Does it still make sense to be still doubting the Wii's success?

@Bod

The time it takes for an industry to form around a company would depend upon the turnaround rate for the products, the amount of time that such products will have to prove their performance, the amount of capital each product takes as a % of the company revenue, as well as the cycle time for reinvestment of results from the previous generation.

Such industry changes is typically measured in generations of product iterations. Since it takes about 2-3 yrs for games to be released, ~1 yr for sale results, and since game production takes a significant portion of the entire company operating income (most companies can only develop 1-3 big budget games at one time), I would estimate 2-4 generations of the product cycle.

What this means is that it may take actually several years to happen. Companies can always go into debt to fund constantly unprofitable games and last for a while. Look at how long Midway and Atari are still around even though they have virtually no real success in a long time. It'll likely take till the end of this generation I'm guessing.

My rocket needs a breast augmentation.

Games already released / in development from Codemasters for the Wii :

Erscheint Frühling 2008 Emergency Mayhem	Erscheint TBA Dragonology™
Erschienen 30. März 2007 Heatseeker

Yeah, after putting so much effort on the Wii, they can rightfully complain. 

This is not a fanboy comment, has codemasters ever released a good game? Everything they seem to touch turns to shit. I remember when I was a kid and I learned at a very young age (NES days) that codemasters make rubbish.

No, it doesn't.

In regards to the Wii, it's up to the Codemasters CEO whether he wants to be the wheat or the chaff.

Time is running out for opportunity and we all know that time is money's equivalent.

This is historic. They fear the Nintendo monopoly and with good reason. I always say that Nintendo is the de facto alpha & omega of this business and 3rd parties who remember Nintendo from the NES/SNES days do NOT want to give them this much power again. They built Sony up & others to counter Nintendo's power.

And for awhile it worked. But it was inevitable that it would return to Nintendo's hands eventually based how they engineer this business.

The whine that Nintendo makes games "too good" is weakness. That's a challenge to step up your game and best them. But most don't know how to handle that for some reason.

They find themselves conflicted on doing what makes most business sense (the most viable platform) and what makes most political sense (keeping a solid base on alternative platforms). Sad thing is the alternative platforms are not really in this business for the games and have ulterior motives for this industry which results in the kind of machines they make and the expenses they contain.

Eventually a shoe has to drop. Something has to give. Eventually as Nintendo strengthens their hold on this business the 3rd parties will have little choice but to join their platform. That or go to PC/mobile phone/etc.

3rd parties are afraid of Nintendo and with good reason but until they can get behind or create a viable platform with a similarly strong business model they are stuck doing business with the Marios.

By the way, what's it like being Bodhesatva?

John Lucas

Just to further highlight how odd this guy's remarks are, please note that the games he refers to as "unusustainable" are Brain Age and Brain Age 2.

So he isn't just calling the Wii a fad. He's calling the DS a fad.

People, I think we almost all agree that he's wrong, and I also know we've all explained 10000 times why he's wrong. In this thread, that isn't the point. This isn't some forum poster we're arguing with or trying to educate; this is a CEO of software development company. He isn't reading here, so we have no one to convince -- all this means is that one developer isn't going to be heavily developing for the Wii, and again, I'd suspect there are at least some other major decision makers in the industry thinking the same thing.

Instead of explaining why he's wrong or showing how bad we thinks his games are, I think there are more productive avenues for this discussion to tread down: do you think (as I do) that there must be other CEOs of other companies thinking the same things. How will this effect them? How will it affect us, as consumers? How long would it take before these companies admitted the Wii is not, in fact, a fad?  

While he is correct in saying that most of the software sold for the Wii has been and will continue to be first party titles, he isn't taking advantage of the 40 percent that is left over. A third party makes a killer game, and people will buy it. Simple. Anyone that ignores the millions upon million of Wii owners out there is silly.

Yeah I don't think Nintendo being the only profitable company is good for the long term prospects of the industry...but I don't think Nintendo being the only profitable company is Nintendo's fault.

@topic, 

Nintendo is supposedly only attracting new casual users, but then why does this hurt the bottom line of companies not even really paying attention to the Wii? The answer is because the Wii is still competing for the "core gamer"'s money as well and it is garnering a decent portion of that market as well.

But I don't see how you can hold Nintendo's success against them, if anything the lack of adaptability by the 3rd party companies who are having financial troubles would be the thing I would point to as the cause of these issues. I understand folks were cought of guard at first, but its way past that point and time these guys stop crying in their beer and do something about it.