Aielyn said:
A lot of them, sadly, are. Look at EA. They released a total of four games on the Wii U, and had cancelled all further development before the fourth one had even come out. Why did they cancel? Because the Wii U didn't sell 20 million units in its first 3 months, and their titles weren't selling particularly well.. But when you look at the titles themselves, it starts to make more sense. Three titles were released within those first 3 months. You had Mass Effect 3, which had no pre-established fanbase on a Nintendo system and came without Mass Effect 1 and 2... and Mass Effect Trilogy was set to release on the other systems within a couple of months, containing all three games for the same price. You had Madden 13, which lacked the major physics and graphical upgrades that the other versions got, and which was released for the other systems well before the Wii U even launched. And you had Fifa 13, which was basically the PS2 version with a gamepad feature instead of the "revolutionary" new version for PS3/360, and which also released for the other systems well before the Wii U even launched. Their fourth game was Need For Speed. It released for other systems around the time that the Wii U launched... and yet, the Wii U version didn't release until 4 months later. It was supposedly quite a good game, and all props to Criterion Games for their effort, but EA had already abandoned the Wii U, and only released the game because it had reached the point where there was no point refusing to do so - it was released without fanfare, without any sort of effort to sell it. What's more, EA had already announced that they were not going to support the Wii U any further, prior to release. Let's consider another example: Call of Duty. It was huge in the last gen, and yet every Wii version ended up being poorly-supported, lacking in major game modes, graphically weak (I'm not comparing to the 360/PS3 versions, but to what can be achieved on the Wii), when the games even made it at all... and then they didn't even mention the Wii version in their press releases, refused to provide any media for the Wii version in multiple cases, and refused to actually inform people of which modes would be present or absent in the game, even after release. I don't blame Treyarch, here - they did the best with what they had available. But they could only put a few people on the Wii version at any time, and had to fight for even that much. Or how about Rayman Legends? Set for release on Wii U in the launch period, and then Ubisoft decides, against developer wishes, to force a delay so it could release simultaneously on other systems, thereby moving the release date from a time that would see it get the lion's share of public attention to a time that was crowded with other titles. The developers themselves protested publicly against the decision. Routinely, developers would put out inferior products on Nintendo systems. If they sold well, it justified more inferior products (see Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles -> Darkside Chronicles) while putting their superior products (Resident Evil 5) on the other systems. If they sold poorly because of the low quality (see Dead Space), they pointed at it as proof that Nintendo gamers didn't want their games. When they had a big casual hit, such as Just Dance or Carnival Games, they started pumping more and more of them out with lower quality and less value, to pump as much out of it before it died, rather than trying to cultivate a long-term audience. And if a casual title didn't sell huge numbers, they simply cut and ran. If a title was "mature", they argued that there was "no market", yet they made no attempt to build a market for their own games, expecting Nintendo to build it for them. But if it wasn't a "mature" title, their argument was that they couldn't really compete with Nintendo. In other words, Nintendo had to build a market without actually making games for the third parties to compete against, prove that the market existed, and then wait for years for the third party to actually make a game now that the evidence was present for the market. And in the rare cases where the above didn't apply, third parties generally squandered their own market. See Red Steel, Epic Mickey, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Monster Hunter Tri (the best-selling home console Monster Hunter ever, and at the time, the third-best-selling Monster Hunter ever), etc. There were a few cases that explicitly demonstrated the potential in the Wii market. Goldeneye 007 sold better on Wii than the PS3 and 360 versions combined (by more than 50%), No More Heroes set a record for a Suda51 title, purely due to the Wii, with PS3 version selling about a third as many units and the 360 version massively bombing. Sonic Unleashed sold far better on Wii, as did Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. Tiger Woods PGA Tour routinely sold far better on Wii than on other consoles, until EA decided to stop pushing the Wii version entirely... and then didn't even bother to make a PGA Tour for the Wii U despite it being a no-brainer, and PGA Tour 13 didn't get released for the Wii, either. Resident Evil 4 sold comparably on Wii to how it did on Gamecube and PS2, despite being 2 years later (but they didn't bother making Resident Evil 5 for Wii). Call of Duty 3 sold nearly as well on Wii as on 360 and far better than on PS3 (but they didn't bother making Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Wii until two years later, meaning the Wii never actually got Modern Warfare 2 at all), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed sold about as well on Wii as on PS3 and 360, but the sequel prioritised PS3 and 360 and the Wii version did poorly as a result. And oftentimes, when a Nintendo-console exclusive becomes non-exclusive, it does *worse* on the other systems. See ZombiU as another example (sold a million copies on Wii U, completely flopped on PS4 and XBO). I could start to list off all of the games, franchises, and genres that publishers never even attempted on the Wii, despite it being the best-selling system at the time, but I think I've already made my point. You can list off a lot of titles that third parties have released on Nintendo systems. But those lists never capture the actual quality, or the treatment given. These companies are mostly public companies - they can't just ignore a system without some form of "justification". So they release inferior titles, expecting investors to do exactly what many gamers do - list off titles without accounting for quality. There is no doubt that there is bias against Nintendo. Nintendo doesn't bend itself to the will of the third party, the way that Sony and Microsoft usually do. This is reason enough for the third party to be biased against Nintendo (not that it's actually a valid reason, just that it's human nature). |
What about the time when they did make efforts? Rockstar developed GTA: Chinatown Wars as a DS game and it was very well recieved but sold very poorly on a huge install base.
Ubisoft published Assassin's Creed 3 on Wii U which released a few weeks after the other versions, but sold very poorly. Activision released COD BO2 on Wii U which was a good version of the game but it didn't sell well. Games like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Blacklist which were well recieved sold poorly on Wii U.
The third party games that sold well on Wii U relative to other versions are Just Dance and Skylanders, and that's what it gets now. Its Nintendo's demographics that are the reason third party games don't sell well on Nintendo platforms as they are violent and mature or realistic, and that's not what people buy on Nintendo consoles.
