I agree Stever89... I wish everyone expressed their points in imaginary conversations. :)

Its kind of sad though as if the trend continues we may not see Devil May Cry 4/MGS4 type of games anymore. Why would they bother if Carnival Games makes them 1000X return on the investment.

Because people will eventually tire of of too many of those types of games. There's always going to be demand for every type of game. And when there's not any demand for a game, then those games won't be made anymore. You don't see a lot of point and click games anymore, but not a lot of people seem to care. Yet, one was released for the Wii.

And that's why the PS3 and 360 are so dangerous. They force developers to focus on types of games that are 'sure things' such as FPS and sequels to games. It's too expensive to develop certain types of games that are never going to sell well, though there will be demand for them.

And anyways, most of these party games aren't selling ALL that well, since WiiPlay is like $10 bucks, and ANY game would sell well for $10 bucks, WiiSports IS packed in, though it's is a lot of fun. Carnival Games only sold a million, Mario Party 8 always sells well. In a few months we'll have RE:UC, Lego Star Wars, SSB:B (now actually), and many more hardcore type games on the million list, showing that those types of games are still "in demand." You can't tell me all the people buying RE4 are buying Mario and Sonic. Consoles need a diverse library's so they can market to many types of people, and so they can gain large userbases. Microsoft has been trying for two years now to get some casuals family-friendly titles, and some people seem to think MS needs to do that in order to get mainstream appeal. Yet Nintendo comes out the gate and does it, and it's a bad thing. What?

I would have to agree with you there. A game that costed not that much money to make could sell A LOT more money and games than a high-budget game that that sells less than expected makes a lower amount of money. That's a good thought, disolitude.

3rd Party shovelware happens, it happened on the GBA, PS2, DS, and now Wii, the same people that were loud and obnoxious with their boasts of PS2 having the largest library of titles forgot to mention how much of it was absolute CRAP, these are the same people that are now complaining that Wii has shovelware and PS3 has the better quality games.

You guys are losing a bit of business sense here. Why does it seem that everyone is making FPS games right now? Because they sell really well. Does that stop them or other companies from making other games? No. You are making the assumption that if every "party" game sells well, then every company will switch to making only "party" games. But not every party game even sells all that well. EA Playground didn't do too well, and I think I remember it being advertised. It even has dodgeball, which is almost a sure buy from me. I love dodgeball. But what happens when all these companies start making only party games? Where does that leave people who don't like party games?

Well you're in luck. Because once a company looks around and sees an oversaturation of party games, they'll realize there is a demand for the typical "hardcore" type game, make one, and with millions of customers starving for a true hardcore game, it will sell 20 million first month. All the other companies seeing this startling great selling game will shift resources to making hardcore games.

That's what would happen if companies were run by lesser men and who were very short sighted. But since there's demand for all types of games, there's no need to completely stop making those types of games. And since the party genre market is growing, that means the industry is growing, which is a good thing. And as more companies learn what a good party game is, and more competition between companies over party games, you'll see the quality of party games improve. Though I don't think reviews will reflect that, because reviewers typically don't like those games, so they'll still not get good scores.

This basically happens with consoles. One console is decided to do well, and thus is given preference for resources. If another console starts doing better, more resources are moved to it, to take advantage of the growing userbase. It's all about supply and demand. As long as there is demand, there will be supply.

And don't worry about lack of quality games. The gaming industry crashed because too many games sucked, so people stopped buying them. Now with more quality control, more competition, more awareness (through reviews), it's harder to continually put out crap without a backlash. Think of Sega. Seems like everytime a game is announced people write it off and say "well let's hope. but it is Sega." I assure you, we'll see more party games (of higher quality), but we won't see less of other types of games. 

@Stever89

I agree again. I don't think Xbox is failing alone in diversifying their library of games. I also wouldn't call the Wii library diverse exactly. Not yet anyway... Now that 3rd party companies have woken up we may see AAA titles coming that are not from Nintendo(I only see RE4 in that column thus far...and its a port, that took capcom 3 days to port over and add motion controls)

Yeah I think all of the consoles have decent diversification in their library's, it's just that the Wii's caters more to the casuals than the hardcores, while the PS3/360 cater more to hardcores than casuals.

Games like MySims would never do near as good as they did on the Wii. But at the same time, RE4 (a port, yes), has sold nearly the same amount as the RE4 game did on the GameCube. And I know the game is only $30, so that probably has to do with the sales, but trust me, the people buying that game are clearly not your Mario and Sonic fans (or at least not only). People don't just buy games unless the plan on playing them, no matter how cheap it is (except for WiiPlay... because you never know when/if you will play it).Edit: well i guess that's not entirely true... $5 games you might pick up on a whim... but $30 games, probably not.

As for the 360 and PS3, like I said, are not failing in having a diverse library, it's just that they don't have the price point or the games to get the mainstream appeal, which is really needed for a console to succeed. The PS2 (and PS1) would never have done so well if they hadn't catered to the casuals (and Sony also focused on expanding the European market, which helped a lot). There just aren't enough "hardcores" out there to "win" a generation.

I think this generation will be interesting because the casuals (and many non-gamers) will go for the Wii, while a lot of those gamers that play a lot of games, but aren't really hardcore, will go for the Wii plus one of the HD consoles, and then the most hardcore of hardcore will own a HD console, and a Wii (since that's where a lot of franchises will go), and will ultimately lead to higher sales for each console compared to the last generation consoles. Meaning the Wii will sell more than PS2, and probably A LOT more, and 360 and PS3 will sell more than the GameCube and Xbox (though that's not hard to tell, since they're only a combined 13 million away or so). The Wii will be the clear "winner," but overall, the consumer will be the true winner.

Just ignore the shovelware and stuff from conspiracy entertainment and you have a Wii library filled with alright - great third party games.

damage control

lolz guys

...but a failure to understand the platform and its potential is one possibility.

From the last paragraph of the article.
I think shat says it all.

Mike from Morgantown