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Deyon said: If you love Nintendo so much why don't you support it by buying 3rd party games on the Wii U instead of getting them on different consoles? |
Hey, guess what - not every person is the same.
My Wii library includes Trauma Centre: Second Opinion, Dewy's Adventure, Eledees, No More Heroes, Little King's Story, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Red Steel, de Blob, Boom Blox, The Conduit, NiGHTS, Sonic and the Secret Rings, CoD:WaW, Tiger Woods 10, Zack & Wiki, Okami, SSX Blur, MySims, Sims 2: Castaways, Epic Mickey, Red Steel 2, CoD:BO, Samurai Warriors 3, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, Goldeneye 007, and multiple Super Monkey Ball games. I'd likely own more if I had more money.
I'm betting you can't even claim to own that many third-party games on your platform of choice.
I've supported the third parties tremendously. They, in return, have mostly put crap games on the system - hence why my list includes games like Super Monkey Ball, Sims 2: Castaways, and Samurai Warriors 3 - I had to reach to find decent games from third parties. Mind you, that list is about half of my library - the other half are first-party Nintendo titles that are almost all high-quality, which is more than I can say for that list of third-party titles.
If third parties want strong sales on a Nintendo platform, they need to bring their A-game. The thing is, they never do, with just a few exceptions that see strong results, like Monster Hunter Tri (which I'd love to own, but by the time it came out, I couldn't afford many games - same reason why I don't yet own Skyward Sword... can't wait until I can afford it), Epic Mickey, and Goldeneye 007.
And it continues with the Wii U, from what I'm gathering (I don't yet own a Wii U - see aforementioned money issue). Most third-party titles were late ports that were promised to be better on Wii U, and then turned out to not be. Multiple publishers sabotaged their own titles (like EA with Mass Effect 3 and the Trilogy released for the other platforms). Others have failed to properly support the system, like Activision with Black Ops 2 DLC. And when an exclusive title comes along that is heavily promoted by Nintendo, with many people buying a system in anticipation of that game, the publisher decides to delay it by 7 months (moving it from a software drought period to a period with a lot of competition), make it multiplatform, and announce all of this less than a month before the release date.
Simply put, it's not my job, or the job of other Nintendo console owners, to win the support of the third parties. Its the third parties' job to win OUR support. It's their job to put out quality titles in a timely manner at an appropriate price, and provide enough information and support to get our attention. They have to compete with Nintendo - and if they aren't willing to put the work in to do so, that's their problem. I gave the third parties extra support in the previous generation, buying games that I heard were merely "decent" in the hopes that third parties would follow up with higher-quality titles. Not this time around - I buy quality titles only, and if that means that all of my money ends up going to Nintendo, it's not my fault, but third parties' fault. Of course, there'll still be a few third-party gems, and I'll buy those, no doubt.
The fact of the matter is, third parties have failed gamers repeatedly. Not just on Nintendo consoles, but across the industry, on all platforms. The difference is, Nintendo's first-party titles are strong enough to stand on their own, whereas Sony and MS depend on third-party support. Which is why you constantly hear of Sony and MS buying exclusives, timed exclusives, etc. Note that I'm not actually criticising Sony or MS, here - it's just a fact of the industry that those two companies put more emphasis on third-party titles. But my point, here, is that if third parties were doing their job on the 360 or PS3, the Wii wouldn't have stood a chance against either platform in terms of sales numbers.
In regards to CoD, it's worth noting that slow launch sales are *expected* for games that release at a system's launch. The Wii had a similarly slow start for CoD3, but it eventually sold over 2 million copies. In 2006, CoD 3 sold just 260,000 copies. By the end of 2007, it was still only at 800,000. But it kept selling. For comparison, the 360 version sold 2.6 million... of which a little under 1.3 million were in 2006. The PS3 version sold 1.4 million, but the first 800,000 were similarly sold by the end of 2007. Keep in mind, the Wii version lacked any multiplayer whatsoever, and had no online, whereas the other versions did have online.
So when CoD:BO2 sells about 200,000 copies in the first few months and comes in 6th in terms of total sales, while lacking features (I'm referring, here, to DLC), being released later than the other versions, and getting little by way of advertisement, I say that it's not doing too badly, for a console that isn't selling as well as the Wii did at launch. But it's the only real FPS on the system, unless you count 007 Legends (which shouldn't surprise anybody at its failure to sell, given that it was a late port that didn't even make it at launch, was rated lower than 50% on average on PS3 and 360, and even lower on Wii U, and I don't even recall it being advertised). Systems sell by appealing to consumers, and they do so using games. FPS gamers have one game so far to attract them to the Wii U. For most, that's not going to be enough. If third parties want to see stronger sales, they need to actually put games on the system.
Next time you feel like calling out Nintendo gamers for lack of support for third-parties, think about what I've said again. And let me restate once again the biggest of all the points, here: it's the third parties' job to attract the support of the gamer, not the gamer's job to attract the support of the third party. Gamers are not obliged to buy incomplete, inadequate titles just to try to convince third parties to put better titles on their console - especially given that history has shown that, when gamers do it, third parties use it as an excuse to put more half-arsed titles on the system (see, for instance, Resident Evil: Chronicles titles).
