By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - A thought on "There are no good conventional third party games for the Wii"

Garcian Smith on 02 May 2008

Who cares about "conventional games" for the Wii? I didn't buy my Wii to play conventional games, and I doubt many other people did, either. The Wii is all about unconventional ideas.



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

Around the Network
famousringo on 02 May 2008
Garcian Smith said:
Who cares about "conventional games" for the Wii? I didn't buy my Wii to play conventional games, and I doubt many other people did, either. The Wii is all about unconventional ideas.

 Indeed. This is the hidden blessing of having all the non-Nintendo entrenched franchises on other platforms. It leaves room for new ideas to move in.



"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event."  — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.

bdbdbd on 02 May 2008

@HS: I made the same notion and was thinking of making a similar thread like this back then, but since we had more than enough "Conduit" threads, i decided to let it be.

Anyway, publishers see practically a blue ocean there, while every decent game with a first or second person view, where you're supposed to shoot your enemies, has been a million seller on Wii, ie proven their sales. So it's not that amazing after all.
I see the thing being more like the developers having their hands full of PS360 projects, and investments around 20M per game, so they need to end up their current projects to get some returns before starting new ones, meaning that there's yet nothing to publish. Just as someone said, Wii is going to get lots of new game announcements in the near future.



Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

akuma587 on 02 May 2008

I think most of the people on this site aren't that selfish or myopic in terms of how they view other consoles, so I for one am glad to see games like this making it to the Wii.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

Words Of Wisdom on 02 May 2008
HappySqurriel said:

I see the comment "Third party publishers developers 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.

 


Fixed.



Around the Network
HappySqurriel on 02 May 2008
Words Of Wisdom said:
HappySqurriel said:

I see the comment "Third party publishers developers 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.

 


Fixed.


You do realize that developers only get to make the projects that publishers are interested in funding ...

There are a few exceptions, but the number of truely independant developers who can fully fund their own game (in particular a big budget game) is very, very small.



windbane on 02 May 2008
Sky Render said:
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.

Doesn't baffle me. It's great getting more people into games and accepting of the entertainment medium. That doesn't change the fact that third parties are still pushing videogames more on the other systems. The forrest consists of mostly gamecube-quality trees mixed with ports and mini-game collections. We had those last generation. The Wii isn't transforming videogames, it's just creating some more fans and adding a new pointing mechanism (that's still not as good as a mouse). Rock Band, Guitar Hero, LittleBigPlanet are and will do the same. I just want people to accept the Wii for what it is and stop acting like Nintendo is perfect.



Me on 03 May 2008

I recall about a year ago there was a few announcements for studios like Jet Black being created, Majestico saying they were concentrating on the Wii to turn around costs, High Voltage saying they were also concentrating on the Wii and now their projects are well down the track and it's showing.

Yes party games will sell as many kinds own this console but thats the thing it's sold to all ages so a Bingo or Bridge game for all of the oap's that play bowling would also probably sell well as will some of these games. Publishers at some point are gonna saturate the market with all of the mini games and move on to smething new and these devs will provide that.

Majestico certainly have me intreagued with Blastworks: Build and destroy and they even announced a few days ago they've discovered a way to use the Wii's system ID to replace friends codes, High Voltage look like their gonna push the envelope and in 08 things are gonna get interesting.



 


Words Of Wisdom on 03 May 2008
HappySqurriel said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
HappySqurriel said:

I see the comment "Third party publishers developers 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.

 


Fixed.


You do realize that developers only get to make the projects that publishers are interested in funding ...

There are a few exceptions, but the number of truely independant developers who can fully fund their own game (in particular a big budget game) is very, very small.


You don't quite understand.  The communications between developers and publishers goes both ways.

Sometimes the publishers acquire a license and approach developers with the proposition of building a game for it.  This tends to happen with movie or other franchise tie-ins.

Sometimes developers will attempt to create a title themselves.  If they can publish it themselves, they will sometimes do so as it means a larger profit.  If they see risk in it, they will approach publishers with it to spread the risk and lower the cost of failure.  The former usually involves a larger more mature developer studio and the latter usually involves either a developer with a lot of high recognition or terrific marketing.  Square Soft would be an example of the former and Bioware (prior to EA acquisition) would be a good example of the latter.

The final scenario is a developer without the funds to publish a game title.  These are the ones truly at the mercy of the publisher as their ability to find a publisher dictates whether or not they can make the game.

 

Now if publishers are literally jumping to get Conduit in their portfolio, it means at very least they see profit in it.  This doesn't necessarily mean that they are otherwise interested in the Wii itself or in developers looking to make games for the Wii.  If we do assume that publishers are jumping at Conduit because it's positioned as a high quality Wii title, that means that they're more than willing to put good titles on the Wii but you aren't seeing many because... you guessed it, developers aren't interest in the Wii.

So either this incident indicates nothing more than publishers can smell profit in the water (which is only logical) or that developers aren't interested in the Wii while publishers are.  Take your pick.



exindguy on 03 May 2008

Actually, WoW, you don't quite understand. While the scenarios you outlined have happened, in the vast, vast majority of cases, the publisher sets the tone and the developers follow suit--not the other way around.

Basically, if the publishers don't want to finance Wii games (because it's a 'fad' or only shovelware/mini-game comps/Nintendo games sell, etc.) the developers aren't going to show any interest in it. The reason they're not going to show any interest in it is because it's *suicidal* to develop games that nobody will publish. And, up until recently, nobody on the publishing end was really interested in the Wii from an original, non-casual (in the mom/dad/sis/grandma/grandpa playing games), mold. A perfect case in point is that publishers are *clearly* signaling that they want Wii product in this style/complexity (if there's a dozen after your game as in this case, it's a safe bet they want more).

In the case of High Voltage, they are an anomaly in a very risk-averse business (the prevalence of sequels makes this painfully obvious) and, clearly, they must have other business (on 360/PS3) and/or a large amount of cash in the bank to justify what, at the time, had to be considered a dangerous move (even if it's clear that it was the right one now) because they had no publisher and went ahead anyway. But let's be clear: this is a very, very unusual situation (even the Biowares of the world--of which even Bioware isn't even amongst anymore--don't self-finance entire games that cost north of 20 million dollars to produce without publisher backing--hell, they don't even self-publish Wii games that cost 500k-1 million dollars).

What it comes down to is HS had it correct the first time around:

"You do realize that developers only get to make the projects that publishers are interested in funding ...

There are a few exceptions, but the number of truely independant developers who can fully fund their own game (in particular a big budget game) is very, very small."

This situation (Conduit and High Voltage) actually illustrates that if you have a Wii game to sell to a publisher, there are quite a few of them that want it badly because they like money and probably want more games like it because they want more money. It doesn't speak at all to overall developer interest but I can assure you: after this episode they will be a lot more interested than they were a few weeks ago (as if they weren't already getting there due to the Wii's sales rate).