Insomniac's Brian Hastings speaks out on the PS3

[Lord N]

HappySqurriel said: "Never" is a bad word to use when every week the Wii has more titles in many of these genres announced or released; certainly, many of these games have been awful but it hasn't stopped developers from trying.

Like what? Care to name a few? The last time I checked, the Wii's most anticipated titles were first-party. Super Paper Mario, Mario, Mario Party 8, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, etc. Even its best-selling games have been first and second party(LOZ:TP, Wario Ware: Smoot Moves, Wii Play). As a matter of fact, very few third-party titles have sold more than a million copies on a Nintendo system in the last ten years. This includes its handhelds. If this was the case with the Game Boy Advance(which had no competition) and is the case with the wildly popular and dominant DS Lite, then what makes you think that things will be any different with the Wii when there are two other platforms that would much better accomodate the "big guns" of third-party developers?

1) It also has inexpensive development costs and a rapidly growing userbase

I just went over this. The Wii will garner more third-party support than the Gamecube, but this will most likely be in the form of games that are specifically tailored to take advantage of the Wiimote. Like I said, you probably won't see any truly epic titles on the Wii, because that's really not what it's about. When Capcom decided to make DMC4 multi-platform, it went on the 360 and not the Wii. Square moved DQ9 to the DS and not the Wii, Ubisoft ported Rainbow Six: Vegas and Ghost Recon: AW2 to the PS3 with no Wii release, and I think it's safe to say that Metal Gear would not see a release on the Wii should Konami decide to make it multi-platform.

2) I was shown (as an example of the greatness of HD) a screenshot from a PS3 fan that was at under 480p and he claimed it was HD. Even the biggest PS3 boosters don't really know or care about HD ...

That's because most people don't have HDTV's.....yet. HDTV is expected to outsell SDTV this year and should completely overtake it by 2009/2010.

3) What is the percentage of gamers who have ever taken a console online? What percentage of games released for any platform have Online gameplay?

Do I even need to explain this? Ever since Xbox live, online gaming has become more and more important and will continue to do so now that Sony has a unified online service with Home on the way. One of the reasons that multi-platform titles sold so poorly on the Gamecube as compared to the PS2 and Xbox was because Nintendo totally neglected online play. The same thing is happening this generation. Notice how titles like Madden, Call Of Duty, and Need For Speed have sold a lot more on other platforms despite the fact that the Wii has moved more units than the other two, and I can't imagine why[/sarcasm].