drought: The facts

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How does Wii's software support stack up?

Last October, during an interview with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime declared that Wii wouldn't suffer the same, infamous,new game drought that had afflicted previous Nintendo consoles. His reasoning was that three giant gaming brands - Zelda, Metroid and Mario - would "continue driving momentum through 2007," and give Wii the support it needed to keep gamers interested.

Back to the present, however, and two of those vital titles are lacking concrete launch dates. Both Metroid Prime 3 and Mario Galaxy - probably the biggest and most anticipated game yet to be released on Wii - look unlikely to appear until Christmas. So with the big hitters out of the action, how exactly does the number of games currently available for Wii compare with the early-doors experience of N64 and GameCube buyers?

Fortunately, Wii is beginning to pick up now, enjoying a more fruitful third month than either previous consoles. Plusa healthy line-up of 17 titles, including SSX Blur, Mario Party 8 and Tiger Woods, is predicted to burst into the shops in March, should each game hit its release date.

But, crucially, only a handful of the games are purpose-built for Wii, employing the console's exciting features - and only a few of those are worth blowing your cash on. Meanwhile April is looking excruciatingly lean, and there's little hope of a killer game exploding out of nowhere in the coming months.

Wii might not be suffering a severe shortage by Nintendo's previous poor standards, but without the thrills of Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime 3 to keep that momentum going, a summer videogame drought for Wii is almost certainly on the cards.

February 21, 2007

Ben_Richardson

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.