mrstickball on 31 March 2007
Erik Aston said:
Lets see... GTA is a series with sales potential around 17 million (PS2+XBox sales of SA=nearly 17 million)... How is that game going to sell that much with current 360+PS3 sales? Does it make sense to spend 25 or 30% more "dumbing down" the game to reach 60% more customers with a Wii version? Even a delayed Wii version?
FF13... Square are going to want that to sell 2.5 or 3 million in Japan. PS3 might not reach 2.5 million in Japan until next year sometime... Wii will reach it in a couple months, maybe sooner. They'll want another 4 or 5 million in the rest of the world, too. They might be looking at selling to 80% of the installed base in the West to pull those kinds of numbers. Again, does it make sense to spend 10-15% more for a 360 port, or 25-30% more for a Wii port, to expand your audience several times over?
That's what third parties will be asking themselves. Now maybe they'll decide it isn't worth it... But then what about GTAIV 2, or FF14? Is Wii going to have 45 or 50% of the market at that point? Hmm.
GTAIV will sell most likely what GTAIII did. GTAIII released at a time the PS2 had around the same sales as what the 360/PS3 will have in November. GTAIII still sold around 4.5m units on the PS2 alone in NA - about 67% of what SA did.
I think some are overestimating how well 3rd party games, expecially violent ones, will sell on the Wii. If the Wii really is getting the casual gamers, they aren't going to be interested in virtually maiming and killing prostitutes, nor the open ended gameplay associated with it. The reason Wii Sports is selling well is it's a casual game on a casual system. Wii Sports wouldn't sell good on a PS3 as Sony Sports. A great example is Viva Pinata: It's a fantastic game on a system that it really wasn't designed for. Thats why it's sold 250k. On a Wii, it'd of sold probably near 2m units by now. But on the other hand, Red Steel on the 360 wouldn't sell any better than it did on the Wii, and Gears of War would not be anywhere near the 4m units it's at on the Wii.
Developers are going to consider what's going to sell best on the platform, what audience they have, and what games to actually produce for the audiences before they plunge into it. This is both a blessing and curse for the Wii. I still believe the Wii will get pidgeonholed on the 3rd party existing AAA franchise titles. Other than CoD3, no real major AAA titles have been announced as being exclusive or a major new port that the GC didn't have.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.