What Makes A Game System Worth It?

When talking to my friend recently, I said I was tempted to get a Wii U since it is only $300 at Costco.  He replied with "I would, it's totally worth it".  My first thought was, "of course you would, you don't have near the amount of expenditures that I do", since he isn't sliding into poverty 11 months out of the year like my family.  What I did say was (my second thought) was "but there's nothing to play on it".  I know that's not technically correct, there are games for it, but it's still new and I don't actually want any of the ones out for it.  I'm willing to try Zombie U, but really, I'll get that cheap later or just borrow it from my friend.

No, the first game I want to play for it is, of course, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.  It comes in March, so I would like to get a Wii U soon, but I don't know how it's going to happen.  Between her job cutting her hours and things not magically getting cheaper, it's going to be hard to squeeze that in.

But I digress (and use "but" at the beginning of a sentence).  To me, what makes a system worth it is the games on said system.  Otherwise, what do you do with it?  Sure you can do some other stuff, but primarily it is to play games.  Having DVD playback was great when the first system did it, now I don't care since I have 6 or so things that can play them.  I play games on them, and that's what I judge its "worth" by.

I'm not sure my friend does.  There was one time when I did buy a system, at launch, because of what I thought it could do.  What kind of experience I thought I would have.  That system was a Nintendo Wii.  I still regret getting it when I did.  There's a few good games on it, sure, but it's just like the Gamecube and N64.  I didn't buy either of those at launch, but when they had good games on them.  I saved some money and was happy with the purchases.

Not so much with the Wii.  It's collected lots of dust, save for the Monster Hunter Tri binges I so enjoy.  I didn't need to buy it at launch, since most of the games for it are just terrible.  I should play it more to actually enjoy the ones I have, but it's still not a great system.  The motion controls are just terrible and sadly the best games (to me) don't even use them.  Also, my launch system died on me and I lost over 120 hours in MH Tri because of Nintendo's terrible ideas and fear of online.  Reading things about the Wii U shows me they haven't fully learned their lesson.

So that's why I'm not really eager to buy the Wii U.  Well, also the 3DS price drop.  That still bothers me, but that's a different story.  I honestly would be content waiting to get one, but I want to play MH3U with my buddies Mark and Jyrokk, since playing with them is really fun.  It's also worth it, but will the network even let us play?  We've had some trouble connecting on MH Tri, and there's nothing we can do about it but hope the next is better.  So, that would be worth it, but how to afford it?  It's crazy to think that the game is coming too soon, which isn't how most gamers think about games they are looking forward to.  I'll just have to see what happens.