| jman8 said: My main idea, the point to take home, is that a big install base doesn't necessarily equal large sales. Then I went on and speculated that it might actually be better to release on a lesser selling system like the PSP, Wii, or PS3 (maybe even 360, but that install base may be too small). That second point is hard to prove b/c there's pretty much no way to truly test it out. But it sure does seem that devs are subscribing to the same line of thought that I'm presenting here when you consider that there are games being released for the PSP even though overall software sales are really bad. Would they have sold better on another system? Like I said, it's impossible to know. But it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Go look at a PSP-only game site like psp.ign.com or something. Check out the games they're talking about on the front page. Not many of them look all that notable. If they were coming out for the DS, the DS sites may not even talk much about those games b/c there's so many other titles that look better that they can talk about. In other words, by virture of being on PSP, a system with few upcoming releases, these barely notable games are getting more coverage than they would on a system like the DS. Look at the DJ Max article I posted above. That dev is saying the same sort of thing I am. It's been actually getting quite a bit of coverage on the PSP sites, and actually I'm kinda interested in what it is. That's a huge step forward for a game that I and many others would've completely ignored had it come out at the beginning of the year when Wipeout, God of War, Crisis Core, etc came out. |
I can understand where your argument is coming from, and it does make sense. I believe Soul Calibur II sold best on the GC, and Tales of Symphonia did great as well (possibly due to the lack of GC RPG's).
However - we can apply this to the Wii. Not only is its install base quickly outpacing the HD consoles, but like the PSP, it also is lacking games (many genres not covered). One of the most hyped games is The Conduit, a game from no-name developers! That's pretty telling right there - and to think, this is on the best selling console! So I don't think it's unreasonable people are upset, and think more effort should be shifted onto the Wii.
Now, as for people who think HD console support should die off completely and all should migrate to the Wii? I doubt many people outside of fanboys believe such a thing - even the Gamecube and Xbox had their uses for third parties. Still, I do believe Wii support should definitely be better than it is now, and for more reasons than just its install base.
