| Aielyn said: You missed the point. I wasn't talking about these games proving generally that there was a market for "core" games on the Wii, just that there was as much a market for those particular series on the Wii. As I noted, with CoD3, the Wii version easily outsold the PS3 version, yet Activision had no problem with there being no Wii version of CoD4 from Infinity Ward - and this irrevocably harmed the series on the Wii. With Resident Evil 4, the proof was there that a quality Resident Evil game would sell well on the system, but they used it to justify a quick pair of lightgun titles, while putting the next real RE title on PS3 and 360 and not the Wii. That Goldeneye sold best on Wii should have suggested that they should put the next 007 title on all three, but it's also PS3/360 only. When NBA Jam performed best on the Wii, they made a PS3/360-only special edition. When the Wii/PS2 Silent Hill outperformed the PS3/360 Silent Hill, they started developing a new PS3/360 Silent Hill, and ignored the Wii (and PS2). When Blazing Angels did much better on Wii than PS3, they made the sequel for PS3/360 and not Wii. In all six cases, when faced with evidence of a real market for games in that franchise, developers and publishers ignored that evidence and supported only the PS3 and 360. And the list includes Activision, EA, Capcom, Ubisoft, and Konami. If all five of these publishers were happy to ignore the evidence of a market on the Wii for their own IPs, why the hell would they pay attention to the success of a Nintendo IP that they would have to compete against? The reason why I only list a few titles is that, when it came to third-party support, most franchises were never even TESTED on the Wii. They never tried an Assassin's Creed. They never tried a Mass Effect. They never tried a Grand Theft Auto, a Red Dead Redemption, a Fallout, a Left 4 Dead, a Battlefield, a Saints Row, a Bioshock, or a real Final Fantasy. Capcom never tried a Street Fighter. Namco Bandai never tried a Tekken. Konami never tried a Metal Gear. And where they did try major franchises, more often than not they were spinoffs - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, SoulCalibur Legends, Castlevania: Judgment, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Dead Space: Extraction, etc. Often they would use these lower-quality spinoffs as "tests" for the franchises... but where those "tests" were successful, they were used to prove that the Wii audience would buy the spinoffs, and not the main franchises. The few times that third parties truly took a risk, and developed a proper title for the Wii that they released worldwide, it paid off. Epic Mickey. Monster Hunter. The Sims. Tiger Woods. The LEGO series. Harvest Moon. Treyarch Call of Duty titles (given the weakness created by lack of CoD4). Of course, when half-arsed ports were done, like Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop, they flopped. Which, to me, was actually proof that the Wii audience were a whole lot more discerning than the industry liked to think. The industry never questioned why Just Dance took off, while Boogie fell flat. They never questioned why Deca Sports sold strongly, yet Big League Sports flopped. They never stopped to wonder why Game Party thrived while MySims Party struggled. It was always "casual games do well on Wii", never bothering to look at why only certain ones did well on Wii. There was absolutely no attempt to understand the "casual" audience, and thus the vast majority of "casual" games flopped, even as certain titles blossomed to such an extent that they're now outselling most other franchises. Indeed, when it came to the Wii, third parties paid little attention to anything of significance, and made their decisions entirely on superficial things. They didn't comprehend that you have to establish the market for your game, it doesn't just fall into your lap. And they didn't comprehend that treating Wii owners like second-class gamers was going to produce weaker sales for their games. And as the evidence noted above demonstrates, evidence of markets were completely ignored time and again, in order to chase after the "red ocean" on the PS3 and 360. To finish, consider this - The Conduit was a game that was designed for the Wii. Having said that, it was bland, it was rather generic, and it wasn't rated very highly. For a new IP, this should have been a complete death sentence. The game still managed a respectable 530,000 copies sold. The same can be seen with Red Steel, which sold well over a million copies despite being buggy. Decent niche titles like Zack & Wiki, MadWorld, No More Heroes, Trauma Centre, Muramasa, and Little King's Story all did remarkably well, and where such titles were also released on PS3/360, the Wii version inevitably did best. The evidence is all there. Third parties just ignored it all. Oh, by the way - if RE and Goldeneye did well because they had a history on Nintendo systems, then why not release other major games on the Wii, so that those franchises *also* have a history on Nintendo systems when the next system comes around? As I said, you have to establish the market before you can leverage it. |
Excellent post, and it's going to be hard for any reasonable man to disagree, but watch me do just that.
Seriously though, I get your points. Third parties are stubborn, narrow-minded, incompetent, traditionalistic, afraid of change, etc, etc. I understand that. But are they impossible? I wouldn't quite say that. Some say they're biased or act with emotion. I personally don't think it's that simple.
You've mentioned a lot of games that saw success on the Wii. A low of which were probably healthy success. But the problem with third-parties (and the industry today, for that matter) is that they won't settle for healthy successes. They won't settle for games selling sub-1m per platform. They don't want to settle for the Wii when they *think* the best a realistic, violent game can sell is in the 'niche' realm of appx 800k, and maybe, if they get lucky, they might get a 1mill or 2mill seller.
They're not going to settle for that, they want blockbusters. And they've witness countless realistic, violent, blockbusters sell 3, 4, 5m+ on the HD consoles. They think realistic violent games can only do huge on the HD consoles. So even if the Wii treats them well, they're still going to go for that blockbuster status, and they think the only way there is through the HD consoles. They just needed something to prove them wrong.
They needed to see some realistic, violent, blockbusters on the Wii. Not a few games that just cracked 1mill & less that cracked 2mill. And that's where Nintendo should have stepped in. Third-parties would have handled this task better, but they weren't. Had Nintendo developed or just published a few realistic, violent games and had they become blockbusters, I don't believe 3rd parties would have ignored the system even if they had bias towards it.
Trust me, I get what your saying. There is a lot of evidence that says there could have been a realistic, violent audience for the Wii, but third parties ignored it. But when a group is only chasing after bigger and bigger, it's quite normal that they'd ignore a console which appears to have a drastically low 'limit' for realistic violent games when compared to the PS360.
And I honestly believe that if Nintendo (and it doesn't have to be Nintendo, but no one else is helping right now) developed a few 4-5mill sellers within the market that 3rd parties reach to, the 3rd parties would have flocked to it. 4-5mill is too much to ignore. Sub-1mill? Not so much. Espescially when they see so many violent games sell so big on the HD consoles, they think that's what theyshould be aiming for.
