Fez dev: PC and PSN "would make sense" But WiiWare can "f*** off"

[mrstickball]

Mr Khan said:

mrstickball said:

I don't hate Nintendo. I hate how they've hamstrung their market.

Thing is, most of the games you mentioned sold very poorly when you compare them to similar quality games on XBLA. I am not knocking the games on the market - they are great - I am knocking how Nintendo has made the environment for developers on the system. Limited space = less major games (we've seen developers state they cannot put their titles on WiiWare because of the 40MB limit, and have to go elsewhere), lack of significant hard drive = fewer purchases by consumers. Bad UI = harder to find and buy titles. Less demos = less conversions from trials (according to Sony, 90% of all purchases were by consumers that tried demos).

For example, here's World of Goo's developer stating that the iPad launch of World of Goo sold twice as many copies as it did on WiiWare at its best point on the market, ever. Also, I think you are greatly ovestating World of Goo's sales on WiiWare. I haven't seen a single statement from 2D boy that they even sold 1 million copies, much less 2 million. Therefore, its sales are very likely to be lower than 1 million. The data I have points to about 500,000 copies sold in WiiWare for about $7.2 million USD.

Comparatively, on Xbox Live Arcade, there are at least 6 titles that have performed the same in terms of unit sales/revenues as World of Goo. Furthermore, you find that the WiiWare market is about 1/3rd the size of XBLA in terms of gross revenues, which is atrocious given that Nintendo has a much larger user install base. That should tell you a lot as to how Nintendo's downloadable strategy is panning out.

Oh, and for a freebie, here is a list of the top 10 downloadable games between WW/XBL/PSN in terms of gross revenues to give you an idea:

Castle Crashers (XBLA) - $22.3 million

Trials HD (XBLA) - $17.2 million

Battlefield 1943 (XBLA) - $16.3 million

Pokemon Rumble (WW) - $10.7 million

My Pokemon Ranch (WW)- $9.1 million

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King (WW) - $8.5 million

LIMBO (XBLA) - $8.2 million

UNO (XBLA) - $8.0 million

Shadow Complex (XBLA) - $8.0 million

Battlefield 1943 (PSN) - $7.6 million

And for number of million-dollar selling titles, by platform (of those that I have data for):

Xbox Live Arcade - 104

PSN - 40

WiiWare - 25

Now, I gotta ask: If you could publish your game to one platform, what would it be? The one that has a title that grossed $22 million dollars and has roughly 1/3rd of its titles hit $1 million in gross revenues? Or the one that has much less that gives developers no incentive for their platform? 

He mean that this jerk-dev hates Nintendo, not you.

Also, i was unaware that the glorified Pokemon box is one of the top-grossing downloadable console titles of all time. That's just wierd

Ah, my apologies.

On one end, its crazy that Pokemon titles make up 2 of the top ten highest grossing downloadable games, but at the same time, when you consider the pedigree, exclusivity, and likely advertising Nintendo does for an internal title, its rather understandable. Performances of downloadable titles are intrinsicly tied into how much 'face time' a title gets on the platform and in the media, so a game that is 1st party is likely to have more user awareness, regardless of quality. Thats not to say that Pokemon is a bad game or anything, but it was given the recipe for success like few other WiiWare titles were.