High production values on games.

[bdbdbd]

davygee said:

Okay, my tuppence worth:

A large number of 3rd party developers are now wanting a piece of the Wii, but there is and will still be some caution surrounding what games and what kind of budget should be spent on said game.

Have a look at the top 20 Wii games worldwide; there are only 7 of those 20 titles that are 3rd party, and the highest selling 3rd party title had Mario in it, so it was likely to sell anyway.  The next title is Guitar Hero III clocking in at 1.5m worldwide.

Now seeing as the Wii has a worldwide userbase of 20m, thats not a huge amount.  Most of the other top 20 titles are coming in around the 1m mark.

Look at EA as a publisher, all of their 17 Wii titles are all well under 1m.

Here is a little comparison.  Compare the top 20 of the Wii with the PS3.  The Wii remember has more than double the consoles in peoples home as well.  I have added up the total sales of all 3rd party titles and here goes:

Wii:

7 third party titles in top 20, with accummulated sales of 9.8m with a 20.5m userbase

PS3:

15 third party titles in top 20, with accummulated sales of 13.6m with a 9.5m userbase

As you can see, it is harder for Wii games to push themselves into the top 20 and sell the same amount compared to the 1st party games.

Also, Wii games are cheaper than PS3 games and doesn't Nintendo take a good chunk of the royalties for each disc as well?

Anyway, IMHO, I reckon it's not worth it for a 3rd party developer to spend a BIG budget on a Wii game.  It's a risk that they do not need to take.  They can spend 5m on a game and sell 1m units and make a healthy profit.

This definately is the best "3rd parties don't on Wii" -post i've ever seen (although that's not what you're saying). Now you need to take into consideration the marketing budget. Some of those PS3 games have been heavily marketed and some even bundled with hardware while Wii games haven't really been marketed. So it's even cheaper to make a Wii game, when it's not marketed at all. Now i naturally didn't check this, but the only big named 3rd party games, that i can recall, on Wiis top 20 are Guitar Hero, Mario and Sonic, Sonic and the Secret Rings and Rayman Raving Rabbids. 3rd party Wii games that have been marketed, that i know of, are Guitar Hero, Redsteel and RRR. So we can rightfully assume that established franchises and marketed games sell on Wii. Which they do on PS3 too. The real problem in comparing the sales, can be seen in what 3rd parties put on platforms; Wii got Dewy's Adventure, which came practically out of nowhere, while PS3 gets MGS4, which has been hyped for 2 years in every expo. Or Wii got Manhunt 2 and 360/PS3 are getting GTA4. Wii games are cheaper and Nintendo takes royalties, but the royalties on Wii propably are less than on PS3 (depends, on game and contract, i don't think Konami pays much, if at all, royalties from MGS4). On an off-topic side note, can't someone ban DSLover, he's been bumping old threads all day without contributing anything to discussion.