| Impulsivity said:
Noone is saying they can't make money off the Wii. Take 2 made at least 100 million in retail sales off of Carnival games. Given the production values 99.9 million of that was pure profit. The point is not that noone makes money on the Wii, its that noone makes money off of good games on the Wii except Nintendo. Don't think of "there are no successful good games on the Wii not made by Nintendo" as an insult, think of it as a call to action. Unless the market changes and more people buy Boom Blox and less buy Carnival games, you're going to get a lot more mini games and a lot less quality titles. It's not about whether third parties can make money on the Wii, of course they can, its a question of HOW they will make that money. I bet you anything take two doesn't care if it makes 100 million selling carinavle games or 100 million selling a Wii GTA, so if you want that Wii GTA buy games like it to show that the Wii will support the much higher production costs a GTA type game requires. The power is yours! |
Nah, the power isn't yours.
Wii owners have already bought more copies of Mario Kart, Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros. Brawl, Twilight Princess, Guitar Hero and even Super Paper Mario than they have any mini-game collection not involving Nintendo. Nintendo's own so-called mini-game collections also run a comparitively wider gamut than third parties', from Wii Sports to Wii Fit to Big Brain Academy to WarioWare.
The reason third parties are focusing on mini-game collections is because, of all the things which have been proven will sell on Wii, they're the easiest to make. A third party with a major platforming star, like Sonic or Rayman, might do one of two things. They could make exclusive platformers for Wii like Secret Rings (1.7M sold) and Black Knight. Or, they could repurpose their star for annual mini-game collections, because they're easier to make.
Eventually the tide will turn. Wii Sports Resort will eat up the market for "Wii Sports 2" type games. Newly established mini-game brands like Carnival Games and Raving Rabbids will own big chunks of the mini-game market. Production values will go up to try to gain an edge, yet sales will go down as players grow tired of the same experiences. Third parties will be forced to try their hand in areas like platformers, racers, fighters or adventure titles, where Wii already has the most popular games of the decade or of all-time.
And eventually, the situation will be like it is with DS, which now has Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto and Dragon Quest all locked up from PSP.
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
