Topic: Game Party Champions Wii U Box Art Revealed

[NWR_Neal]

The formerly Midway-made Wii party series is coming to Wii U later this year.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/31272

Game Party Champions is coming to Wii U later this year. Published by Warner Bros., the party game's announcement also comes with a picture of the game's box art, which features the same look as the Ubisoft box art revealed earlier.

The fourth title in the Game Party series, which began on Wii in 2007, Champions is being developed by Phosphor Games, who also worked on the Space Pop game in Kinect Adventures. The first three Game Party games, the last of which came out in 2009, were developed by FarSight Studios, who more recently created The Pinball Arcade for various platforms.

Game Party Champions will contain several modes: Quick Play, Story Mode, and Party Mode. The Party Mode features players equipped with Wii Remotes griefing the GamePad-wielding player. Some of the included sports and games are ping pong, skill ball, table hockey, and hoop shoot.

The official line is that Game Party Champions is coming this holiday season. There is no mention of a launch day release. Warner Bros. will be publishing Scribblenauts Unlimited and Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition for the Wii U at launch.

[broodwars]

Because, you know, if there's one thing I'm sure future Wii U owners are looking forward to playing after the Wii generation, it's a party game/mini-game collection.  You're starting the console off right, Warner Bros.!

[Ian Sane]

Ever notice there is a certain style of boxart for shitty games?  I can't really describe what makes it look that way but there is a shovelware style of art and this is using it full on.

I think the Wii's image as the casual console was largely set by the sheer amount of bullshit like this on the shelves.  Whenever I look at the Wii section in a store it's just "junk, junk, junk, junk, junk, good game completely hidden among junk."  Unless Nintendo is cool with being the casual guys, the Wii U is going to have to actively fight against some of the very games being made for it to be taken seriously.  Having a small selection of games on the shelf looks bad.  Missing key third party games that all over the other consoles' sections looks bad.  And having tons of shovelware crap on the shelf looks bad.

Essentially Nintendo has to establish the Wii U as a more core friendly system ASAP before all the shovelware piles up and hides the good games.  They can't drag their feet on that.  They're got like a year before everything is set in stone.  You know when Nintendo will launch with very few titles and "give the third parties a chance" (a fanboy bullshit excuse if there ever was one)?  They CAN'T do that here because THIS is what the third parties will make as they will follow the status quo of the Wii.  It is Nintendo's responsibility to set the example and set the image of their own system as no one else will do it for them.

Seriously though this one piece of boxart makes me feel sick.  I swear Sony or MS could literally put this image in a print ad with the words "this is the Wii U" and just crush any core gamer interest in the system.  Nintendo is probably unaware just how damaged the Wii brand is with core gamers and how damaging to the Wii U's image it will be to have such games on the shelf around the launch window.  They have to make THIS kind of boxart hidden, instead of it doing the hiding.

[broodwars]

That's why I kind of hope that Nintendo Land under-performs/underwhelms at the Wii U launch.  I'm sure it could be a fine mini-game collection, but Wii Sports' success (and Raving Rabbids) probably started the trend of mini-game collections and party games that dominated the Wii.  If Nintendo Land is incredibly successful, which it probably will be, Nintendo will be risking history repeating itself.  There's a place for such games on any console, but I'd prefer if they weren't the "easy" maker on Wii U that it appears they were on Wii.

As for this game, sure the cover may be incredibly generic, but I'm not going to call it a "shitty game" until it actually releases and someone's played it.

[Ian Sane]

As for this game, sure the cover may be incredibly generic, but I'm not going to call it a "shitty game" until it actually releases and someone's played it.

Well it IS a sequel in a series that averages in the 30% range on Game Rankings.  I highly doubt that THIS game is going to buck the trend of its predecessors and be a classic.

[DonnyKD]

@broodwars:

"I WANT NINTENDO LAND TO FAIL BECAUSE IF IT DOESN'T THEN THERE WILL SOMEHOW BE MORE SHOVELWARE GAMES I DON'T HAVE TO BUY!"

That's the crappiest reason on why anything should fail, ever.

[ShyGuy]

hahahahaha

[broodwars]

@broodwars:

"I WANT NINTENDO LAND TO FAIL BECAUSE IF IT DOESN'T THEN THERE WILL SOMEHOW BE MORE SHOVELWARE GAMES I DON'T HAVE TO BUY!"

That's the crappiest reason on why anything should fail, ever.

And yet it's what sold the Wii, and it's what 3rd parties sold a great deal of on the Wii and ended up prioritizing on the Wii.  Wii Sports was the casual tech demo that established for many people what the Wii would be for them: a mini-game collection machine.  A party game machine.  If Nintendo Land does sell well and correspondingly sells Wii Us in the same way, it could very well be seen by the same casual gamers as the face of the Wii U and thus history repeats itself.  And if you somehow think the casuals are over those experiences, just look at what apparently sells on Kinect.

So you'll forgive me if I don't want to see a single mini-game collection/party game sell well on the Wii U, and thus set precedence...for a year or two at least, to give the Wii U a chance to build a firmer foundation for other genres.  And frankly, I don't see my opinion here as being any more asinine than all those that whine that they want the Michael Bay Transformers movies to fail so studios don't have the incentive to make similar stupid big budget action movies to ride that success.

[DonnyKD]

The Wii U isn't going to freaking fail because a few minigame collections are on there.

Since you seem to be totally ignorant on this topic, there's low third party support on the Wii for OTHER reasons. Not freaking minigames.