So after the first wave of buzz for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories passed, there was a second round of information that made my heart sink a little: Shattered Memories would also be appearing on PS2 and PSP. Now, nothing wrong with either system, but both are inferior to Wii in terms of hardware specs and use wildly different control schemes.
A really great game developed specifically for Wii is unlikely to play well on PS2 or run well at all on PSP. So if Shattered Memories is a good game on either of the PlayStation consoles... well, it's almost failing the Wii by definition, isn't it?
While Ars Technica did a look at this and their article was pretty good, it was very business-oriented and ignored what I think is one of the most serious problems created by the massive proliferation of PS2/Wii titles appearing this late both system's lifespans. Namely: as long as publishers keep pushing PS2-caliber games onto Wii, both the console and its owners are by definition being underserved.
It was understandable to see a lot of PS2-to-Wii conversions early on in the system's life span, but it's not a good sign that we're going on four years of Wii and third parties are still basically trying to treat the machine like a PS2 with a funny controller. The GameCube was a superior machine to the PS2 in all regards but storage media capacity and a Wii is pretty much two GameCubes held together with spit and baling wire.
We should be seeing better games, and games with features unique to Wii. Some third parties are investing in this and producing really great stuff. Some of those games are even starting to make money! What Wii owners don't need to see is their machine's hardware being constantly under-used by basically lazy third parties who are interested in exploiting the PS2's super-massive install base. That leads to people deciding that the only good Wii games are going to be made by Nintendo, which leads to people passing on third party titles, which leads to worthy stuff like No More Heroes getting shoved onto a disc with Red Steel.
Of course, Sony probably has no intention of forcibly ending the PS2's horrible zombie afterlife and there's so many PS2s out there a lot of people don't want to stop buying games for it and move on. There's a lot of negative vibes out in the business and fan communities about Wii right now and to be honest I think it's due to publishers not really wanting to acknowledge that the PS2's heyday is over (even if more people spend time on PS2s than on Wiis according to Nielsen).
Wii doesn't lack for games right now, but it does lack for high-profile games capable of launching strong new IP for third party publishers. That's because a lot of third parties insist on turning Wii projects into Wii/PS2 projects, which ultimately just kneecaps Wii's chances of receiving any really exemplary software. So from where I'm setting, a lot of the problems people are having with Wii are really problems they're having with the system getting eaten up by the PS2's dying days.
