Nintendo has finally announced the list of retro titles that will be available for the Wii's Virtual Console download service, and let me just say that I am underwhelmed at the first bunch of titles, but I also understand why I am underwhelmed and that I'm also patient. When Nintendo first revealed the plans for what became the Virtual Console, I know that most of us had visions of Mario and Metroid dancing in our heads moreso than Pinball and Tennis. Yet it is Pinball and Tennis that Nintendo has seen fit to offer first in North America (Japan gets all the good stuff right away for whatever reason, and in a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence Europe gets one extra game over North American gamers this year).
We're not going to get all the good stuff at once, of course. Nintendo is going to ration out the big guns over many months (years?) so that there's always something really highly anticipated only a few weeks away at any given time. At Wii launch folks will most likely be spending more time with the launch titles for the main console itself than they will spend time with the Virtual Console's titles. Why offer up the major hits of yore when they'd be eclipsed by the Wii itself? And furthermore, why offer up all the major retro titles at once so that they end up competing with one another? By spacing them all out Nintendo can lavish the spotlight on one profitable game at a time. Racketboy over at Retrogaming also has a similar take on the subject, pointing out a possible third-party publisher factor:
I also believe that Nintendo is holding back on most of its own titles to give more attention to Sega and Hudson's offerings. They want to prove to the third parties that they can make good money on the Virtual Console. If they flood the VC with all the Marios, Metroids, Zeldas, and such there will be far fewer gamers that will by the Sonics and Bonks.
There's plenty of games that I want to see (and buy) on the Virtual Console, but this initial list of titles really doesn't contain anything I'm eager to buy that I don't already own in other formats. More time to spend playing the Wii launch library, I suppose.
