Kenryoku_Maxis said:
What does Nintendo 'leading the way' have to do with third parties jumping on board? That got them nowhere on the N64 and GC. And that got them nowhere on their monster first two years of the Wiis launch. You know, when the Wii was selling out of stores upon arrival and Nintendo had games like Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros going head to head with all the major HD games. And where did Sony or Microsoft 'lead the way' to gain the support of third parties back on the XBOX and PSX? I see no coorilation with your 'leading the way' argument with the first part of your argument. My statment of 'developers could do whatever they want' was meant to focus on how developers could develop games in any way they want, if they put their minds to it. Sure, they couldn't go make some holographic game that let people jump into the Matrix and fly over the Grand Canyon at 300 FPS. But within the Wiis boundaries, they could develop anything they wanted, if they just put forth the effort. Instead, they just set these imaginary boundaries of 'we can only use waggle, these set resources, target these set markets and aim to sell these many units'. And it was even a shock to the third parties when Wii games started selling well, because they expected their own games to bomb. That's just plain sad. |
Those first two years were when I was the most satisfied with our Wii. Then came the disastrous E3 2008 presentation of Wii Music cowbell players and Animal Crossing being touted as the big core game release of the holiday season (because of the multi-player and Wii Speak, features which were 10 years out of date by then). I can recall as that being the moment when I realized Nintendo had left me, and I had to get one or both HD systems for my needs. We did that by the end of the year, and Wii gaming has fallen way down in our house from what it once used to be. This is all pure speculation, but had Nintendo instead invested its money that year into making a few big budget and truly innovative games (say a real new IP FPS, not the continuation of Metroid Prime they had already made), many people like me would have held off the HD switch. I am sure with all their talent and money, Nintendo could have made a serious, big budget game that was significantly better than the port of CoD:W@W or the Conduit, and had a good chance of making it hit big. This would have showed the third parties that there was money to be made in new IP AAA games on the Wii. And possibly some of the current bigger HD projects would have switched over to the Wii by now. Nintendo had to be the first, because they only developed for the Wii, had the necessary resources, and had the incentive to make this happen. They instead dropped the ball, decided to focus on more profitable, but low profile casual games or continuation of proven old IPs, and left it up to the third parties to take all the risk.
You can claim that Nintendo did follow this model in the N64, GCN cycles, and the third parties did not follow. The big flaw there is that N64 and GCN were not the market leaders, and Nintendo never really went all out with them like Microsoft did with their XBox. Microsoft lost a lot of money in the short term, but set themselves up to take on Sony then next generation. Nintendo instead went with maximizing profits, and doing what they already knew. Good for them, bad for the fanbase.
