I see the comment "Third party publishers aren’t interested in making high quality conventional videogames for the Wii" and I just wanted to point something out that was missed a couple of weeks ago. Soon after IGN reported on High Voltage’s Conduit, 12 publishers showed immediate interest in publishing the game for them.

Now, although this is not entirely unprecedented, you don’t typically see publishers fighting over a game that is being developed by a team that has never had a blockbuster hit; usually, after an announcement like this the publisher would be listed as TBA for 12 months before they could finally work out a deal with a less than stellar publisher.

Certainly, some of these publishers that approached High Voltage probably were not the best in the industry; but, being that they (seemingly) have the budget available for what could potentially be a fairly large budget game it wouldn’t surprise me that several of these publishers were the big players in the industry.

Where have you heard about third party not wanting to make quality titles for the Wii? I believe you misunderstand what people are saying. It's actually more like third party publishers not feeling that the return from releasing a great game on the Wii is not worth the effort and money that goes into developing for the title. Therefore, they just make shovelware that will profit no matter how poorly it sells. They don't see any great return there so they won't go further in their commitment to Wii development. Sure if a game like "The Conduit" can garner hype, publishers will go for it. I want to write more to this but the idea in your post is too narrow and I won't stray off.

I think the fact that you are pointing out a no-name developer getting picked up is telling. No one is saying third parties are ignoring the Wii. Quite the contrary, but most of the games aren't their main titles. I'd at least wait to see if the game is even good before pushing it as an example of a larger trend, rather than the exception.

Actually, from what I have seen, quite a few people claim that the only types of games that third party publishers are intersted in are casual games like Carnivale Games and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics. The fact that publishers seem to be in a feeding frenzy (on a level that is typically reserved for developers like Epic Games and Free Radical) for a "No Name" developer should be very interesting; they probably aren't that interested in the developer based on their history as much as they're interested in the product that they're producing (which doesn't really stand out except when you consider the platform it is being released upon).

I could be wrong, but I suspect that publishers have looked at why Nintendo is so dominant on their own platform (they're the only developer producing high quality conventional games for the Wii) and they're desperately looking for developers to produce high quality conventional games; to a certain extent these developers are rare at the moment because a large portion of them started work on XBox 360/PS3 games which have very long development cycles.

The nature of what is selling well on the Wii baffles most of the haters of the system. They see collections of minigames, and basically only spot the forest for the trees. The games that sell well on the Wii are not selling well because they have minigame collections, because they're Nintendo franchises, or because they're quirky. They sell well because the experience they provide appeals to users. And to a user who has become content to repeat the same incrementally upgraded experience that games have offered for the last 20-some years on consoles, it makes no sense to rejoice at something completely new and defying that long-standing tradition.

There is currently a power vaccuum in Wii development, and publishers are scrambling to fill it up. The Conduit is one of the many effects of this struggle. It will be fun to watch, and we'll end up with some great original IPs because of it.

About a year ago is when people realized the Wii wasn't just a fad, so it will probably be another year before there are a lot of really good games being released for the Wii. I think we are going to get a lot of awesome announcements for Wii games in development at E3 this year.

i would really like this game to sell well so then wii can get even more shooters and also make its library more full with all of the genres

Nice observation. celine's thread about THQ's Wii development also interested me.

I think developers (and publishers) are starting to figure out what makes a good Wii game.