| peachbuggy said: Although developers do seem to be lazy and reticent when it comes to Wii games, i do have sympathy for some of them. A few companies have tried to put fairly large, big budget games on the Wii and they have flopped miserably. They say they are trying to "get" the Wii's userbase. This is probably true. It does seem to be a bit of a conundrum to me. I think it's unfair to say the userbase is completely "casual". It seems to be a very diverse audience and difficult to find a "typical" demographic to aim at. It's also unfair to say the Wii only sells to "kids, moms and grandparents". I think it's a much wider appeal than that. Ironically the Third parties seem to have worse problems with selling their games on Wii in Japan, where they are shifting support over to Wii. In the West, where the devs have been slower to commit their best efforts to Wii, they seem to have less trouble selling software. Strange, really. |
I gather that by "fairly large, big budget games on the Wii" you mean titles like Sky Crawlers and Fragile?
If so, I kind of agree with you here, especially on the observation on the irony of the situation. It does make a bit of sense, though, since the Wii is selling magnitudes better here in the West than in Japan, and those games have remained Japan-only (so far, although Sky Crawlers will likely stay there, as well TvC).
In the end, I think "patience" will have to be some third-parties' watchword. I wrote a long-arse essay on this a few months back, but essentially I think the market for traditional titles has not yet completely shifted to the Wii, but that (as in the DS) it's definitely migrating this way. At least, it's migrating in enough numbers to sustain such games. However, it's not 100% there yet, even if the arrival of more and more "traditional" titles brings "traditional" gamers around in higher numbers.
I suppose we'll know by this time next year.
