IGN's Podcast: Nintendo Voice Chat 6

[Sqrl]

famousringo said:

Developer was like no Wii, publisher response was, well this market is not proven on the Wii. Ubisoft stepped up with No More Heroes and Red Steel. Godfather, Scarface, Manhunt 2 should have done better but didn't, and thats what publishers are looking at. The acknowledge that those are 2 ports and a bomb that outperformed the ps2 version. They say how Red Steel can be argued it did well because it was a launch game, Metroid Prime 3 did well but not as well as other Nintendo Games. The Developers have moved on now to other projects, but they would still like to show it some day, and are watching how the Conduit reveal goes for them.

This section seems so bizarre to me. By the time you wait for a market to be 'proven,' it's already tapped. Why would you want to move into a high-competition, saturated market like party games and Wii Sports clones when you could go up against ports and sloppy launch titles?

If Nintendo had waited for the Wii or DS model to be 'proven,' they would be living off scraps like last gen instead of drinking up all the profits in the gaming industry.

I absolutely agree but the reasoning is because businessmen get into the habit of "Business as usual" and change represents risk to them. Rather than strive for the rewards of proving an unproven market they avoid the risk it incurs. They instead prefer to manage the risk of making games in a market they have experience with.

Its sort of like if a Hunter was afraid of squirrels and had been told they were ravenous and maneating but that they also had the best meat of any animal by far and if you could kill one and survive it would be more than worth the trouble. Most hunters would keep hunting deer and rabbit rather than take the risk...but occasionally some "crazy" bastard comes along and proves to everyone that its no big deal and they're really just harmless nutgatheres bent on world domination....thats pretty much what is going on here....in a manner of speaking.

FYI - The last paragraph was meant to be silly but the analogy does work.