Iwata: Wii isn't in a healthy situation we need to recover momentum

[trestres]

c0rd said:

txrattlesnake said:

      Yeah, we know that the Wii Fit crowd is buying some pretty poor games on Wii like Deca Sports ( a million seller on Wii with a metacritic score of 50) and maybe Carnival Games (a million seller on Wii with a Metacritic score in the 50's) and Game Party (a million seller on Wii with a Metacritic score in the 20's), but as far as encouraging developers to put more top rated core games on the system like Dead Space:  Extraction (Metacritic score of 83 not a million seller on Wii), or No More Heroes (Metacritic score of 83 not a million seller on Wii), or Okami (Metacritic score of 90 and not a million seller), they're not doing much at all.

     If publishers can sell more crap on a system than they can something they've actually had to put some work into, then they're not going to have any incentive to actually put something good on a system.

Metacritic?

People don't care about metacritic. This includes the core gamers. Nobody wanted Dead Space: Extraction, No More Heroes did well (why does this come up?), and Okami? Are you serious?

It's only easy to carve out this "quality games sell poorly" because the Wii gets most of the niche games. The same exact argument was laid down on the DS, when GTA:CW "failed." However, look what happened when they put it on the PSP. In fact, this game has all the supposed qualities (that Wii detractors give) of a huge success - high metacritic rating, with a huge brand name attached (GTA is as big as it gets).

Also, I see some things in this thread that are off. People that blame third parties for the Wii selling poorly in Japan miss the point. Genres like JRPG's are not the types of games that Nintendo needs. The DS did not become a massive success because of JRPG's, it was the other way around. Look at how the sales looked like by the end of its second year - only a single 3rd party million seller (non-JRPG), while Nintendo already managed 11, 5 of which cracked 3 million.

Nintendo blazes its own path. They don't pay third parties for games, because their strategy is to create a userbase the third parties cannot ignore. They just weren't able to create enough compelling software to sustain the sales (bet way too much on Wii Music / Animal Crossing). I imagine they were out of ideas. Still, the "core gamers" are not Nintendo's most important customers. Not only are they a smaller group, but the whole industry is already competing for them. They want the interest they generated in 2007 with Wii Sports/Fit, not the kind PS3 the is getting with its lineup.

But 3rd parties are ignoring the Wii, even if it's the fastest selling console of all times. The thing is, this time around Nintendo is facing real competition. They always dominated in the Handheld territory, so they shouldn't have had much to worry about. On the other hand, relying only on a couple hits /year was very dangerous with the Wii, since the other consoles were offering far more. Nintendo needs the core gamers, they are the ones that remain faithful and end up buying most of the games. The new owners may fluctuate elsewhere if there's something more interesting coming out. The 55 million userbase is just an illusion to developers. Sales by genre have shown otherwise.

Nintendo NEEDED good core games at the beginning of its life, but only Nintendo was capable of producing those games. Meanwhile a huge selection of games was coming out for the other consoles, so core gamers probably migrated there. Nintendo fans remain loyal, but up to a certain point. If theres a constant game drought of 1st party titles, people may start looking into other options and buy a secondary console.

Nintendo should broaden their market as much as possible, but they should KEEP ALL OF THE USERS interested. Because if they only plan on attracting owners and then move on to the next big thing, many people will end up disappointed and will haev to swallow the 3rd party garbage on the meanwhile.