Did Nintendo screw us?

[Gnizmo]

Onyxmeth said:

I think my post is being picked apart only at it's weakest points. Why not address the fact that Nintendo is opening up the market to developers to make beginners games? The PS2 had plenty of shovelware, no one can deny it. But back in those days, I never heard a developer say their concentration on making their PS2 game was for a "casual" audience.

 Alright then I will pick apart your post on every point and we will see what you think then. Of course PS2 developers didn't refer to their games as casual. That is a buzz word that was started this generation. Sony has said they are going to use the PS2 as their "casual" machine. Define "casual games" for me and I will be able to get you a list of games from previous generations that fit the mold. I need more than examples as well, but an actually list of criterion that can be applied to a new game. The old Monopoly, Wheel of Fortune, and Family Feud games immediatly spring to mind though.

If you look around these forums, you'll notice A LOT of Wii defenses. All manner of third party titles are jumped on immediately as saviors, when the majority of rational folks can all agree that it's severely lacking behind the competition's. Topics have come up recently showing the Wii's average review scores far below those of the PS3 and 360. Anyone can see why. Only Nintendo has such classics as Alvin and the Chipmunks and Ninjabread Man. How much of this do you think is Nintendo's blame?

 Ninjabread man is not a Wii exclusive. The industry has always lent itself to shitty games being popped out in hopes of making a quick buck. Ninjabread man is no worse than the thousand and one movie tie-in games that are always released and always suck. You could say that the Wii's lower average review score means something, but the PS2 also has the lowest average review score of its generation of consoles. The most popular system always has the lowest attach rate and the worst average review score. Thats just the way it is.

 

Does anyone get the sneaking suspision that Nintendo may not have a quality control department? If the console maker can take a blind eye to whatever is shoveled onto their Wii, how can you expect the third party to up their standards? I know many will say that the time will come and third party will arrive, but it may not. If a third party is not told to meet a certain standard, and sees it's previous efforts of mediocrity raking in bucks, why would they change the gameplan? Does one expensive critically acclaimed project equal to ten low budget cakewalks that somehow still make a good profit?

 Nintendo has an amazing quality control department. Point me at the first party game that is poorly made and I will be floored. At least for the last few generations they have been great. SNES had some interesting gems admittedly. Looking past that poorly worded sentence I would like to point out that the last company to have a quality control department for third parties was Nintendo. It is one of the reasons third parties hate Nintendo so much and avoid the console. Sony and Microsoft have never had a quality control department for third parties and never will probably. The day and age when that was useful is over.

 Beyond that, you can expect third parties to up the quality of the games on their own. Good games sell more copies than a bad game. Further, if you build up your reputation for making amazing games then people will flock to whatever you put out and buy it en masse. Just look at any Blizzard title to see examples of that. An expensive critically aklaimed game must make more money or they would never be made. If there was more money to be had in just cheap shovelware for the Wii all PS3 and 360 projects would be canceled and the Wii would be the last console ever made. Te question of which one makes more money is just absurd.

Nintendo will probably approach and possibly pass the PS2 as the world's best selling console, but I fear the library will never equal or even come close to it's predecessor. We are still looking at the same Nintendo console that is known for it's sparse lineup of excellent first party offerings, followed by a sparse selection of mediocre to great third party offerings, followed with the newest phenomenon, a plethora of shovelware.

 Sparse list of first party games from Nintendo? Are you serious? They had around 10 million+ sellers before the console was a year old. Have you forgotten the old bash against Mario being whored out to everything under the sun? Here we again have your claim that shovelware is a new phenomenon which you later decided to go back on and admit the PS2 suffered similar problems.

 

Nintendo themselves have gone on record on who their target audience is, and it doesn't sound like you and me. By opening up the market place, Nintendo set an example of easy games for beginning gamers. It leaves those of us who came before this time to question why we stay with a company that isn't in it for us. Now granted, Nintendo is a business just trying to survive. I don't hate them for their approach. I just don't feel it serves my interests.

 Here we have the crux of your whole whinefest here. You don't like the newer games and feel not enough classic style games are out on the system to serve your interest. I will say nothing bad about you for that, and no one else should. I tell people to look at all the games you want to play, and then buy a console for that. I really enjoy some of their easier games, and they have enough of their classic franchises returning that I am very pleased overall with the line-up and my purchase. Please refrain from projecting your displeasure at the line-up on me. It is very much targeted towards me.

 

Does anyone get the nagging feeling inside that the third party situation isn't really getting that much better? Let me step it up a notch. Does anyone get the nagging feeling that the third party offerings will never match up to the 360 and PS3s? Games like Monster Hunter and Fatal Frame are a start, but mostly Japanese sales wise. I don't think many people heard these announcements and thought Nintendo truly pulled anything great from the competition. Shouldn't there have been some screenshots of something down the pipeline from third parties? Something outstanding? I don't need to name games from the competition, but you know who the real developers are developing for.

 No I don't and some of the evidence of that is in your post. The turn has been slow and it will never be super dominating. All I want, and all I expect is for more big titles to end up on the Wii. It won't pull support directly from the competition but indirectly due to limited developer time. Namco, Square-Enix, and Capcom seem to be happily supporting the system to name a few. I am eager to hear when the next proper Resident Evil game will make it onto the Wii (and you better believe it is coming).

 

Capcom is a great example of a third party that is going on record saying they are wary of developing for the Wii. It's not because they aren't making money off of it. They are. They want to know whether they're better off developing light affairs like We Love Golf, offbeat experiments like Zach & Wiki, or straight ports of former fan favorites like Resident Evil 4 and Okami. I bet if you rolled every Capcom team from each Wii game into one, it wouldn't reach the magnitude of the team working on Resident Evil 5, or even Devil May Cry 4. If you think the tides are changing, think again. Even after the Wii's continued success, their only announcement was rearming Bionic Commando for PS3 and 360. It should have been a shoe-in for the Wii with the control set-up. Capcom's not the only guilty party, but I feel they're the most obvious culprit.

 Worst example possible. Capcom has taken a PS3 exclusive, and previously Playstation exclusive series, and turned it into a Wii game. The development for the other games was well underway when they decided to support the Wii much more than their original plans. If you are waiting for all the titles for other systems to be cancelled then you will always be dissapointed. If you are expecting no quality titles to make it to the Wii you are just being stupid.

 

The PS2, as someone, mentioned previously, already had an extensive third party lineup by the end of it's first year and 4 months, with plenty of great titles announced and on the way.

 The PS2 was expected to be the market leader and by a lot. The Wii was expeted to come in dead last and by a lot. Compare it to the PS1 line-up and I suspect it will be very similar. The evidence of third parties losing faith in the current HD consoles is shown by the number of exclusive that are going multi-platform.