baka on 26 February 2007
Kwaad said:
Why are there only 40,000 more 3rd party games sold on the Wii... wich has over DOUBLE the consoles sold... better games... why? Can anyone give any answers related to this? Opinions?
I think I can answer this, assuming you're serious about an answer. The first party entries for the Wii, in my experience, generally use the new controls better. Wii Play for example may not be the most in-depth game out there, but it's an excellent introduction to the controller - particularly for first-time gamers, but also prior gamers getting into the console. As a bonus, the Tank game reminds me a lot of Combat on the Atari 2600. The shooting game makes no bones about being similar to duck hunt either, at least until the tin cans and UFOs come in. That's a good thing for me, and to be honest I've never had an issue with pointer accuracy.
My experience through rentals is that the controls on some third party games are spotty, quality-wise. Most likely this is due to their development staff being given information on the controllers later in the game than Nintendo's, who would have more advance knowledge. Rampage for the Wii is a case study in this. Third party developers may also have been hesitant to put too many resources into the Wii until they were sure it would sell well. No doubt those fears have been at least partially assuaged. There are of course some third party games that do use it well. Rayman: Raving Rabbids is an excellent example, as is Trauma Center: Second Opinion. I own the former, and may end up buying the latter title based on a rental. I've heard that Madden controls nicely as well, although I haven't played a licensed sports title in over 10 years - they bore me quite frankly. Ditto on Elebits, although that's another game I haven't tried. I have no doubt that these titles will do well over their lifetime, however they're going to be overshadowed initially by popular Nintendo franchises such as Zelda and Wario Ware. The Nintendo titles are a known quantity for gamers, who know more or less what to expect.
Give people a few months, once they've played through the initial games enough, they'll start looking into other titles - including third party. There was a reasonable amount of quality software available for the launch directly from Nintendo, not the least of which was Wii Sports. That's simply good business sense on Nintendo's part. I also suspect third parties will start releasing games that take further advantage of what the Wii has to offer, in terms of both graphics and controls that translate closer to what you are doing in the game. Build better games, and people will buy them.
I can't comment on the PS3's third party situation directly, as I don't know anyone personally who has one at this point. How do you feel about the initial first party titles? Were there enough of them, and were they significantly better than the third party games? What's your analysis on why people are buying games that you didn't think were very good?
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