| celine said: Actually a more interesting matter is that Wii is a more favorable enviroment for japanese developers/publishers. Japanese gaming industry can't compete with western one from a financial and technical point of view because their development cycle are obsoletedifferent compare to companies that made their fortune on PC and that now are developing for Ps3/360/PC combo. Japanese developers advantage however is developing for low tech and low cost system so their DS choice isn't a suprising one. The same I think will happen for Wii althought ironically I see DS huge japanese support be a slowing down factor. The majority of western publisher will probably prefer the 360/PS3/PC combo because they have already heavily invested in HD technology and because the gap in western region (PS3/360/PC vs Wii ) is unfavorable to the Wii at least for now. The problem I see for them is that if the Wii mantains its popularity in coming years than there is no way they will benefit from it because Wii business model is based on a profit advantage against the HD model ( a similar situation happen when many computer software missed the NES train in '80 ). I like to point out that for certain companies and publishers the Wii is an impossible choice to make because they rely only on technology ( i.e. Epic ). I think that what is ask to publishers isn't to abandon the HD systems but to mix their offering with a good effort support to Wii/DS that take advantage to the new philosopy brought by Nintendo. |
While that did initially appear to be the case, there is a major problem with Wii for Japanese developers and that's the fact that in Japan their games sell terribly on Wii. Even AAA games like Tenchu 4 completely bomb on Wii as does most attempts at casual. Very few games can break the 200k sales point where games are profitable without having to rely on Western sales. Even Nintendo has released games with very poor results in Japan (Disaster/WarioLand/Captain Rainbow).
Currently a game will sell 10x more if devleoped for the PS2 than the Wii (or release on both). Meanwhile PS3 and 360 software sales are continuing to improve. While the high cost of HD may deter 3rd parties in Japan still, with current trends they will need to switch to PS3/360 rather than Wii.
