I'm implying that if they had put in the same amount of effort, but used it to make a 3rd person Dead Space game, they would have at least doubled their sales

wow...so true

Wii is a console directed for young kids. They don't check review scores or anything like that. If they like the cover and if it has some hype these kids buy it. That's why reviews don't affect Wii games as they do to Xbox 360 or PS3 games because it is directed to a more hardcore fanbase.

Am I the only one that read the article in question, because I have to say the way some of your responded is utterly shameful. The author was both thoughtful and self critical. He didn't claim that their games were great. He just felt some of the reviews were overly harsh. Hell he apologized for being critical of reviewers. That said that wasn't the crux of the point he was even making. Neither was the reception on the part of consumers. Go ahead read he wanted to do more for consumers, but was stalemated by Nintendo.

His real issue is with the draconian practices Nintendo uses in reference to the service. Sorry apologists, but not only does he raise a valid point, but he is entirely correct in what he is saying. Nintendo is fleecing developers, and discouraging development on the platform. This is part of why quality is lacking, and is not improving. Probably the biggest reason by far.

Being paid and being profitable are not the same thing. You can argue that a developer doesn't deserve the latter, but is there a justification for not honoring the prior. Unless a developer reaches a threshold Nintendo refuses to give the developer its due. Obviously its never for some, and the check comes far later for others. In either case it is imposing a hardship. It leaves the developer with no safety net. If they at least see some money coming back they might be able to put it towards their next game. This is curtailing development, and obviously making it that much harder for developers to improve. Even bad developers can get good. In this case they aren't even being given the chance.

It is equally obscene to block redevelopment. Nintendo isn't permitting developers to improve their products. To couch it in other terms why are developers not allowed to take broken games back into the shop for a tune up to address problems. That would make for better games for the consumer. That would improve what is offered on the whole for the platform. What is wrong with fixing failures.

This pricing scheme that Nintendo is running is also ludicrous. Who doesn't run sales, promote products, or gasp allow the retail price on some goods to drop. A good host sees to the needs of their guests. Giving developers more options to make their products more viable in the marketplace is just good business.

The real problem here isn't the developers, and no it isn't consumers. If you aren't buying digital games. Then the platform could obviously do without them altogether. The real problem is the way Nintendo is running the online service. A high risk, no options, no rewards scenario is only going to result in little to no development. You might argue that you dislike the games the developer brought to the platform, but who is the say if the system wasn't more lenient that their offerings wouldn't have improved.

Anyway what you should take away from the article is that digital distribution through Nintendo is entirely hostile against developers, and this is obviously a area where Nintendo needs to rework the methodology. You cannot argue about bad development. When the environment it takes place in is bad itself. Improve the system, and you will start to see a improvement in what is being offered.

It isn't so much that digital developers are bad. There are quite a few putting out incredibly good games, and they are doing fairly well on other platforms. Which is largely due to the manufacturers using good practices. What is really disappointing about this article is Nintendo is missing a opportunity here. This is somewhere that they could start to develop strong bonds, and exclusive relationships. In this case Nintendo has done a good job of driving off a developer, and that is just not good for business. They need to be building them up to make their service going into the future better.

This is what Nintendo could be doing right now to improve their next console. Microsoft and Sony can attest to how important these small digital developers are for bolstering their lineups. With a little more tender loving care Nintendo could be doing equally well. As it stands now though it looks like it will take them years to catch up to the other two.

To be fair, the article was only part of one example, and we fast went off-topic to discuss the treatment of retail developers, who deserve many of the harsh words given here. Nintendo's online service is poorly developed with the threshold system (though given how much people bitch about "how much shovelware there is on Nintendo systems" it's hard to wonder that they're not imposing punitive quality controls somewhere), but i would agree that the bigger issue is the utter lack of promotion that WiiWare games receive, both in promotional pricing and just in awareness creation altogether

It is hard to understand why Nintendo can't just copy what they see the competitors are doing, at least when the competitors practices are actually beneficial (and not just core-beneficial), which is definitely the case when you compare WiiWare to XBLA or PSN Games

I like this post because it's something I wanted to address a few years ago. It's as if they wanted them to fail, and Nintendo is part the blame itself. Devs that thought they can throw BS games on Nintendo's console and people will buy it. I will start this off with Electronics Arts because I was never a big fan of them. The last generation, I was one that didn't play John Madden football like everyone else. I liked the 2k series that Sega had and that was where my money went, on both the NFL and NBA series. What EA did with the Wii was terrible with games like Madden where characters are running around with big heads. It always had to have a cartoon/kiddie look to it when it didn't have that look on the Gamecube or Playstation 2. I had spent money on NBA Live 09 and I will tell you, that was the worst/nastiest/ugliest game that I have ever brought in my life. Again, I have the Sega series on the gamecube, and it is better. Ubisoft brought casual games to the Wii and you see effort put in them, like the Just Dance series. It was better they did that than to throw together anything and put on the market for people to buy, which Ubisoft is guilty of. The Godfather: Blackhand Edition was a good game that I liked. The controls was solid and the best that I have seen by any third party dev with any open world game on the Wii. I sold that game cause it would sometime crash while playing, also cars will disappear and appear right in your face, and also has bugs. And EA was the top gaming company at that time puting out these games. It also has tought me better that now I will never buy a game from EA unless I have seen trailers of the game and I read views on it. Second, It will never be brought on day one, but after it go on sale at a steal price. I am going to stop here but stay tuned for the next post that will follow, "Ubisoft".

this is Ninty's greatest strength and their biggest weakness, they are pave the way for fresh ideas and are independent. But they rather go with a path that obviously sucks, just to be different. THe online isnt the only example. WiiSpeak sucked hard too

I agree with the 3rd party make no effort aspect... heck even the square outings were disappointing on Wii, when they should have had an easy time.

Capcom though I can't agree. Yes they put the Wii on the second plane... but they still released a lot more of quality titles than others.
And no RE:UC was not a test title. It came out early in the Wii's life when there weren't many rail shooters, a genre that just felt natural for the wii remote. You can't call that putting out crap on the console when they carter to a yet unchartered aspect of the console's controls. The game itself was incredibly long for a rails shooter, with some re-playability and a local 2 player mode. I'm a rail shooter fan and I liked RE:UC. The real test game for RE if there was any was RE4... which incidentally sold well.

Test games in the rail shooter genre are stuff like Dead Space... that you don't even understand why it's on Wii in the first place.

A question I have been asking myself a lot recently is whether or not there are 3rd party games that can find success on Nintendo platforms who wouldn't have found a similar (or higher) level of success on other platforms. If I was developing a game this is something I would seriously consider before deciding on platform.

Nintendo platforms this gen offered a cheaper development environment as well as a different audience than PS360 (but not compared to iOS/Facebook) but this also came with its own share of draconian restricitions.

The fact that excellent games can find success on a service is no indication of the quality of the service. Like it or not, the performance of mediocre games is actually a far better measurment of this.

No, but a service should do as much as possible to promote transparency in order to help a product find its audience. Games that are scored 8-10 in reviews are more likely to sell based on the review alone. But games scoring 5-8 are more likely to be treated with caution by the informed consumer, as well as be ignored more often by the remaining consumers due to little word of mouth.

I'm sure every one of us has been in the situation where a demo of a niche game persuaded us to purchase it, despite not looking particularly appealing based on screenshots or reviews. Many times a product is released that is mediocre due to time/budget constraints, but even a small level of success could be enough to allow the developer to make a higher quality game next time, not to mention invest some of that profit into patching and polishing the already released game, which is something you can't even do on Nintendo platforms...

The hard-headed mentality of "only excellent developers are welcome here" does very little to encourage growth on Nintendo platforms. If you're already an excellent developer, chances are you're doing fine on an alternate platform and have been for some time, in which case you don't NEED Nintendo's silly restrictions... These restrictions are only useful if they help create new markets, but new markets don't usually start out with AAA levels of success.

I think this why many small developers see Nintendo environments as hostile, and I can't really blame them.