| davygee said: Publishers are jumping on the Wii bandwagon, although we have yet to see a good selection of 3rd party games appear for the Wii though. This will IMHO take another 6-12 months to happen. I honestly think that developers are caught in the middle. They want to take their games to the next level utilising the power of next generation gaming, but they cannot afford to take huge hits on unpopular games on small userbases. The Wii will allow them to create smaller last generation games and make a good profit on a continually growing userbase, but developers WILL need to make the jump to next gen at some stage as they will be left out again when this generation finishes and they haven't developed tools at a higher level. One thing you need to think about is this. Is the Wiiremote enough to keep a generation of gamers away from the PS3 and 360 entirely? I honestly think that most of the big publishers/developers are waiting to see what happens with the PS3 before they decide to leave it for dead, this is why 2008 primarily will be a decided year for the PS3. Also, why are developers making 360 and PS3 versions of games when the 360 has 3 times the user base at the moment? Because there is a loyalty and a knowledge that the PS3 won't die anytime soon! You mention unimpressive sales of the PS3...compared to what....the Wii. The PS3 has virtually sold the same number compared to the 360 in the same timeframe. Yes, compared to the 12m Wii consoles (7m more), it does look weak. Also by the time the PS3 has been on the market the 18 months, we could see as many as 12-15m PS3's worldwide, which is not a low number by normal sales. |
You make severa assumptions here which I think are wrong. First is the idea that developers intrinsically want to develop on the "Next Gen" (PS3, 360) consoles (I also think calling them next gen and the Wii last gen is about as wrong as you can get as they are both current gen, ie. Generation the Seventh) however I see no reason why this would be so. Developing games is a very marginal business and good sales are neccesary to stay alive and sometimes even that isnt enough (I believe Take 2 is struggling despite the fact that they have had some huge hits?). The larger userbase of the Wii holds far more attraction for developers than the power of the PS3, this is only reinforced by the cost of developing games on the PS3. The reason that people develop for 360/PS3 is because that userbase is larger than the Wiis userbase and as such currently makes sense if you wish to develop a multi plat game. Exclusives however will, in my opinion, mainly either be on the Wii or be bought exclusives. There will be notable exceptions from developers such as Epic who are graphics whores =P (and brilliant at it too).
The reason for porting to the PS3 from the 360 is because your increasing the userbase at a low cost, not because developers have a mysterious loyalty to the PS3 =
