Solution for 3rd party Wii quality titles

[famousringo]

Procrastinato said:

 

Here's where your solution goes off track.

The Wii was predicted to be the "loser" of the current gen, before it even launched.  The 3rd party publishers not only listened to those predictions, but also they needed to develop titles for the first entry in this gen -- namely the X360, which, and not coincidentally, is extremely similar to the PS3, in terms of overall capability.  On top of that, there is *no* evidence that supports the "if they built it, they would have come" hypothesis.  The truth of the matter is that the Wii is successful because it appeals to the blue ocean, and it appeals to the blue ocean because its simple, and was once cheap, relative to its HD competition.

If you look at the history of PC gaming, you'll note that PC games have rarely released with a "low end" PC spec of the day -- inevitably they play best on the finest machine available, because game designs are always, always, always too big for the hardware.  Game designers, often being very non-technical, very it extremely difficult to work within technical limitations, and so its natural for them to want to create game experiences on the hardware that gives them the most freedom -- in this case, that means not the Wii.  They have the mindset of the typical gamer (as they are usually devoted gamers), and the devoted gamer gets the hardware that will best suit his/her gaming needs.

The Wii never had a chance to win over the HD demographics.  It doesn't have the specs to do so, plain and simple.  No matter how hard the publishers could have chosen to push in that direction (and honestly their stockholders would never let them push very hard, given all the "Wii will fail" warnings), the demographics would have pushed back, eventually forcing the 3rd parties to develop HD games.  The Wii never had a chance to secure a strangehold on the hardcore demographics while the HDs existed, because someone would have wagered on the HDs, and proven them wildly successful, for that demographic, and then the tides would shift.

 

My solution is for the here and now, not the "what if?"  Here and now, publishers might be able to afford to make semi-casual, semi-hardcore quality games on the Wii, like Wild Tangent's Fate, for example, which would probably do very well on the Wii.  If they can break ground, by converting blue-ocean gamers to "slightly hardcore" gamers, with games like Fate, then they can move on with games like Torchlight (which is awesome, btw -- I totally recommend it for anyone who likes dungeon crawlers), and eventually carve themselves a niche on the Wii, or more importantly, Wii-like systems of the future.

There's a market for "premium" games on the Wii, and chances are, that same market is the one that would ponder picking up a "hardcore" game on the Wii.  These same "borderline" gamers are the ones who put down the $50 to buy CoD, or Madden, on the Wii, because they cannot excuse buying a HD console for themselves... but they can excuse a game for themselves now and then.  The $60 pricetag makes sense, from this perspective.  At least I think it does.

I'm going to have to disagree strongly with this point. It's true that a lot of PC developers are keen to push the hardware as hard as they can, but the most successful PC developers of recent years have been those who design their games for low- to mid-range PCs. I'm talking about Blizzard, Valve, and Pop-Cap. Crysis may have been a success, but it pales when compared to games like World of Warcraft, Left 4 Dead, and Peggle, all of which ran fine on 3 year old hardware when released.

I could add that two of those three companies are amongst the most beloved PC developers by "devoted gamers."