Squilliam said:
Ever-shrinking? Hmm so software sales have fallen from 2007-2008 on the Xbox 360/PS3? No then its not shrinking. The A teams still have a stronger incentive to primarily produce Wii software - Your Epic, Bungie, Insomniac, Gearbox, Valve, Infinity Ward et all developers. Teams B through J aren't going to produce top quality software as reliably as the A teams. They are your typical Spiderman web of shadows type developers. The issues that prevent them from producing quality software on the Wii are most likely still present. @HappySqurriel The main issue which causes development problems on the Wii are going to be augmented if they approach Wii design with a more visual focus. The main issue with the Wii software at present which must be solved by third parties first is product testing, especially getting their software into the hands of a diverse userbase. Otherwise they are going to keep making the same grave errors with the interface or invent new ones. They need to have their products tested, and early which makes using a PS2 engine an excellent design decision to help them put their key interface and gameplay elements to the test early so changes can still be made. If they use a more advanced graphics engine they push the date for first testing the software outward as they need to spend more time developing the engine. It also puts pressure on the games budget/release schedule which can take time/money away from the required testing process. You've seen games with obvious interface/gameplay flaws which you can see quite clearly and yet somehow they managed to release a game with such flaws still evident. One thing which seperates many of your AAA developments from the run of the mill games is product testing. Valve/Left 4 Dead is the perfect example of how extensive produce testing inspired them to make a game which is infinitely replayable. The whole idea of product testing is even more important on the Wii because you're attempting to cater to a much wider demographic for whom tacit game knowledge may be partially or wholly absent from many of the users who may be playing games for the first time.
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For quite a long time (in computer terms) game development has been focused around an iterative development methodology which (essentially) means that testing the game begins very soon after game development begins. The Wii is not new and unconventional technology that requires years of software development up front to develop the tools and technology to build games for it, and you should be able to start with existing technology and begin building gameplay dynamics while you're working on enhancing the graphics pipeline to take advantage of advanced graphical features.
The only reason we haven't seen more games that really push the Wii was third party publishers were caught with their pants down and didn't anticipate the success of the Wii. A large portion of Wii games so far have been rushed ports of PS2 games which tended to be developed by (no offence to the developers) third rate developers because most of the best developers had moved onto HD console games long before the Wii launched. There have been excellent Wii games from third party publishers, but many of these games were really low budget games even by Wii/PS2 standards (de Blob, Boom Blox, Zack and Wiki, No More Heroes).
There are many publishers who seem to be reversing this trend and focusing more of their effort on producing higher quality games for the Wii, and over time this should result in games which are more visually impressive. An example of a company that is doing this is Sega, and I suspect they see the lower-development costs and higher sales of the Wii as an opportunity to return to some of the more experimental game development that paid off for them in their glory days.
Will visually impressive games ever make up the majority of the Wii's line-up? Probably not because it makes sense to have as diversified of a line-up as possible; but the lower development costs on the Wii (1/4 to 1/2 the cost of a HD game to produce a similar Wii game) means that they can combine 1 big budget visually impressive Wii game, several smaller budget Wii games, and quite a few WiiWare games for the same cost as producing one game for the HD consoles.
