| ItsaMii said: Your reasoning isn`t wrong WoW, but I think you are missing 2 points. 1) 360/PS3/PC is not a single entity (credits to Bod). Building a game for one of these platforms does not guarantee that the porting will go smoothly. 360 and PC may be similar, but PS3 is not so easy. It takes several months to make a good port evenwhen they start developing on the consoles at the same time. Porting costs are not insignificant. One could make an good game for the Wii with the money to port a AAA PS3/Xbox360 game. The userbases have different tastes, so making a multiplatform game can be bad for business (like a game selling ok on one console and breaking even/losing money on the other). 2) You are right in theory, refusing to support the Wii is not a one way trip to hell. Some developers/publishers proved this: Ubisoft, Epic and Activision. Everyone else is either bleeding money or showing us a pathetic performance this gen. Midway, THQ have crappy sales all around and are losing trucks of money. Take 2 and EA have ok sales (much less than last gen) but are losing lots of money. Konami and Square Enix are 2 big non factors, they are not making Wii games, but their HD console games are few and far between. Sega, Capcom and Ubisoft are supporting everyone evenly. My conclusion is that only really big and profitable companies like Ubisoft and Activision could choose to ignore the Wii (even though they are not doing it). |
1) Porting costs, while not insignificant, shouldn't be overestimated either. It's far easier to port an existing game than to build an entirely new one in most cases I'd wager. Indeed the PC and 360 are very similar in development which naturally makes 360/PC games an easy choice. Right there you can hit a good portion of the gaming public and with the userbase of the PS3 growing and its specs fairly close to the 360, it's another natural choice for porting. You can say it's more difficult and somewhat costly, but developers are showing with one multiplatform game after another that, to them, the profits (and brand exposure) outweigh the costs. I can guarantee you that they wouldn't be making ports if they expected to take a bath on their investments.
2) To be fair, Midway and THQ are not all-star developers in the first place. After playing THQ's Titan's Quest for the PC, I was very much less than impressed. In looking at their respective lineups, it's easy to point out shovelware left and right in them. I don't think picking a couple crappy developers and saying that their sales are bad proves anything about the PS3/360. On the contrary, the fact that PS3/360 owners won't necessarily buy crap and shovelware as it is apparent some Wii owners do is a good thing. You can see the result for yourself. The shovelware goes to the Wii while the big name titles (that the developers know people will buy) go to the 360/PS3.
Your points are well-taken if a little flawed. ^_^
