I was talking to the Wii the other day and she told me that being popular sucks (yes, the Wii is a female). It appears that her surprising popularity has caused everybody to question her longevity. Heck, every time I surf this super highway of information, I come across another article attempting to analyze whether or not the Wii is going to eventually fail.

The newest trend: comparing the Wii to the Dreamcast.

What the Geek brings up a couple interesting comparisons between the Wii and the Dreamcast. First, the potential piracy issue for the Wii:

The Dreamcast became a hotbed for pirated games, since well, the system didn’t even need a modchip to play pirated games (just download a game’s ISO file, burn it to a disc, and enjoy!). The Wii doesn’t make piracy this easy, but most people with the desire could easily go about it. Within the first three months of the Wii’s life, torrent sites are beginning to flood with ISO files for games and several modchips are available to play pirated games.

The success of the Wii is going to depend very heavily on third party developer acceptance. If software sales are sluggish due to piracy, then third party devs will stop making games for the Wii.

While I understand that piracy might adversely effect game sales, it will not be serious enough to scare away third party developers from the Wii. If this is the case, then publishers would run away from the entire gaming industry and PC games would never exist. Piracy is a widespread problem that faces every console in this generation, not just the Wii. While piracy might have been a leading contributor to the Dreamcast’s failure, it will not even come close to harming the Wii as much. Remember, the Dreamcast had absolutely no blockades in place to restrict pirated discs from booting up on the system. None.

The other comparison between the two systems has been their lack of DVD playback:

Another common threat to the dearly departed Dreamcast and the newborn Wii is a lack of DVD playback. The PS2 beat the Dreamcast to a bloody pulp thanks in part to the fact that it was an affordable DVD player. The Xbox 360 and PS3 not only play DVD’s but they both have HD movie formats associated with them. This gives them an edge - mom and dad will get one for their kids to play games on, and for them to watch movies on. Assuming their kid wants all three systems equally, if mom and dad aren’t interested in gaming, then their only motivation to pick up a Wii over the other two new gen systems is price - and maybe they’re willing to pay a little more for a machine that does it all.

It’s true, DVD playback gave the PS2 a huge advantage over the Dreamcast. That also happened to be six years ago when DVD players were just starting to become affordable enough for most homes to adopt. In fact, the PS2 was the first DVD player to enter my home.

Six years later, almost every house in America has at least one DVD player. If a home doesn’t own a CyberHome DVD player at the bare minimum, I doubt that family cares about PS3s, Wiis, or HD DVD playback.

So now that standard definition DVD playback is a completely useless feature for a console today, what about HD/Blu-Ray DVD playback? While a nice feature for the PS3, Blu-Ray compatibility is not necessary unless you are one of the few people to have a 1080p HD television with the proper HDMI cables for the full high definition experience. If are lucky enough to have this expensive entertainment setup, then you probably won’t hold back on buying a standalone Blu-Ray or HD DVD player. Hell, you probably already own a PS3 and 360.

Besides, even if Mom and Dad aren’t into gaming, the Wii will certainly change their opinion and they will be far too busy bowling up a storm to care about not being able to watch ATL in high definition.

I guess the only actual similarity between the Wii and Dreamcast is that both systems are white. It must be a sign…

What the Geek

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