Wii owns the Platforme genre

[mrstickball]

Lucas-Rio said:

Degausser said:

 I wish there were more platformers out there tbh, and not just 2D ones >_>. SMG1 and 2 are absolutely amazing but they're pretty much the only 3D platformers out there nowadays, aside from ratchet and Clank who while fun have sort of burnt out on me. I wish they'd bring back GOOD Crash, Spyro, Jak and Daxter, 3D Donkey games etc.

 I don't mind the 2D stuff but I'm starting to prefer the indie / downloadalbe side of that like Braid and VVVVVV. Dunno why, I think I just have trouble paying full price for a 2D platformer that essentially just plays like a SNES game, but will never live up to the crazy pedestal I put those games on now with my nostalgia tinted glasses.

Sonic 4 really didn't do anything for me either... I keep trying to like it but it just feels so, lifeless.

I completely disagree witht that.

If you want the 2D platform to be alive, it needs to be full price game, with budget and ambition, and selling at retail. If you don't do that, it will be indies low budget game to download and I can tell you that nobody care about that.

You assume that budget = ambition. It doesn't.

The thing about indie titles is that it allows a developer to make a different stylistic and value proposition, as they don't have to design the game to be a $40, $50, or $60 title, which may leave out certain conventions because the title needs to be more mainstream to succeed for whomever published the title. Thats why we see a lot of titles that look cool (like Bob's Game) fail to get a publisher - the publisher knows how many units a title is likely to sell at market, and if it is unlikely to break even at retail, then it never gets picked up, no matter how good a concept the title has.

By and large, I think you see indies take far more risks, because they know that the market can support such ideas, and they aren't being pushed into having a massive scope of requirements because the game must sell 500,000 or more copies to even survive, much less thrive. Going further, look at the arguments we make about the audience of the Wii, PS3 or 360. We always argue that the Wii does well on certain genres, while the PS3 and 360 do well on other genres.

Not so with downloadable titles. After all, look at some of the great-selling titles on downloadable platforms - Trials HD, Castle Crashers, Dead Rising: Case Zero, Fat Princess, Mega Man 9, Lost Winds, and so on. None of them would exist as full-price releases, yet are fantastic titles that are wonderful to play, and have a great value proposition. Likewise, they've been met with great sales on their respective platforms.

Eventually, all of the Big 3 will figure out how to really get the most out of promoting the downloadable platforms, and give them the structure to succeed. When that happens, you'll see an even larger paradigm shift towards downloadable games as opposed to retail releases by smaller studios. When that happens, I think you'll see a lot of the argument about genre superiority fall by the wayside, as value propositions take over. After all, you can argue that SMB: Wii did well because its on the Wii. I say it did well on the Wii because there's no analogue on PS3/X360. That may change when downloadables become bigger, as more developers would seek to push out a unique downloadable title that may become a proper analogue, with the right value proposition to garner SMB: Wii-like sales patterns.