Third parties will not miss the Wii boat. If we look at what Nintendo has accomplished with the DS and The Wii, what we will find is that Nintendo has been able to reach a new audience, the casual gamer. These gamers have been willing to spend money on games, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing Wild World, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario Party 8, The Brain Training Games and Wii Sports. All of these games have sold extremely well and some have set the world of fire. Publishers and Developers have seen this and want to reach out to the casual gamer.
But the problem is that most of the developers do not know how to make casual games. An article posted on this site by the Source was an Interview with a former Microsoft employee. In that Interview he stated that Microsoft was looking for a developer to make a platformer for the Xbox/Xbox 360 and found out that developers do not know how to make those types of games anymore. Sega has not been able to successfully bring Sonic back to the level of popularity that he had back in the 2D days.
Secondly, Publishers are asking developers to make games that they’ve never made before. Look at the games that Ubisoft normally produces and publishes. Now think about them asking a developer who normally makes First or third person shooters to make a platformer or a puzzle game. This is the major reason why the Wii has so much casual crap, like Jenga, BaByz, and other stuff. It is not easy to develop puzzle games, platformers, point and click adventures, pet sims and etc.
However, developers will not be deterred. The casual gamer is attracting all developers Ubisoft, EA, Activision, Atari, Namco, Konami, and Square-Enix. It’s only a matter of time before other developers decide to venture into the casual realm.
If Nintendo is successful at the moment, it’s because they are good, and I cannot blame them for that. What we should do is try to be just as good.----Laurent Benadiba
