Has Nintendo's Efforts to Entice Third Parties Worked Against It?

[mike_intellivision]

This generation, Nintendo worked hard to court third-party publishers with much more “vigor” than it has in the past.   

What it has gotten is a lot of quantity. Unfortunately, it has not gotten a lot of “quality.”

Then the “shovelware” avalanche commenced – with small publishers bringing out budget titles, sometimes based upon late PS2 releases.  

Unfortunately, seeing that these titles sold quickly because of their price and occasionally because they became a “must have” title (e.g., Carnival Games), higher profile publishers began to lower their sites on the Wii – using it as a virtual “cash cow “ (Carnival Games probably kept 2K afloat while Rock Star was working on GTA 4).  

This led to an even greater crush of less-than-great games. And with so many similar things out there – sales have dropped on a per title basis. The result has been statements by third-party developers talking about games not selling while never addressing the quality of those games – and in the next breath stating their confidence in the salability of games using the new motion technologies being readied by the competing consoles.

Where will this end?  In my opinion with a continued shakeout of developers who just don’t get that quality sells – particularly in a crowded marketplace and during times when people are reducing their spending on non-required items (the global economic recession).

Personally, I have bought and enjoyed some “shovelware” from smaller developers and been burnt by similar “party” offerings from larger firms.  I just wish that companies had a better idea of what they can do and should be doing with the Wii.

Mike from Morgantown