Jack Greene

Hopefully Victor Ireland, of Working Designs fame, will get his new company, Gaijinworks, up and running and they can bring this to the US. This sounds exactly like the type of game he would love to work on.

While I would agree that agree that art direction trumps CPU/GPU power (I'm of the opinion that Okami is probably the prettiest game I've ever played) the problem with Wii games up to now, is that the developers aren't even trying. Most of the games look worse than PS2 games, and none of them (excepting the absolutely brilliant Paper Mario game) have had a unique or inspired design to them. No More Heroes does look promising (from the creator of the very stylish Killer 7) but most of the games on the Wii have had what I would call functional graphics: They get the job done, but they don't wow you at all.

"So, take your pick Mr. Business: should they have waited until after Christmas, or started injecting into the market a little early?" I'll answer that. They should not have tried to do a worldwide, simultaneous release. They should have concentrated on the US, possibly Europe as well, and waited until early next year before releasing it in Japan. The Japan launch WAS a disaster. The sales number were horrible and there were many instances of retailers discounting units by 50%. The launch in the US wasn't a flop, but it definitely could have gone better. By not having more units in store for Christmas, there will be some lost sales that turn into purchases of PS2s, Gamecubes, or the decision to wait until the PS3 and Revolution are released before buying a next-gen console. On the bright side, I'm sure that will be a significant number of people that take money and gift certificates they receive for Christmas and they'll purchase a 360 as soon they're in stock after the holiday season. The holiday season wasn't a flop for Microsoft but it was a missed opportunity to get a significant lead on Sony and Nintendo.