Rogerioandrade said:
I don´t feel that it´s so surprising, actually. With the low sales of the console and with those always increasing development costs, it seems natural that developers would avoid making projects for the WiiU at least for a while. See the huge losses Square just posted? The market is getting riskier, some games are not being lucrative even when they sell millions. Developers must play it safe from now on. Another thing that seems clear is also that developers still don´t have many ideas of what to do with the Gamepad. For example: why Square decided to launch a refurbished Deus Ex for it? It´s an "old" game that many people already know, it may not find good sales. But on the other side they are not spending too much cash on this port and they´re taking the opportunity to make some experiments with the Gamepad. Maybe they´re just trying to work out how to develop for it, ´cause if WiiU sales get better in a near future they may be able to get some profit developing for it ? |
The losses posted by SquareEnix are mainly due to massive financial drains from their MMO projects, FF14 and DQ10. Big MMOs are extremely expensive to build and maintain, and that's a constant development drain that can't be used on other projects. When MMOs fail as hard as these two, it is very bad news financially.
I agree that the Gamepad is an intimidating feature on the Wii U, much like the motion control on Wii. Buyers expect the gamepad to be used for something, and so forcing developers to add a new screen to their game. Sometimes this just isn't a viable option, or they feel they will be judged for a "gimmick" or being too simple. Another thing that doesn't seem to be hitting off with developers is the Miiverse functionality, there's just general disinterest outside Nintendo to do anything with it. To be honest Nintendo's online functionality in general at this point is a disaster compared to the offerings by Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo was clearly not ready to move into online integration. Then there's the bad taste left in third parties after the Wii, so there's a general disdain for Nintendo consoles present in the industry.
A lot of people say the specs are also too low for a next generation console, but I think that's one of the least concerns for the console. Sure there are developers who will want to move on to newer tech, but there is still plenty of market space for older stuff too, as well as smaller more simple games. Just look at what is available on Steam. Nintendo needs to reach out to these other developers and let them know this is a good market to put their games on, and promote this stuff among their fanbase to get them to buy more than just Mario and Zelda. Unfortunately both these things are a long and arduous road.
