I feel a MASSIVE change in the gaming industry

[facher83]

Bodhesatva said:

HappySqurriel said:

Legend11 said:

Samus012 said:
The Wii is honestly the only profitable console right now. The 360 might get a lot of software sales, but only from a couple key titles. Like Bioshock, COD4, and Halo 3. OTher than titles like that, the software isn't amazing.

I think that in 2008 devolpers like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision will see that the Wii will be the system of choice for exclusives of high quality, and not the 360 and PS3.

I see your logic. Most of EA's money for example is being made off of 360 and PS2 games and far far less from the Wii so it makes perfect sense for them to ignore those systems in favor of the Wii.

Being that most third party publishers are reporting far lower profits (or potentially increased losses) even though they heavily supported the XBox 360 and PS3, I think it is fair to assume that the high revenues of certain XBox 360 games may be negated by the high costs of development (and high losses to unsuccessful games).

If third party publishers were reporting record profits I would agree with you that they might continue focusing on the XBox 360 and PS3; at the rate things are going the companies that continue at this level of support will not be around in 2 years.

It's difficult to say with certainty, but I'd bet you that the losses are heavily weighted towards the PS3 now, not the 360, and that these losses will diminish as current-gen engines are refined and completed. There's so much money invested in the 360/PS3 now it's effectively impossible to pull out. Divert some resources to the Wii? Sure. Absolutely. But abandoning the trilogies (Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect) and 360/PS3-centric titles, not to mention the expensive middleware and licensing fees is almost impossible at this point. It won't happen.

 

 

Lastly, the Wii's appeal is now proven (it clearly isn't going anywhere), but it's also clear that most developers just do not know what to do with the fanbase. Resident Evil soars, but NiGHTS bombs. Carnival Games worked, so should they just make crappy mini games? Possibly, although looking at those monster Galaxy sales, it's hard to say that. And now Guitar Hero is doing extremely well, too. In short, the Wii is uncertain territory, as it's not really clear what works and what doesn't yet, and publishers like EA do not like uncertainty. It's not like I know these people personally, but given EA's track record, I'd bet you a dozen donuts that they're very queasy about leaving their comfort zone -- sports, shooting, and racing.

The Wii is clearly profitable, but no one outside of Nintendo is exactly sure how to make money on it, and I think a lot of third parties will just be afraid to try anything serious because there isn't a clear track record of what works on the system.

 With a rapidly growing uderbase, it has to be steadily more appealing to developers to create a game that they just like themselves... with the amount of Wiis flooding homes of all ages it will be easier to sell their 3rd party games, at least when enough users have teh same tastes to buy a specific game genre.