Haha, well said.

 Square used to be so cool in the PS1 days.

@Dodece: Redsteel was a lot like Assassins Creed, big budget for the platform, lots of hype but it didn't live up to hype and the game had some serious flaws. You're right about that RS had a lot of sales because of being launch title and the lack of competition, but consider the low installbase at the time it was released. RS would propably have pretty similar sales if it would have been released 6 months later. So when the game is qualitywise so similar with Assassins Creed, i wouldn't say Wii owners having high tolerance for bad quality games in comparision. Besides, haven't the problem in bad 3rd party game sales been in their low quality.

And RE4, like Naz said, you don't follow your own logic. Considering RE4 being an old port, it has had unbelievably good sales. But in the other hand, it was the first high quality shooter on the Wii. The best hardcore 3rd party title on the Wii propably is RE:UC. As i see it, ironically, RE:UC is the best RE game so far.

Usually you should say that all exclusives are guaranteed sellers. MP3 definately underperformed to most peoples expectations, but considering sales history of Metroids, which all are incredibly solid titles, MP3 is actually doing pretty good.
Now, consider it this way, every 1st party title that sells for example million, shows that the platform has viable userbase for that specific type of games. Saying that Nintendos 1st party titles saturates the market on Wii, for example SMG would have saturated the market for platformers or Twilight Princess saturated the market for adventure games, is similar to saying that Halo 3 saturated the market for shooters on 360 and therefore it makes no sense to make shooters for 360, even that the 360 userbase is clearly biased towards FPS fans. And if we want to continue the logic, GT Pro Series and Monster 4X4 shows that it's a good idea to make a really crappy driving game for Wii, since there are lots of room that type of games because the two Ubisoft games sold badly and didn't saturate the market.
Of course Nintendos first party is competition for other publishers, but even without Nintendo, 3rd parties would have to compete against each other.
The main reasons for 1st party games being so dominant on Nintendo platforms is because of their high quality and them being nearly the only (quality) exclusives (=the reason to buy the specific console) on the platform for the last 2 generations, when Nintendo have been losing to competition.

What do you mean by "traditionally lower attach rate"? Traditionally Nintendo platforms have had good attach rates, or at least not worse than the winning competition. Wii may have lower attach rate than competition, but it's because it has constantly sold good, haven't had similar bundles with competition or have been out less time than competition. And looking at game sales, on a current weekly level Wii has the best software total out of the three.

360 has been out twice the time than the Wii and it's yet to prove any 3rd party game to become real success (if you don't count the RE:s or RRR and RS, or few smaller games, there's no really successfull 3rd party title on any current gen platforms).

One (short term) problem Wii has indeed, it's the variety of it's library. Nintendo has good selling 1st party titles on a lot of genres and have created (and proved them selling) a userbase for those genres, which is a certain amount of Wii owners per genre, which means that Wii owners buy more different type of games than for example 360 owners, when games in different genres can sell nearly equally on Wii, while none can (with similar userbase) reach the 360 shooter levels, but games out of the "main genres" will easilly outsell any 360 game out of 360:s "main genres".

To put this simply, if 80% of the userbase are FPS fans, an FPS will have a great attach rate but most other genres will fail. If, on the other hand, your userbase is more diverse with 25% Shooter fans, 25% platform fans, 25% casuals and 25% adventure/sport titles there may never be a game as successful as on the console with 80% FPS fans but there will be a bigger variety of successful games across different genres.

I used to appreciated Dodece's posts, but lately he's becoming the drama queen of FUD arguments.

Here's something for you to refute Dodece - the 3rd party titles you slagged off, while possibly being bad (although not according to most people, at least for RE4), have proven beyond doubt that 3rd party software can sell well on the Wii even if it's not party games.

As the Wii userbase grows, even if a given title has a very low attach rate, it will have great sales as long as it's a good game with good marketing (and a bit of luck, as always in business).

The only people who care about attach rate are console makers (due to royalties) and FUD makers like you (due to the weak power it gives to their arguments). Absolute sales numbers (coupled with expectations) are the real measures of a game's success, and that's what 3rd parties and investors look at.

Dodece, you're obviously a smart guy... Why don't you use your brain for something more productive than those half-assed arguments you've been posting lately?

 Excellent post.  And probably points out one of the 3rd party problems that they need to address when they release their games.  Any FPS on X360 released +1 month before or probably up to 2 months or so after Halo3 would have been smothered by the hype of Halo.  In a similar manner, the same type of games as the big IP of Nintendo would tend to do the same.  The solution:  Release your games before or after the N game, when the players for that type of games are a bit bored with the hyped game and looking for something else.

As also pointed out, as the gamer base of the Wii expands, so will the number of potential buyers of any decent game produced.  No, the games will not match the sheer beauty and overall effects needed by lots of data and number crunching of the HD machines, but on the other hand, neither will the cost for making a decent game.  For a number of gamers, getting to play say 3 Zack & Wiki games over 6 months (not the style but how well they were made) would match getting to play 1 HD game of Halo3 (again, not necessarily that game, but how well that one was made) over that same 6 months.

Relieving boredom can be very profitable for 3rd parties if they can come up with the games that do it for that machine (in this case the Wii) players. 

from jhlennon1

Square Enix are doing what Square Enix do best. They are doing nothing to help anyone. They only supported the DS after Nintendo had done all the hard work, they are doing nothing of any note on the Wii, their 360 support has been lame at best and with the PS3 they are dragging FFXIII out as long as possible leaving Namco, Sony, Konami etc... to do all the work.

After the userbase has been established (by everyone other then them) they release their games and cash in. S-E executive talk is very annoying. When they start to do anything, then they can talk. Before that, S-E can STFU.

It's beyond obvious that S-E are sitting back and waiting for GT5, MGS4, Tekken 6 etc... to do the work on the PS3 for them... while they sit back and talk trash.


SE talking trash? LOL! They're debating to see how they should sell their series right now. JRPG's generally sell to the core gamers so in all fairness it's a smart decision. Making direct decisions too soon can be bad for your company. Plus with all do respect they're working on many many great games.
The Last Remnant, Versus XIII, KH3, and Infinite Discovery are some prime examples. Not to mention FFXII came out more recently than any previous major
MGS, GT or Tekken game. FFXII was very successful btw and it IS a great game.

from bdbdbd
@Dodece: Redsteel was a lot like Assassins Creed, big budget for the platform, lots of hype but it didn't live up to hype and the game had some serious flaws. You're right about that RS had a lot of sales because of being launch title and the lack of competition, but consider the low installbase at the time it was released. RS would propably have pretty similar sales if it would have been released 6 months later. So when the game is qualitywise so similar with Assassins Creed, i wouldn't say Wii owners having high tolerance for bad quality games in comparision. Besides, haven't the problem in bad 3rd party game sales been in their low quality.

AC didn't live up to the hype, but it's quality was much greater than Red Steel. I usually don't trust review scores, but there is a fine line between telling if a game is superior to another game in terms of just the score.

Red Steel
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/932528.asp?q=Red%20Steel

Assassins Creed
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/930022.asp?q=Assassins%20Creed

From reading hundreds of comments online, I can also tell you that people enjoyed AC much more than Red Steel. I rarely even hear about anyone liking RS honestly.

I never said I was looking to win a popularity contest. I find it strange that I am most often complemented in the back handed manner only when I disagree with popular opinion. Intelligent people can disagree.

I am rather disturbed by the defense of Red Steel. This is a title that took great advantage of its launch window which coincided with the consoles own launch. Which will always help a titles sales despite quality. The big fish in a small pond analogy.

This title is sub par for any console. Receiving a metacritic rating of 63. Were that a letter grade it would be a D. To compare it to Assassins Creed is almost criminal that game received a metacritic score of 82. The game was rushed, and poorly developed. Ubisoft has confessed to not having done as well by the Wii as they should have. Are we going to argue with Ubisofts own evaluation of their own efforts.

Red Steel was a mediocre title at best. Thats what my first hand experience tells me, and the professional reviewers validate that. This game couldn't even climb into the arena of decent let alone good or great. Don't defend a shitty game it comes off weak.

Don't defend Red Steel it doesn't deserve it. The only redeemable feature of the game was its sound track, and from what I understand you can buy that separately.

from ItsaMii
You are trying too hard dude. Give it a rest, take a day off and stop looking like a fool. How can RE4 be a triple port? The original GC version was a port of what? If you used the PC version that could make sense. It could, if you did not say "returned to the Wii". So RE4 was developed for the Wii ported to GC, then PS2 and later returned as a port to the Wii. Now all makes sense.


Wow, you gave an entire discussion on something so subtle as that little mistake. It's the content, not the subtleties that matter in a debate. Please keep that in mind.

 Strawman, meet red herring.