greenmedic88 said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
greenmedic88 said:
Most publishers don't want to take big risks with dev projects on the Wii. That's why I recommended that test. As long as other major 3rd party supporters like Ubisoft and EA continue keep their Wii softs profitable, I don't see what their motive for doing "test runs" would be. We did see a creative game like Boom Blox from EA, but it was not expected to be a major title even though a lot of gamer (myself included) gave it high marks. And it wasn't exactly a high budget, high risk title either. But as for a high budget port to recreate the best visuals possible on the Wii (still downgraded from any other platform), again, what is the motive for this?(1)
Personally, I don't want to see most efforts by third party devs being reduced to ports. So what if you don't want it? It would be a low risk way to see if the Wii will take developers' bigger games. It's for them, and Wii owners, not you. I speak for multi platform gamers who will not buy an inferior Wii port of a game simply because they like the system. If the same game is available for all systems, odds are highly against me buying the Wii version. I don't think I'm the only one in this boat. (2)
Do I buy a high budget Wii port or do I buy a high budget original IP exclusively designed for the Wii? Is this even a question? (3)
But when edgy titles like NMH underperform, what does that tell publishers about the Wii audience?
It only underperformed in an infamous Japan launch party. In terms of sales, it's turned a healthy profit. It's also not a big budget game. If it was on the HD systems, it would have cost more, and likely flopped. NMH was not a commercial success. It hardly exceeded expectations. Even if it made some profits, Suda was disappointed by the level of success. (4)
The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe that Ubisoft bought the rights for NA distribution relatively cheap. (5) And if it had been designed for the PS3, we would have either seen a very different game (much larger with deeper AI) or we would have seen a game that looked strangely out of place on the platform. As much as I loved NMH, I just couldn't see myself playing the same game on the PS3. (6)
Capcom is leading the push in that respect, so I hope no one actually blames Capcom for the relatively low sales of their first original Wii IP because of a failure to properly market the game. Well they blame Capcom a little, but a lot of us understand it's a revival of a nearly dead genre, which is almost more of a risk than a big budget game. Since it's still turnind a healthy profit (unless the game cost more than $7 million), I could see a bigger push with a sequel.
Spyborgs is going to be a very important title in terms of what can be expected from Capcom in the future. I really don't know what to say if it fares no better than Z&W. It would help to know what the budget is for this title, but that's not something open to the public. Well the director says this is an actual game, which may not indicate how much it costs, but it's not going to be cheap. It may be cheaper than you think. I've looked at the early dev materials, and unless this is a very long game, it should be a fairly tight (not a large team), but creative dev team project, similar to Grasshopper. (7)
All I can say is, if you want the continued support of Capcom on the Wii, buy it if it's a good title. Buy it for your friends too. |
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1. First of all, Steven Spielberg was a major creative mind behind Bloom Blox, so this was more him easing into a new medium, than not taking a risk with the Wii.
1a. Second, EA is not following ubisoft's pattern. They've stated that their games will be shooting for all used accessibility. That is not what those games from ubiday are doing, save for RRR3.
1b. Third, just focusing on cheap shovelware is profitable in the short term. In the game business, you want people to keep buying. Even if games are so cheap they're almost impossible to flop, the risk of losing customers means the profit margin is too narrow. That's why Nintendo actually spent money on their downmarket games. They wanted the new gamers to stay with them for more games. In other words, this won't be profitable for long, so trying to focus on more than just one presumed Wii demographic will become more important.
2. And that's why I stated it's not for you. You don't have to buy the Wii version. Others don't have to either. The key is to see if others would make that choice. If enough will, then make more. If enough won't, then they stop. The reason I suggested porting from the 6th gen is that it means the least money is lost of a test doesn't work.
3. If nothing is offered that appeals to you, go for the HD version. If what is offered appeals to others, then they'll go for the Wii version. You can't use your own personal taste to decide what games would be worth selling. I don't use my own tastes, since I know games I don't like are still hits (I don't play sports games, for one).
4. As far as I know, Suda only commented about sales in Japan, which were relatively low. I don't know if he commented on US sales, but they were much better. The first week in the US was nearly four times the first week in Japan (39k to 11k), and the total sales of the US are five times the total sales in Japan (200k to 40k).
5. Duh. Suda 51's games are niche titles. I don't even think the game itself had a high budget. That's why it really isn't a good way to tell if high budget games won't sell on the Wii, since high budget games cannot afford be niche. For that matter, I don't think Fire Emblem or Nippon Icchi games cost a lot either.
6. Which is why I stated that game might have flopped. Yet still, it was a niche game, and this is about big budget games.
7. What I mean by cheap is by the level of money ubisoft is putting into their games. Even though NMH was not big budget, it did cost a lot more than those games.
