The Industry being stubborn

[MaxwellGT2000]

Reasonable said:

MaxwellGT2000 said:

Reasonable said:

I'll say it one more time, then we're going to have to agree to disagree.

If certain games were put on Wii, advertised, hyped, etc. as you say I am very sure they would still fail to sell to expectations and would fall far short of their HD versions.  Note again I'm talking about the specific types of games third parties are focusing on for HD consoles vs Wii as that seems to be the thrust of this post - why aren't the publishers/developers focusing on Wii for those titles?

So they don't bother, apart from the odd experiment to see what happens.

According to this site CoD:WaW sold around 1.5 on Wii and Reflex less than 1M - that's not good enough given the install base vs the sales on HD consoles.

Also, the other point I'm making you seen to have missed is many of those developers clearly see the Wii as too weak.  IW and many others have made it clear they're not interested.  For them it doesn't meet their minimum specs for what they think they need to meet their goals.

On the other hand, look at what something like Wii Music can sell, or Mario, or Carnival games - or Force Unleased as you mention.  I just don't see a lot of those developers trying the Wii, although clearly some publishers, like Activision, will try getting others to port to the console to see if they can maximise profits, but that seems to be a minority activity at the moment, and I don't see it catching on.

The PSP is getting attention as a handheld (one of only two on the market of note - ignorning iPhone for a moment) and I think is a red herring in your arguement as the handheld market isn't the same as the home consoles and efforts on it should be viewed in a different light as I believe they represent a different strategy.

Now, as I said in an earlier post, when Natal and Arc/Gem/Whatever hit, and the option is there to release a title on all three platforms using motion controls, then we might see more support across all three, but until then it's very unlikely.  Post those releases I expect to see developers try and leverage motion controls across the board - but again I doubt we'll see that touch the very large AAA franchises that focus on HD consoles, and of course with Nintendo holding the keys to their franchises on Wii the basic divide will remain in place.

Anyway, I guess we just see it differently.

Your argument is based on "it won't happen" despite no one actually trying to do any of what I've stated.  That's not a very good argument until someone actually does try and then fails, and will be the day I shut my trap about it

As for CoD sales, they're much in line with last gen CoD sales, you know back when it wasn't advertised and hyped for consoles, like I've been arguing this entire time.  You know if you put effort into marketing it could sell.  Right now the CoD games on Wii are selling on name and the fact that they are good games, you really can't call someone out on a red herring and then do the same thing yourself because the Wii versions were put into a drastically different situation vs the other versions.

As for IW saying they're not working on the Wii cause of specs... well thats really just complete fabrications... they were the original ones to start porting the CoD4 engine to Wii, that sounds like development to me... they didn't have it done in time for CoD4 so they handed the engine to Treyarch to finish up and put their W@W game on, then they gave them a good budget to port over CoD4 while IW worked on MW2... it all makes sense from a development stand point, they're building a base on Wii but because of issues it missed the CoD4 hype train.

As for handhelds, its all apart of business I'm not talking markets, I'm talking why make a game that is basically like developing a ground up PS2 game for a system that really doesn't sell software that well, and if they're going to do that it only takes a little more effort to port it up to give themselves more profit and start to build userbases on Wii.  It really doesn't make sense and that was the point I made not some "well handhelds are different so they should be viewed in a different light" when people do everyday when a game for the Wii comes out and becomes a 100k "flop" but then sells a million + and has more million sellers then say PSP or PS3...

There's a giant pink elephant in the room that no company wants to address, it's there, it's large, it's obvious, they're losing a shit ton of money, and yet they still want to say it doesn't exist.

I take your point, but I bet it still won't happen!  I'd say it's pretty clear the die has been cast in this area.  

Infinity Ward

http://kotaku.com/5396559/infinity-ward-wii-cant-deliver-our-multi+platform-experience

Epic

http://www.destructoid.com/epic-s-rein-m-rated-wii-games-are-huge-financial-flops--141140.phtml

 

Now of course in any industry never doesn't mean never, but I think it's clear that in general most of the developers producing big hits for the HD consoles aren't falling over to support the Wii, and it's also clear they seriously doubt the sales of their titles on the platform.

I do too, obviously, but of course can't prove anything unless they try and fail as you say, but based on the sales of respective games, particularly by rating, I'm feeling pretty sure that the result is more likely to be a failure than a success (comparative to the potential sales on the HD consoles).

I just don't believe, and clearly neither do a lot of developers, that there really are huge numbers of Wii owners demanding certain titles vs the known genres that sell well on the Wii, or that millions of young male teenagers are looking at their Wii and wondering where the Epic, IW, Rockstar big titles are.  I think you represent a minority of Wii owners, TBH, and are more likely to remain unsupported than supported.  Note I'm not gloating or even saying this is right - it's just how I read the market and I don't see much chance for major changes.

Neither do I (or these developers) feel they are losing a shit ton of money.  MW2 is well over 10M, Gears 1 &2 has a huge haul, Uncharted 1 & 2 have a huge haul (going by Sony not VG), GTAIV is well past 10M, etc. etc. and those titles and many others I firmly believe would be more or less wasted appearing heavily cut down graphically on the Wii or adapted to its controllers.

So I'm still of the 'fragmented market' mindset, where different companies are going to bet on different consoles for the most part leaving this topic open until the end of the gen, whereupon, if the Wii has remained ignorned in the same vein, I'll claim victory by default.

The Wii is a huge success, and clearly Nintendo gave themselves the larger install base and great SW sales with the choices they made, but at the same time those choices also eliminated the chance for great SW sales and support in certain genres and areas, and I don't think that's going to change.

EDIT : one final point.  I'm not really sure Nintendo themselves would be that keen on a huge marketing push and hype for games like MW2 or Gears on the Wii.  The Wii is very, very heavily marketed as a family console, with neat familes of 4 or nice neat friends in groups of 4, enjoying it together having fun.  It's whole consistent image, I doubt, could easily support a major push for the console as being home to heavily online, competitive, violent games.  It just doesn't fit and I believe that's also part of the issue.

*and the headache starts*

Ok yeah, of course Epic wants to troll the shit out of the Wii like they did in the link you provided, their engine was made for the consoles they want to support with games, it cost them a lot of money to make and they were gaining it back with third parties using it for PS3 and 360 while the Wii developers could still make their own engines at a lower development cost and make better looking games in the process, Epic was taking advantage of the insanly high development costs.

As for Epic's games look at their old bread and butter Unreal Tournament III combined PS3 and 360 sales are out sold by CoD W@W on Wii.  Yeah that proves they have no market on PS3 and 360 I'm guessing if we go by sales on that one am I right?

As for things like GTAIV, I'm guessing you missed when 2K games is still posting losses, they were almost bought out by EA, which has troubles of their own now, and now 2K will have to sell "5 million" copies of Red Dead Redemption to break even with that project, indeed their business model makes perfect sense.

The reason these people don't flat out say they're losing a shit ton of money is because they have investors they need to keep from losing, if they lost those investors it's game over for them in multiple ways.  But the one thing they can't ignore is the actual numbers on their reports... I can find you a list of dead developers and publishers, the common trait with most of them is they were all HD exclusive or had "big" HD games that didn't sell well.

This is probably the most unreasonable post I've seen in a while, since you can't really ignore facts and numbers, which is where my argument has it's basis, while you're claiming sales = doing well but completely ignoring the fact that even with million sellers these guys are hurting pretty badly...