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Sal.Paradise on 09 April 2012
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RolStoppable said:
Sal.Paradise said:

I don't mind doing the work for Kowenicki :)

Again, the very same argument applies: the market on the Wii was there, but a significantly better market was available on the HD twins + PC.

You say: "But that wasn't the case one year after the Wii had launched "

Yes it's very reasonable to assume that third parties chose not to develop shoooters for the Wii based on the Gamecube's performance last generation. And after games like Red Steel and RE4 Wii Edition sold around 1-1.5 million in a year, you're very right to ask, aren't these good numbers? Aren't these indicators to companies that these games sell on the Wii?

Yes, they are, but now compare these numbers to the HD twins + PC. From games released in 2005-2007

 

1. Exclusive launch title for the 360 and a new IP, Gears of War: By January 19, 2007, just ten weeks after its debut, over three million units of the game had been sold

2. Exclusive launch title for the PS3 and a new IP: (remember, a console with a $599 barrier to entry and significantly bad press pre and post launch), Resistance 1: by June 15 2007, after only 8 months on the market in Japan and US and only 2-3 months in Europe, sales reached 2 million 

3. Call of Duty 2, a port of a game already available on PS2, Gamecube and Xbox, launch title for 360: As of July 2006, 1.4 million copies of the game had been sold on the Xbox 360.[45] By January 2008, the game had sold 2 million copies.[46]

4. Halo 3. While it is no surprise this game sold massively, the potential market for this franchise ALONE is a convincing reason for a developer to release shooters on the HD consoles, especially the 360. 

 

I am not surprised in the least that companies, seeing these figures and having initially planned to develop for the HD twins (before seeing the Wii explode in hardware sales), continued to develop for platforms other than the Wii. The market for those games largely moved to the HD twins, especially the 360. 

Another factor to take into account is that the advances in processing power were just expected to happen in next-gen consoles; developers, especially PC-centric ones like Epic or id, simply stuck to the path they knew best, and that's is an unfortunate (for Wii owners) by-product of the shift in strategy on Nintendo's part. 

Of course, a massive shift in focus was also due to the seminal Call of Duty 4 not launching on the Wii. And can you blame Activision? The game-changing extensive multiplayer component and the 'blockbuster' nature of the game; high production values, for the time impressive graphic effects and smooth 60fps, i.e. the reasons this franchise exploded,  were just something that people did not see in Wii games at the time. 

 

The market was always stronger on the HD twins, there is no argument.

Any company that wanted to make money with these types of games would have orignially developed them for 360/PS3 based on the pervious gen's performance, and then at the beginning of the 7th gen, there is no metric that shows the Wii was a better market for their games than its competitors.

It's a closed and shut deal.

You cannot blame developers and publishers for simply 'not trying' to take advantage of the market on the Wii, unless you want to blame companies for trying to make money. 

Call of Duty 2 on the 360 was identical (in terms of content) to the PC version. The sixth generation consoles got a different Call of Duty 2. Just to let you know, not that it matters much.

But since you are bringing the performance of first party published games into this argument (Gears of War, Halo 3, Resistance), it opens another door. If I accept your argument that third parties decided to put their shooter games on other systems solely based on software sales numbers with no existence of an anti-Wii agenda, then why are there no quality third party games that tried to capitalize on the success of games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy?

I guess you could argue that the video game industry simply isn't interested in developing anything besides shooters, generally M-rated content, racing and sports games anymore. Then again, this might be the result of the anti-Wii agenda and nothing else selling well on the HD consoles.

I thought there were quite a few platformers/adventure games on the Wii? I'm surprised if that's not true, as you said it seems there's a market for that genre of game. Quite honestly platformers have been under-represented this gen on the HD consoles also, it's quite sad. I don't think it has any bearing on the shooter market for the Wii though, the numbers take care of that. 

You're right that for larger companies there has been a shift away from platformers/adventure games and more alternative genres, with a significant chunk of the money going to racing/fps/tps, but I would point out that the indie scene is booming right now, and some of the most interesting developments in alternative games, platformers and less traditional RPG experiences is coming from that sector; a sector largely represented by the PC, and on a smaller scale XBLA and PSN.