The Wii's death marks the end of an era

[RLbitClassica]

So the Wii U is out now. That's not really news anymore, obviously, but it did make me come to a realization of sorts. The end of Wii means the official end of traditional gaming. Think about it for a sec. The Wii did have the whole motion control gimmick going for it, but it was, at it's heart, the last console available that provided you with old school styled gaming. It didn't have a hard drive. It didn't have a fully realized online infrastructure. There was no way to obtain DLC. There were no multimedia bells and whistles attached. The entire experience consisted of nothing but you and the games you played, no strings attached. While I would never go as far as to say that the newer, more up-to-date methods of gaming are bad, I can't help but feel somewhat depressed at watching old-school console gaming dying for good. What do you all think about this?

[Reksanden]

Now that you mentioned it..... Yeah.

[Sinue_v2]

I'm sorry, what was that you said? I was busy swapping floppy disks to load up the next area...

[Retehi]

Remember when you had to start a car, by turning a crank on the front of the engine to get it started? Man those were the good ol' days.

[Palle]

Remember when you had to start a car, by turning a crank on the front of the engine to get it started? Man those were the good ol' days.

Although, to be fair, mens' forearms in those days had both the hardness and tensile strength of a battleship's anchor chain.

[RLbitClassica]

Thank you all for your replies, the sarcasm is adorable. I should have known better than to try to start a legitimate conversation on a forum.

[yoshiblue]

He's right though. Even the handhelds went multimedia.

[RenzokukenZ]

It didn't have a hard drive.

It had high capacity memory sticks, which technically count.

It didn't have a fully realized online infrastructure.

But it did have one, and it was used for games like Smash Bro. Brawl and Monster Hunter Tri. The Mii-verse could count as well.

There was no way to obtain DLC.

You also couldn't get patches and updates for games, at least official ones. Which is one trait of 'old school consoles' that we can do without.

There were no multimedia bells and whistles attached

Last I checked, you could have Netflix and Hulu on the Wii. Could the Virtual Console also count? Perhaps.

It just seems that a lot of nostalgia filter was placed when making this topic. The Wii was no different than the other consoles when it came to 'multimedia' mainstreaming, it was just overshadowed by the other guys when it came to it.

Personally, the end of traditional gaming would be when discs and cartridges are rendered obsolete and everything is digital download. And from the looks of it, we're getting there.

[Sinue_v2]

Personally, the end of traditional gaming would be when discs and cartridges are rendered obsolete and everything is digital download. And from the looks of it, we're getting there.

A day I hope never comes. Digital downloads are fine, but I want a physical copy of my software. I don't like the idea of being tied to a particular service, and only having access so long as that service is still available/offered. Plus there was that whole issue with Kindle going into people's devices and deleting 1984 (of all books). Yeah, they weren't legally allowed to sell it in the first place... but still. With a physical copy, I can still at least access the software offline after clearing the cache and have the original purchase at my disposal in case the manufacturer/service decided to "alter" my purchase in a way I don't approve.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing everything go back to cartridges. Well, some form of solid state card media at any rate. Get rid of all those finicky lasers and self-destructing disk drives, allow save & DLC space on the media itself for compactness and portability, and reduce those ridiculously slow access rates. Something like what the PSvita currently has. I don't know if it's really practical at this point, but that is the direction I'd like to see them go.

[RenzokukenZ]

Something like what the PSvita currently has. I don't know if it's really practical at this point, but that is the direction I'd like to see them go.

Interesting you mention the Vita. It's predecessor, the Go, focused entirely on digital download, lacking a UMD drive, and it flopped hard. So perhaps we haven't reached that point of pure digital just yet.