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 Animosity towards Nintendo has been at an all time high lately. Between cries about their piss poor line-ups, pompous showboating, and the abandonment of the core gamer, the Big N has been given little opportunity to make things right. Let's face facts: Nintendo could announce that every purchase came with a free trip to the actual Mushroom Kingdom and we'd be writing it off as shameless self-promotion. We're mad as hell. And that madness might just kill the best thing to happen to Nintendo since a monkey throwing barrels. Nintendo's WiiWare service launched in North American on May 12th of this year. That's less than four months ago -- and yet any hype, excitement, or anticipation for this providing a viable alternative to Live Arcade or PlayStation Store's original content have completely evaporated. Why? Hasn't it provided original content? Hasn't it done so frequently? Isn't some of it top shelf product? The answer to all of those is a bonafide yes. And yet it's release was met with little more than hopeful curiousity that most of us didn't follow through on. How many of you have downloaded a WiiWare title? Ok -- now how many of you have downloaded two?
Before we go any further, let's take a moment or two to crunch some real basic numbers about the competition. Since May 12th, Xbox Live Arcade has released 30 titles. PlayStation Store has released 10. Both of these had a mix of good (Castle Crashers, Braid, Pixeljunk Eden, The Last Guy) and bad (Frogger 2, Sea Life Safari, Novastrike). WiiWare has had 27 releases in that time, so clearly it's not a lack of options that's keeping you from playing them. That's not to say that WiiWare hasn't had it's share of bad titles. Not a lot of people are lining up to play Major League Eating or Pong Toss, but of the 27 released we've seen some real gems in there. Lost Winds took the world by storm on WiiWare's launch day. Defend Your Castle offered up the kind of fresh and original experience that we've come to expect of the competition on the PS3. Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People, Toki-Tori, Star Soldier R -- the list goes on and on. I'd say there's a good dozen or so games on the service that are at least worth checking out, half of which I'd easily consider a must buy. And maybe that's the problem. Maybe something that seems worth checking out doesn't necessarily translate into something that's worth $10. Nintendo has been notoriously stingy with the concept of trial versions, and maybe that's what's hurting WiiWare the most. Only recently has Nintendo opened up the Wii to host demos for your DS games, and since you have to be in front of your Wii to actually play the demos it takes all the portability out of owning your handheld. Smash Bros as well lets you earn trial versions of Virtual Console games, but attempting to sample an old NES game under a strict 1 minute time limit doesn't really give you an impression of what the games about. But on the same note, Sony hasn't always been forthcoming with their demos either. Sure, certain PSN titles like The Last Guy, Echochrome and Elefunk have had demos before their release, but for the most part purchasing a game in the PlayStation Store could prove just as much a crapshoot as buying it off of WiiWare. Unless it's a concept that you need to feel to grasp, Sony tends to play their cards close to their chest -- but you bought Everyday Shooter anyways, didn't you? Maybe proof of concept is the issue. So much of what's on WiiWare is so vastly different from what you've played before or completely unheard of that you don't want to take the gamble. Maybe Nintendo needs to market more aggressively. Maybe they need to push these games weeks in advance and give us the goods to get excited. Maybe, as we'd discussed a few weeks ago, their marketing is just broken. Whatever it is, your lack of involvement is killing a fantastic service and we need to figure out how to fix that. As good as these games are, you're just not playing them. Why do you hate Nintendo?
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really eats away at my gaming habits. I've also been upgrading my home entertainment center, so I try to limit my spending anyway [been sticking as much to the Pile of Shame as possible]. 
) and Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty (LOVE R&C). I've downloaded PSN demos and such, but for much the same reasons above for WiiWare, I haven't gotten any more. 
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That and demos. I've been raked over the coals not trying the demos out first... so that's kind of a biggie for me