That third parties are having a hard time on Nintendo Wii is actually a consequence from the SNES/Genesis era and the generations after it. The culprits are ALL console and game developers. They lead gaming to a dangerous point. No, this is not to criticize PS360, but game development and marketting resulted in previous generations.
Starting from the SNES era, the market who buys the games became "core gamers", people who love to play games as much as they want. This market got so known that game design, development and marketing bacame so much easier to the point to make the game a success is to let "core gamers" know that their game was better than the rest, that it stands out. This is not wrong or a sing of failure, because if you keep gamers happy, they will buy your games.
In the world of gaming all was well (aparently) until Nintendo found out the real problem, and with the DS and the Wii they actually revealed that problem to the public. And no matter how hard or loud fanboy hardcore gamers shout that this is a big lie. Wii' sales numbers and third party sales numbers on that console are the solid evidence no one can deny/
What is this evidence? Market segmentation
The first segmentation was gamers and non-gamers. Since the SNES/Genesis era, developers were making more and more games for gamers and less games for non-gamers, so they got specialized in that part. But then, games like Mortal Kombat (which is an awesome game) caused a games' age ranking, which make things a lot worse. A segmentation inside a segmentation made game companies change focus on the new segments they found to be the most "profitable" one. Companies segentaded themselves to cater these new audiences in age groups developing games.
This was the evidence that we never saw until the Nintendo DS and the Wii cameinto the picture... when you segmentate a market too much, you specialize to the point of enclosing yourself and be trapped inside the cage you built without knowing... This proves how Epic games, who developed GoW1/2 and UT3, are after a segment inside a segment of the market: mature core gamers, can't understand other segments (age groups) within the same core market properly, how can they possibly understand the other market the Wii showed?
Third party companies are treating the new market the same way they were treating the old for years as a resut of their years of experience. But in the new market they're blind to see what the non gamers really want from a game. This in result gives what a picture in Malstrom's birdmen article express better
Third party games that don't understand the new market will make plastic dog-like games (casual or hardcore) and when they see that their games don't sell, they blame it on Nintendo with arrogance instead of being humble and accept that they need to study this new market properly before releasing a game that WILL sell. For example: games for everyone and games for different age groups can be confusing, but if you understand that if you make mature (age 17+) for core gamers and expand to mature non-gamers, it's a WIN opportunity.
and don't get me started on marketting a game for non-gamer....
The game industry can't erase the age group segmentation, but they can tear down the non-gamer Vs core-gamer wall.
And this is from developers part.... the publishers are another who don't understand the wii market either. They were responsible for making games like Zack and Wiki and No More Heroes flop. They don't know how to market a Wii game becuase marketting a game for non gamers is different from maleketing it for gamers. And they become arrogant with excuses that they don't buy the games instead of admiting their mistake and study.
