My own thoughts on how to score with the Wii audience.

[Pristine20]

vanatos said:

Pristine20 said:
lol, with all you have written, it looks like devs would need a whole new degree just to develop for the wii. You have to ask yourself if its more worthwhile for them to keep thinking up new bright ideas (to avoid releasing "more of the same") for this "expanded" audience every single time when they also have the option of scoring with a runaway hit like Modern Warfare and rereleasing an updated version every 2 years on PS360.

One of the reasons devs can afford to ignore the wii is that 50% of the market is pretty much figured out (PS360 users). It's just natural to do things you are familiar with as this grants the highest chance of success. Isn't it odd that games like Ar Tonelico III which can obviously be done on wii is ps3 exclusive especially when wii has more than double ps3 sales in JP? It doesn't have high end graphics which seems to be one of the main excuses for why people think devs stick to ps360 (the idea that the uncreative games can just be disguised by graphics). I'll need some serious convincing to believe sony moneyhatted that one.

To cut the long story short, the criteria for wii success is just too damn complicated. When you have to consider so muc before developing one game, doesn't dev time/money end up increasing thereby killing off one of the strongest reasons for developing for the wii?

Short term, you have a point, long term it would be disastrous.

What no other company seems to be thinking, is what happens when the 'hardcore' audience (which is no one new, its the leftover audience of snes/PS1 days) dissapear?

This is why it is godam stupid that no other company is targeting the kids but nintendo, how can an industry survive based on the same customer forever?

When those gamers "disappear", there's a very great chance that our current devs would have "disapppeared" as well (how old is Miyamoto again?) so their audience now is probably going to remain the same till they "disappear" themselves. Also, do you think the kids today are going to keep playing the targeted kids games when they become adults?

A lot of kids play stuff like MW2 and their parents dont care. If anything I'd say that developers are better off sticking to adult games as kids would buy 'em, adults will buy 'em whereas kids games are only bought for kids. The word "for" is noteworthy because kids don't even have their personal income and mostly have to rely on getting games as presents on special occasions not whenever they feel like.

Lots of industries survive on the same customers, times may bring different new concepts but the basis is the same. You seem to think the current game industry demographic will move away, thats where you're wrong. PS360 mainly targets 18-40 yo males (from what I've seen several times in random articles). Is this demographic shrinking? Last I checked boys aren't stopping at 17yo. The only exception would be Japan where they just aren't giving birth to kids anymore.