| DarkNight_DS said: There is a problem with your thinking though... Most companies already have game engines and middle ware that works with the Wii, PS2, Gamecube etc. There are new middle ware solutions for the 360, PS3 and PC. Companies can choose to use their old solutions to work with Wii development as they'd have a lot of choices already. Ubisoft bought some updates for their Unreal 2 engine which they were already using and made it work with the Wii. That was a one time up front cost. I'd say all of the big companies have nothing to worry about in this regard. Capcom has the Resident Evil 4 engine, Nintendo has many different engines to work with from the cube era, EA is fine as well, as is Squaresoft etc. The problem that any of the developers may have is that some of them jumped the gun early and bought new engines for the new systems without waiting until the costs came down. Nintendo has it's own middle ware software which any developer can purchase to work with Wii games. |
Yeah, agreed. Good post in general, but I think DarkNight has some reasonable points about the solutions. Also, yeah Red Steel was made with the Unreal Engine. I mean, in the end, I don't think the Wii's success this generation will result in any issues with the next generation middleware. People are already drooling over the Crysis engine for example, which hasn't even been released yet. Middleware will continually be developed. The "massively underpowered" view of the Wii is somewhat misguided. After all, the weakest system has lead sales both of the prior 2 generations, and middleware is still continually being developed. Most high graphic system middleware is going to come from PC game develoers (Source engine, Crysis engine, Unreal engine), but every company offers their own middleware to cut down on development costs. It's not all that often that a game is built from the ground up anymore. Just because developers don't necessarily mention what middleware was used in the development of the game doesn't mean that there isn't middleware involved. I think you are a little too worried about he situation.
Edit: I also doubt that developers will continue to focus on the high graphics systems. Look at how little support he Xbox and Gamecube got vs. the PS2 (which was weaker than either). It would have required a lot of middleware to make Xbox games, but when developers saw there was no money in it, the continued to make ground up graphically inferior PS2 games on the promise of a higher user base to purchase those games. I can't really see big franchises hanging around the 360 and PS3 past 08. The only reason you even see them now is that the big PS3 and 360 games started development 2-4 years ago before they knew the Wii was going to be the generational winner. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see many big games switch over, for the sheer convenience of a readily available user base that is willing to purchase 3rd party games (see Red Steel and Rayman for examples). A lot of developmental support swings towards the best selling console, even when it's the weakest. Look at the PSP and DS. Square took their best selling Japanese RPG (in Japan that is) and stuck it on the DS. Why? It will sell the most copies. They could have made it anywhere, but they put it where it sells. This happens EVERY generation to the expensive high graphic consoles.
