In playing Need for Speed on Xbox 360 and Wii, I understand how serious Nintendo was when they said Wii was not a competitor to Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Playing NFS first on Xbox 360 allowed me to see the game as it was meant to be. Six cars in an average race, massive 20 car race wars after territory takeovers, and sharp, clear graphics.

The Wii version was a sad, stripped-down version in comparison. Four car races, no race wars whatsoever, and when using rca cables, everything is fuzzy and dark. There’s no cabin shots from the other car during boss races, either. Clearly, A full featured game was made and subsequently stripped down to work on the Wii.

Game creators, developers, etc. should understand Wii is the apple among oranges. Because it is not a comparable system, a game can’t really be tweaked into working for the Wii if was developed for 360 or PS3. Not recognizing this reality emphasizes the Wii’s weaker engine, making the system useless for many. However, there are plenty of games developed specifically for the Wii that are fun, full featured and look great.

So, is it better to make the same game for all levels of consoles for a sense of fairness? Should they make different games for Wii, like the All-Play series for Sports titles?

Surely it costs less to make one full game and one stripped game. I want to say they should just skip making a Wii game all together, but if you only owned a Wii, the stripped version wouldn’t be so bad. However, if you have both, there’s no point it buying it on the Wii because it is better on the 360… but the 360 version is arguably harder, so maybe you’d rather have the Wii version.

I haven’t completely made up my mind on this issue…. EA has decided to make different versions of their sports games, but not so much with their other titles like Need for Speed. Maybe they improved with Pro Street, which I haven’t played. Tony Hawk saw a seperate Wii version, and SSX had the exclusive Blur, but they both kinda sucked. They forced motion controls when they weren’t necessary. Need for Speed is guilty of that, too. I think that every game should the option for classic controls, with the exception being titles like wii play, sports, etc. The motion controls are most beneficial when intuitive. Despite five options of controller configurations in NFS, I think that none is really intuitive.