celine said:
This is true for all systems in Japan not only the Wii. If you don't have a strong brand name, like Dragon Quest, it is really difficult in the current japanese market to have a hit ( Dragon Quest Sword sold half million copies on brand name alone ). In recent years only offering for expanded audience ( ie: English Training ) or games with social interaction ( ie: AC WW and MHP ) seems had stroke the way of success. The reality is that if you are a japanese developer and you don't have a strong brand name behind you, you can't rely on japanese market alone ( except if your development cost are really low ). The Wii however has development cost comparable to PS2 and its sales are exploding at a rate never seen before in Europe and America. If you want to develop for 360/PS3 you must compete with the western high tech software house who made their bone on PC gaming. To me Wii and DS are platforms where low/mid developers/publishers hungry for success try to achieve their limelight. |
My point still stands. Wii is an abatrous for Japanese 3rd party developers making games for the local market. And yes, PS3/360 is just too damn expensive for too small a userbase. As far as home consoles go, the only system worth making a game on for them is PS2 (and you can port to Wii for another 10% of sales).
For those developers DS or PSP is the absolute best way to go. Wii is not a valid option, unless as you say, it's a sure seller anyways and even then it'd probably be more profittable to have made that same game on DS or PSP.