Kresnik said:
“Therefore, I feel that we have managed to overcome the challenge of releasing enough first-party franchises on Wii U,” he said.
Looking at the list, they actually had a pretty decent lineup in 2013 in terms of both quantity and quality.
But in terms of sales potential? Not so much. Two Mario platformers propping up minigame collection after niche franchise after second party collaboration was just such a bizzare choice for the platform's first year. |
This comment is ignoring the fact that Nintendo intended for games like Pikmin, Wonderful 101, Game & Wario, Wii Party U, Wii Fit U, DKCR 2, etc., to come out months before they did. They were, I'm sure, also expecting Rayman to remain a big exclusive and actually come out in Feb. 2013. As well as, for example, Aliens: Colonial Marines actually coming out on Wii U at all, and games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution coming out earlier than it did. I wouldn't be surprised if they intended/hoped for MK8 to come out around Christmas, either. But the fact is, their development, and the development of a few third party games (such as Lego City), were for various reasons delayed.
In all honestly, Nintendo would do very well at this point to do what Iwata hinted at, and use some of those billions they've got in the bank right now, to buy at least two or three developers, such as Next Level Games, such as Monster Games, such as perhaps even Platinum, or some other small developer along the lines of Vanillaware or someone. If they are not going to be able to always rely on third party releases (even though I do think third party support will pick back up within the next year or so, after the system sells more), then they obviously need to secure as many exclusives for their system as they can. If Wii U has a shit-ton of good exclusives that people actually want, that would go a long way to offsetting the lack of games like Madden or GTA.
I still would personally prefer Nintendo to make a new Wace Race, Star Fox, and F-Zero internally, because to me, they made the best entries in those series anyway. I would much rather see studios like Next Level and Retro, at least, taking a crack at original IP exclusives, to fill out Nintendo's catalogue. And it also wouldn't hurt for them to just knuckle down and publish Eternal Darkness 2 (instead of an episodic "Shadows of the Eternals") themselves, as a Wii U retail exclusive. They need as many of those kinds of games as they can get.
But I won't deny, Wii provided me with a LOT of great games, more than N64 and GC combined actually, but there were a few I was hoping for that never happened, such as Pikmin, Star Fox, Wave Race, etc. Pikmin finally happened on Wii U, and it's a good game, but it was also a let-down to me because of certain pointless feature ommisions. Hopefully, Wii U does eventually see a new Wave Race, Star Fox, F-Zero, etc., and that they're all GREAT, and not let-downs in any way.
