What do YOU want to see out of the next generation?

[Meta_Fish]

We all know what the Wii U is bringing to the table for the most part, coming out later this year. While it's not what many of us were expecting, it's what we're getting, and Nintendo fans are going to get it either way.

Still, I can't help but think... It isn't what I had in mind. Then again, whatever Nintendo does never is and I'm usually pretty pleased with what we get regardless.

Normally, every new system would have a slightly (or not-so-slightly) updated controller with a more powerful machine. The Wii obviously changed that up and now every system has some device to get people to flail their arms around, one of which is extending a console's lifecycle beyond the normal duration (Kinect).

Wii U will launch this fall/winter and Xbox (720/Yboy/Durango) and the PS4 will likely be shown at next E3 to come out next winter, after having a good amount of time to gauge the success of the Wii U. We know what the Wii U is going to be doing (for the most part), which is tablet controls, along with extended support of Wii Motion+, nunchuks, balance board and the "new," Wii U Pro controller.

Sony and Microsoft, however have time to think of something new. It doesn't really matter who you want to see succeed or be the most innovative, but if it were up to you, what would you choose for the next generation?  

[Meta_Fish]

Personally, I was hoping Wii 2 would push motion gaming further. The Wii was an immensely fresh idea in 2006 and after everyone wrapped their head around the idea, imaginations ran crazy. People are divided on the system in general, but it's pretty safe to say that most of the games didn't deliver on what we thought up six years ago. The Wii had a great library of games, but most of them slapped on some motion functionality. Even with M+, we still haven't seen, I'd say, ten Wii games that have great motion controls. Whether that's due to the technology not being good enough or developers not being able to utilize it, it's hard to say. Personally, I'd say it's a mixture of both and one of the best functionalities of the Wiimote is its IR sensor-something that goes pretty ignored in discussions.

Kinect was a promising technology, but its technology wasn't good enough to push out great games and Playstation Move hasn't had much success with killer apps, either.

A lot of people hate motion controls now, but I personally love them. They add an extra level of immersion to me, and when done right, can make a game so much more enjoyable. I was really hoping that the next Nintendo console was going to blow the lid off of motion controls and fulfill all those daydreams we had six years ago, but only got small tastes of with the Wii.

What I wanted: Power Gloves. Hear me out, though.

The Wii Remote and nunchuk combo worked decently enough (Wiimote moreso), but you always had to give something up with whatever control setup you used. The Wiimote only had a few accessible buttons and the nunchuk was gimped in comparison, with worse motion controls, no pointer, no rumble and two buttons. If you used the Wiimote on its side, the pointer was awkward, the d-pad on the Wiimote admittedly stinks, and you don't have hand freedom-something important with the Wii: Being able to move each hand independently to accomplish tasks.

Kinect doesn't work well because there are too many variables. Animals moving in front of the screen, exaggerated gestures that go out of the camera's range, wide ranges of body types, etc. Power Gloves would go over your hands and react to how you moved your fingers. You could grab objects in the real world to hold onto as the objects in the game world if you didn't want to hold nothing, as so many Kinect-haters mock it for.

Yes, I would still want a controller. It would be suicide to only use gloves as a controller for a console And yes, it would be expensive and difficult to do well, but putting a tablet, along with speakers, motion sensitivity, cameras and buttons is too, isn't it?

If it would be as advanced as I think it could be, buttons could be unnecessary. You could simply have a mold to hold in your hands. A simple, one dollar mold of a controller with no buttons, perhaps movable sticks. The gloves could sense where your fingers went and even how hard they pushed down, bringing analog control back to gaming-something I miss from the GameCube (which also makes me wonder if the U Pro controller will have it... Sunshine wouldn't work the same without it). Hell, you could hold a Wavebird without batteries in your hands and use it as a controller while wearing the gloves!

Power Gloves would obviously also use motion. With six years of time, motion controls could be vastly improved and you could reach behind you to sheathe your sword or to shoot oncoming attackers while you keep facing forward. Movement would be difficult, and I haven't thought of every variable, but I still like the idea. They didn't work that well before, and with an announcement of such a device, the gaming industry would collectively groan, but they did the same thing when the DS was announced, the Wiimote was shown off and the balance board was announced. Over 20 years ago, Mattel made a Power Glove that failed miserably, but in that time, technology has come far and it could be done well and done right.  

[[Kegan]]

I want them to drill a hole in my skull and install a small port so that I can plug my brain into the game.  

[Xilo The Odd]

i'd love to see other developers actually take the time to LEARN more about the controls they have at hand rather than pump out something with motion attached to it like it'll make them matter more.

i could list off any 3rd party game like, well, i'll jsut say anything early that disney did was terrible in the controls department.

im also hoping Online features including co-op, and vs. for a great many good nintendo games happens.  

[Skaeryll]

Star Fox  

[old jazzy]

Wait, the balance board DIDN'T deserve groans? Funny, considering my family's has done nothing but occupy an unnecessarily large amount of space for the past four years. I may have used it to check how much I weighed a couple times.

If we're gonna have motion controls, I want them to be flawless, or very close to it. I don't have the patience to be bullshitted upon because the controls are no good, or because the movement of my arm isn't perfect enough. If the developer doesn't want to make the effort to have great motion controls, then they should just do them the tried and true way.
While I'm at it, I'd like a visor to go with the motion controls in order to feel completely immersed. Wavin' my bod at a TV screen just feels dumb.

My #1 hope is that they'll keep pushing this idea of connectedness, bringing players around the world together. I'd like to see how far it can go. Hopefully one day, the vast majority of games will have some sort of (GOOD QUALITY) online multiplayer mode, including Nintendo games! I also like the idea of a built-in software that lets players interact with avatars in a space you can move around in, like PlayStation Home, except one that doesn't suck a**. Or at least good IM/voice chat. Everyone should just partner up with Steam.  

[Meta_Fish]

We don't notice the impact the balance board had so much because most of us are 20-somethings with no thoughts in our brains about fitness, but it had an impact all the same. Even just in sales, the balance board and Wii Fit (Plus) sold like crazy and for awhile it was as big as the Wii was when it launched. Kinect had the same burst of popularity and sales for a time, too.

Outside of sales, the balance board did well, too. Just this week I saw an ad for a tablet of some sort (non-iPad) and in the commercial, the person stood on an electric (assumedly [new word] Bluetooth) scale, holding the tablet, and it gave them their weight and information. That s**t would not be happening now if it weren't for the success of the balance board.

Granted, the balance board doesn't get much love from most people that bought it, but that's the way all fitness devices go. I can't even count how many exercise machines my family has bought over the years that they only used once or twice.

As for the "tried and true" way of doing things... If that was all we ever got, we would never get anything better than what we started with. I get the fatigue with motion controls and there is nothing more frustrating than when you are playing a game and you cannot do what you are trying to do, due to controls. But Nintendo took a risk and tried something that had (mostly) never been tried before and it paid off big-time for them. We didn't get many good motion controlled games on the Wii, but it excites/excited me for the future, because things can/could only get better.

I'd also like to see something like Playstation Home, except not shitty and filled with ads. Trenn (I think) had a great idea on one of the old Cultcasts to have Animal Crossing be the hub for a console. You could have all of your downloaded games in your house, as well as eBooks, furniture, music collection, photo album-whatever. I really wish something like that would happen, because it would help prolong interest in the system itself, after the wave of launch games release. We've all sunk hours into AC in one of its incarnations, and I'm sure most of us customized our rooms in GSC, too. It would help bring people together and they could keep a steady stream of items coming out, perhaps for microtransactions, ala free-to-play games, and partner with new releases. You could get a Tekken item when Tekken Tag Tournament 2 released or whatever. It works wonders for TF2, which gets new items for most every big game to come out on Steam.  

[Waynebrizzle]

I want good software. When it comes down to it, nothing else matters.  

[Waynebrizzle]

except CHEEVOS  

[old jazzy]

I'm not opposed to developers trying new things at all, but I'm not going to buy that stuff anymore unless it's legitimately good.

The fact that no one really uses or cares about their balance board anymore convinces me that it's just a gimmick despite its sales. Sure, it was great for Nintendo, but not so much for us in the end. It was neat when it was something completely new. Lately, it doesn't appeal so much to gamers, and it doesn't seem to do a good job of appealing to people who do care about fitness, as it doesn't provide a replacement for "real" exercise.

But anyway. Those ideas about the Animal Crossing hub sounds rad. Or it could just be Miis, or whatever. Make the house be part of a village or city you can explore with your friends and it'd be absolutely perfect. Who wouldn't want that?

Obviously I want good software, but every gen has had amazing software, so I kind of expect it of the future, too. There's no need to hope.  

[Waynebrizzle]

What's the point in hoping for things that are never going to happen?  

[old jazzy]

U DON NO  

[Meta_Fish]

Waynebrizzle

I want good software. When it comes down to it, nothing else matters.

Well, yes and no, right? Good software is the most important thing, but I don't know if I'd say it makes everything else irrelevant in a future console. If that was the case, we could still be playing games on the Brown Box, and we'd never know a world where Super Smash Bros or even Super Mario games existed.

Additionally, if things didn't mutate like the DS and Wii, we'd never get games that used those input methods in new and interesting ways.

Waynebrizzle

except CHEEVOS

FYEAH BRO. I wonder what Nintendo would call cheevos on their own system... Accomplishments are on the Streetpass channel.

Jaycorn

I'm not opposed to developers trying new things at all, but I'm not going to buy that stuff anymore unless it's legitimately good.

The fact that no one really uses or cares about their balance board anymore convinces me that it's just a gimmick despite its sales. Sure, it was great for Nintendo, but not so much for us in the end. It was neat when it was something completely new. Lately, it doesn't appeal so much to gamers, and it doesn't seem to do a good job of appealing to people who do care about fitness, as it doesn't provide a replacement for "real" exercise.

But anyway. Those ideas about the Animal Crossing hub sounds rad. Or it could just be Miis, or whatever. Make the house be part of a village or city you can explore with your friends and it'd be absolutely perfect. Who wouldn't want that?

Obviously I want good software, but every gen has had amazing software, so I kind of expect it of the future, too. There's no need to hope.

The balance board had potential but it was squandered, as a lot of great ideas on the Wii were. The Wiimote, AND the balance board both suffered from the same things, but we notice it less with the Wiimote because it was a required tool to use their console. If GCN or Classic Controllers (that didn't have to be attached to a Wiimote) were a viable option for 75% of Wii games, the Wiimote would be a lot less implemented than it is, just like the balance board.

Again, I think Wii Fit can help you get a good workout, but people just stop working out after buying equipment for it. That's the way the world works, and it's not that surprising to me, since I've had to lug loads of heavy exercising equipment to the curb over the years.

On a side note: I think it would be really neat if one of the next-gen consoles was completely cloud-gaming; a service like OnLive. The console would never (foreseeably) need to be replaced, and you would just need an internet connection and a subscription. I think cloud gaming has real promise, and it would shake things up immensely if one of the big three implemented it.  

[old jazzy]

Cloud all the way.  

[Waynebrizzle]

Meta_Fish

Waynebrizzle

I want good software. When it comes down to it, nothing else matters.

Well, yes and no, right? Good software is the most important thing, but I don't know if I'd say it makes everything else irrelevant in a future console. If that was the case, we could still be playing games on the Brown Box, and we'd never know a world where Super Smash Bros or even Super Mario games existed.

Additionally, if things didn't mutate like the DS and Wii, we'd never get games that used those input methods in new and interesting ways.

I've seen maybe one console generation where the best-selling hardware didn't undeniably have the best and/or most unique software. Input methods have come and gone, but they don't always determine the winner (as shown by the PS2 beating the Gamecube, or the 3DS beating the Vita, which had that neat back pad).

Also, let's be honest, I could probably count the games on the DS and Wii that actually NEEDED motion/touch controls to work on one hand. For both consoles. I'm not claiming that they're gimmicks; they're obviously not. But making crazy input methods just for the sake of having them isn't going to get you anywhere (see: Move, Kinect). You have to have software that shows off what the input method can do. It's always going to come back to software.

Motionplus was a great peripheral, but how would we have even known that if it wasn't for great software like Red Steel 2 or Skyward Sword showing it off? It's the software, MANG.