HappySqurriel said:
I think it is simpler than that ... Most third party publishers discounted the Wii before it was even announced, and any support they gave to the Wii was from their worst teams with very limited budgets. In many cases these developers would be far more likely to develop a Sponge-Bob Square Pants or Dora the Explorer game than any game most gamers would recognize. These developers did the best they could with limited resources and choose to develop simple fun games that took advantage of the Wiimote. The Wii and many of these games shattered expectations of most third party publishers, but by the time they were willing to admit that the Wii was successful the vast majority of their best teams and their best known IPs had been tied to massive projects on the HD consoles; and any project that would be considered a core-game from most studios was an unknown IP being developed by studios that had a history of producing critically acclaimed niche titles.
Realistically, the next generation is going to start out quite a bit differently and it is highly unlikely that any studio with a large IP (like Modern Warfare) will be allowed to ignore the Wii’s successor unless it flops in the market. For the most part, more optimistic expectations from launch will lead to stronger support across the board which should lead to better sales across the board, and a feedback loop could form where third party support is justified because of the system’s strong third party support. |
Im thinking that the real reason for the lack of support goes deeper than that. I believe theres to the idea that the Wii was cheap to develop than just outright man hours. The industry is built on the concept of young male artists/programmers who are willing to work crap hours for crap pay with crap conditions because these people tolerate it because of the idea that they can have creative input into the games and because they can make the same core games that they like to play.
If the industry moves to actually support a wider audience, they could lose their best programmers/artists which they aquire cheaply unless they pay them more. So as an act of preservation they don't support the Wii because in effect if they have to pay people more to develop expanded market games they have to pay everyone more, even those working on core games. So whilst the HD consoles as a concept increase the development cost on a per project basis, the Wii concept increases their costs on a per developer basis. Nintendo anticipated this which is one good reason why they went for a lower tech console to keep everyones costs down.
Its not that publishers wouldn't support the WIi, its just that they believed that supporting the Wii would be counter to their overall best interests. So the issue has probably never been about outright performance but the fact that on an informal basis the developers inside the publishing houses and outside simply do not want to work on games which they don't want to play themselves. So the studios which support the Wii are only doing so because they have to as they lack the negotiating position to not support the Wii. However even then, if they meet success they too would expect to be able to graduate to making core games. There are very few studios out there which thrive on making expanded market games and that would choose to continue making them if they met any kind of success.
| LordTheNightKnight said:
2. I find I agree with that as well. But it's not a popular thing to notice, since many gamers feel that those games are for them, and should all be for them. 3. I so agree, especially with most of the big games having control setups that have counterparts working on the Wii. |
See above, I answered both of you at once. But I didn't want to repeat myself or double post. However I quote you out of respect given the fact that I didn't want you to feel ignored here.
