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Declan on 24 February 2011
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Doobie_wop said:
Declan said:
Doobie_wop said:

When Nintendo supports third parties, then maybe third parties will consider supporting Nintendo consoles. If Nintendo aren't willing to make the effort, then I don't see why third parties should try when they already have two or three viable platforms to put their games on, especially when they all have have higher attacth rates than the Wii. When someone does take the risk, then they don't meet their expectations and pull out. It's so easy to see and it makes more sense than making up weird fanboy conspiracy theories.

Not sure I agree with you there.  When you say "taking the risk", do you mean pulling out all the stops to produce a costly AAA title?  Because if so, I can only think of two third party examples on the Wii (Monster Hunter 3 and Epic Mickey), and they both sold very well.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Red Steel 2, de Blob, A boy and his blob, Madworld, Dawn of Discovery, Little King's Story, NBA Jam, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and many more are just a few examples of Third Party effort on the Wii. They are all good games, none of them sold relatively well and judging from the sales of these games and the ones from a few recent JRPG's (The Last Story/Xenoblade), I can definently see how third parties got the impression that most third pary efforts don't sell on the Wii. 

Epic Mickey takes the brand name of one of the most well known characters in the world and puts him into a game, while Monster Hunter is the third in a pretty popular franchise and they both did sell pretty well (as they should), but despite being serious efforts, neither of them set the charts on fire. Goldeneye is based on one of the greatest and most well known shooters in history and it only sold a million units, despite being given a significant amount of effort and advertising. 

The Wii audience is still a mystery, while the HD audience isn't and that's why third parties are willing to go all out on three platforms (PC, 360 and PS3) and that's because they've already proven themselves when it comes to making sure that great games sell well. 

Clearly the developers of these games did put a lot of effort into them, but that doesn't equate to publishers 'taking a gamble' on the Wii - of those titles, only COD comes close to counting as AAA, but even then, it's not really, since the marketing for it was entirely directed at HD owners.  It doesn't matter how good a game is - if it gets a stealth release (as many of the ones you mentioned did), then it's going to get ignored by the vast majority of a system's userbase.  Look at the big successes on the HD consoles - did any of them become such successes with the kind of marketing that, say, Little King's Story got?  I don't think so.

I think your point about GoldenEye (which I apologise for forgetting about - that did get AAA treatment) is a better one, but as you point out, that has sold over a million to an audiuence supposedly uninterested in core games and despite being released in direct competition with its stablemate Black Ops.  It's also still selling reasonably well.