Reggie: Third parties don't "get" the Wii, more

[The Ghost of RubangB]

Esa-Petteri said:

The Ghost of RubangB said:

7 days ago EA announced a Wii Fit clone, called EA SPORTS Active.  I'm sure it will fail.  This is the problem many 3rd parties are having, and it's their own fault, not the fault of any mixed messages from Nintendo.  They are copying Nintendo instead of competing with Nintendo.  The genius of Wii Fit was that it had never been done before and took several new great ideas and put them all in one great package with a lot of effort and high production values.

The way to compete with Wii Fit would be to take several new great ideas and put them all in one great package with a lot of effort and high production values, not just copy Wii Fit's old great ideas and rush it out with low prodution values.  This is the same reason that Nintendogs does better than any Petz game on the market, and why Brain Training does better than any of its clones.

If developers are choosing to follow the leader instead of actually competing, then that's their own problem and they deserve to lose their money.  Also, where are the clones of Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart and Smash Bros.?  These idiotic developers don't have the balls to copy those games, so they copy the games that are cheaper to copy.  Because they are wimps in a business that only has room for giants.  There are tiny companies coming out with great original games (World of Goo, No More Heroes, etc.), but it's the big companies that have their heads so far up their asses they don't know how to compete.

I am also sure it will fail. After all, it is not bundled with a balance board? You'd have to own wii fit to play that game. But what is that? As far as I can see, a lot of the best selling and the most profitable 3rd party games are copies of wii play/sports. Carnival games and so on don't have to sell as much as wii sports to make a pretty nice profit.

The problem with smg,kart and smash bros is the nintendo characters on them. Third parties can't use them, so there is little point to copy those games. What is so great and original about no more heroes? World of goo is excellent. :)

You don't need the balance board to play EA SPORTS Active.  They're trying to appeal to people who are interested in exercise gaming but don't want to spend $90 on a game with a whole new peripheral.  It's good marketing strategy.  But that's all it is: a marketing strategy.  The idea behind the game is "copy Wii Fit but make it cheap."  That's what I'm talking about with EA and Ubisoft and many other 3rd parties.  They're copying rather than competing.

It's true that third parties can't use Nintendo's characters (most of the time)*, but they have their own flagship characters.  Why aren't they putting their flagship characters and flagship titles on the Wii?  The best-selling system should have some Castlevanias, Mega Mans, Final Fantasies, and everything else by now.  The developers are stupid and don't get the wii.  They give us on-rails spinoffs and a Castlevania 2-D fighter spinoff.  They have dreamed up this magical casual audience that for some reason only wants minigames and bad ripoffs, and doesn't want anything else.  We want some of everything.  We want old franchises, new IPs, and new genres. 

Developers are refusing to put their big budget games on the Wii, because they believe Wii users are stupid casuals who only want Carnival Games.  It is a self-fulfilling prophecy because they will ONLY make Carnival Games ripoffs.  They are stupid, and I really hope that the smaller companies (with bigger ideas) get to replace them.

 

And No More Heroes is in my opinion the greatest 3rd-person melee combat game of all time, because it's the only one I can actually play.  I normally hate games like Dynasty Warriors, Star Fox Adventures, God of War, Devil May Cry, etc.  I don't think beat-'em-ups work with 3-dimensions, because you just get surrounded by enemies and press the special move button and do some lame spin attack.  They're all the same button masher over and over.  Beat-'em-ups kicked ass in 2-dimensions (you could walk up and down, but could only attack left and right, so I'm calling them 2-D), like Double Dragon, River City Ransom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Battletoads, etc.  We don't get these games in 3-D anymore, except new TMNT games, which suck ass compared to the old ones.

In No More Heroes however, they added this awesome gameplay mechanic that really made it fresh and new for me.  The angle at which you hold the remote determines your character's high or low stance.  If you raise or lower your arm, so does he.  You're still button-mashing like crazy, like every other pathetic 3-d melee beat-'em-up, but now I'm switching my stance (and so are the enemies) really fast, which makes it almost a new genre for me.  And the game has more personality than just about any other game.  It's got a hilarious and awesome story with great cutscenes and rad bosses.

 

*If the companies play their cards right, they can use Nintendo characters.  Square-Enix got to use Nintendo characters in Mario Hoops on the DS, and in Itadaki Street on the DS.  Konami got to make a Mario version of Dance Dance Revolution for the GameCube.  Namco got to use Link in Soulcalibur 2.  Sega got to make Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.