Hanlon's Razor is how some people see the Wii, the DS and even HD games.

[SaviorX]

It's an issue of investment, too. 3rd parties bet the farm on HD development, pouring millions into making engines for these games well before anyone was aware how this generation would actually turn out, and they're trying to stick with what they have. It would look really bad to investors if the 3rd parties came out and admitted that they could have made similar amounts of money without having to pour so much into cultivating new development assets.

 

That also explains the "multiplat everything" strategy that you see. 3rd parties chose to play in the space that ended up being the smaller space, where they simple couldn't survive unless they spread it out as far as possible across that space, leading to the concept of the "HD Twins" with "mirrored libraries." That's Wii's fault, since you see games that would have stayed exclusively Xbox (like BioShock) or exclusively Sony (like Devil May Cry) have to go across

 

I'll agree on the bafflement about them not making some no-brainer PSP-ports, especially of that Soul Calibur game. My guess is that has to do in part with PSP's strength in Japan, that for Japanese publishers it makes little sense to do PSP-to-Wii ports, since you're porting to a console with a smaller install base from their perspective. The more insulting thing is with the western third parties that make PSP ports (Army of Two 40th Day and Dante's Inferno come to mind here), when it would clearly have been to their advantage to make a Wii port instead, given that PSP can't move software to save its life in the West.


Well, I agree with 3rd parties betting it all on "HD", and that in part explains their slow turnaround. My issue is more that there's been no actual market wide turnaround, they're just going ahead with "HD". Even in previous generations where we had an unexpected market shift emerge (NES, PlayStation) you saw the industry eventually switch gears and move to correct for that shift... we haven't gotten that this generation, and it looks like we won't be getting it either.

The other end of this is DS, which has pretty much taken the bulk of Japanese support that I think Wii would've inherited. Japan's weird... DS gets most of the mainstream stuff, PSP gets most of the otaku stuff, PS360 gets most of the stuff for overseas, Wii gets left with nothing.

As far as PSP games, I'd agree in some instances the JP market target makes sense (Gundam Vs Next, Valkyria 2, Absolute Hero, etc) but games like Soulcalibur or Kingdom Hearts are made more for an international audience, and do substantially more of their sales in the west (where PSP's basically a dead format for software). Those sorts of games would more than double their worldwide sales with a Wii port.

Its interesting people always talk about the 3rd party struggles on the Wii, but don't really take note that 3rd parties haven't done that well in general with new IPs. Check the numbers for new IPs this gen and you will see they all range from "eh it did alright" to "it bombed" the only standout success story is Assassins Creed.

Off the top [my] head, The Saboteur, Heavenly Sword, Blazblue, Dead Space, Brutal Legend, Prototype, Bayonetta and so on all did mediocre to poorly. Its not just the Wii, the success stories have been the usual suspects of Call of Duty, GTA, RE, license games like TFU and Arkham Asylum. The big difference is all the major publishers has had a success or two with the status quo. Activision has had success with CoD, Capcom with SF, that's what the Wii is missing, its sales have been judged by the struggling oft new IP, a 3rd of which release in a 3-month period in STIFF competition (actually 37%).

To finish off, I'll post an excerpt from a Marvelous interview:

EDGE: Some of Marvelous’ latest titles had positive reviews worldwide but this did not translate into sales. What are the reasons of this? Do you think the choice of the Wii as a gamer platform is one key element?

YW: I don’t think it is about the platform. Of course it can’t offer the same level of performance and HD visuals of the other high spec platforms. Having the possibility to display 100 characters on screen where you would be limited to 30 on the Wii won’t make the game any more fun. This is not where the essence of video gaming is. Today, you have plenty of beautiful games that are not very fun to play. So it is not about the hardware.

The reason why our games are not selling as much we would like could be found in the name of our company. Marvelous has just reached the point its games are getting noticed and getting good reviews. But we are not a major name yet. The Marvelous brand is still associated to some not so good titles we made in the past. We are yet to gain the brand value of companies like Nintendo, Capcom or Square Enix. Even if you don’t fully understand what a title is about, because it’s branded Nintendo, Capcom or Square Enix, you feel like ok to buy and try it. A Marvelous game has yet to gain such recognition and trust from users. Now, if you consider the big but very light population of casual users, they don’t know about Marvelous at all. This population is by far the majority on the Wii. So in that sense, you could indeed think the Wii factor is working against us. But at the same time, if you consider games like Umbrella Chronicles, Biohazard 4 or a Tales Of RPG on the same Wii, you find that those games sell more than 200,000 or 300,000 copies. So there is a gamer market on the platform. I’m sure there are potentially about a million of them. So we need to gain the trust of these users.

EDGE: Often publishers are criticised about the lack of original content in titles, but when original games are released, users are not buying them. Knowing the risk and amount of effort needed to develop and release an original game, is there any reason to make one today?

YW: I really strongly think there is a meaning in keeping developing such games. If we don’t, I feel a great danger for our industry waiting around the corner. Originality would find itself in some underground, indie, level of production. I believe our market is shrinking because of gamers getting bored and uninterested in videogaming. We relied on those IP, series and characters stuffs for too long. I remember of the huge creative explosion that occurred when the first PlayStation and the Saturn were launched. There were tons of new ideas and concepts thrown on the market. It was an exciting time and many came to video gaming. That time and today are very different. I’m sure that gamers who have left video gaming today were among the ones that were very excited and very active on their PS or Saturn. A dynamic market is a magnet for creative and talented minds. If a market is based on the same stuff over and over again, it is not very appealing to creators and there are even lesser opportunities for new ideas. We are trying to get as much originality on our market as possible. Each time, we have a core idea that defines what we want to deliver with a specific title. Arc Rise Fantasia was about the tradition of the JRPG, Little King’s Story was about innovation while Muramasa: The Demon Blade was about the best 2D graphics you could deliver. Getting that wide variety of contents on the market is the only way you can appeal to a variety of people that are into videogaming.