Third party are doing fine on wii. Look at the sales:

Mario&Sonic at the olympics 4,56m
GH 3 2,79m
Carnival games 1,94m
Resident evil 4 1,63m
Sonic&secret rings 1,39m
RRR 1,35m
Lego star wars 1,28m
RRR2 1,25m
RE:UC 1,25m
MySims 1,1m

10 million sellers on wii, that is nice. 360 has only 33 third party million sellers. :(

Bodhesatva said: It's not a crutch, Kasz, it's a different set of emphases. Again, I think muscle cars are a great example. Is the extra acceleration and top speed of a Pontiac GTO a "crutch"? No, it's just a different set of priorities for what the car should be, and clearly some people prefer those priorities.

I would argue that for games it is in fact a crutch.

I wouldn't compare extra acceleration and top speed to the sports car.

I'd compare it to how the car looks.

A good game is good game. Suddenly not being able to rely on good graphics isn't going to change that. A game like gears would still be good and sell well on the wii with worse graphics. (IMO.)

The only people this is a huge problem for rather then a slight bump are people like Epic who sell middleware engines.

When I was younger I was quite the athlete, and was able to play at a very high level for the sports I played (Rugby and Football) in the community I played in (getting as high as being a non-traveling alternate for the national team in Rugby). Now there were quite a few players who believed they were better players than I was, that (probably) thought it was unfair that I was selected to play at a higher level than they were; the truth is many of these players were more talented than I was but they didn't put the extra time into working out in the gym, or practicing to improve their skills, and this meant that they didn't make as large of an impact on the field.

The reason I bring this up is very similar to how a lot of third party publishers and their fans/analysts react to the success of Nintendo; if you're not using your best development teams, are not taking advantage of your strong IPs, and are not marketing the projects you receive you shouldn't expect to be elevated to the sales level of Nintendo when they're doing all of these things.

It's not just graphics, though. Physics models can be improved. AI theoretically could, but I haven't seen it much yet. Most importantly, both the PS3 and 360 have more robust online models, including a much easier DLC model thanks to HDs.

Bodhesatva said: It's not just graphics, though. Physics models can be improved. AI theoretically could, but I haven't seen it much yet. Most importantly, both the PS3 and 360 have more robust online models, including a much easier DLC model thanks to HDs.

Physics models have been improved... but that's never really talked about except by people like epic who want to sell their engines again and DLC hasn't been even remotely scratched yet as far as the big companies go.

As for the online... I think that's just more of a matter of the software released so far compared to the hardware. The games that really succeed on the 360 and PS3 aren't any different then the ones that succeed on the wii.

They are the ones that break away from those things you talk about.  Sure they have those things, but they improve in other more important areas.

It's actually more resistance on the HD consoles as you have to do all that AND the other things, rather then just the other things.

Kurakasa said: Third party are doing fine on wii. Look at the sales: Mario&Sonic at the olympics 4,56m GH 3 2,79m Carnival games 1,94m Resident evil 4 1,63m Sonic&secret rings 1,39m RRR 1,35m Lego star wars 1,28m RRR2 1,25m RE:UC 1,25m MySims 1,1m 10 million sellers on wii, that is nice. 360 has only 33 third party million sellers. :(

With one year head start, now show me the third party million seller on the first 18 months.

Bodhesatva said: It's not a crutch, Kasz, it's a different set of emphases. Again, I think muscle cars are a great example. Is the extra acceleration and top speed of a Pontiac GTO a "crutch"? No, it's just a different set of priorities for what the car should be, and clearly some people prefer those priorities.

When it becomes THE emphasis, it's a crutch.   A game should be able to sell on the merits of gameplay alone.  When that fails and graphics are required to re-balance the ship....it's a crutch.

 

Bod, your muslce car example would actually fall under gameplay, not graphics.   A high end paint job would be what you're looking for in a car analogy.

Viper1 said: Bodhesatva said: It's not a crutch, Kasz, it's a different set of emphases. Again, I think muscle cars are a great example. Is the extra acceleration and top speed of a Pontiac GTO a "crutch"? No, it's just a different set of priorities for what the car should be, and clearly some people prefer those priorities. When it becomes THE emphasis, it's a crutch. A game should be able to sell on the merits of gameplay alone. When that fails and graphics are required to re-balance the ship....it's a crutch.

In your opinion. Obviously, other people have different opinions and priorities. For example, I can certainly imagine a car enthusiast looking at a game with mediocre graphics but amazing features and driving modes; they might claim that the game uses its features as a "crutch" for its lack of visual fidelity. This is because the graphical quality is first and foremost in this genre, and gameplay is a secondary concern.

If you don't agree with those priorities, that's fine. It's your opinion. Your opinion happens to be the more popular one, so you can always point that out. 

Really good argumentation in this thread, Bod. I agree that third-parties are in tough shape, and they're likely to get worse before the situation gets better. (The performance/muscle car analogy is an excellent one to use.) Still, I don't think it's quite as dire as you've pointed out. I think there's still an untapped market on the Wii for games built around the traditional "performance" specs, one that will exist for at least a few more years as we continue to make the transition into the new social/interface gaming cycle. Let me put it in the form of rhetorical questions:

How many blockbuster first-person shooters are there on the Wii? One at most, and that's if you count Red Steel. It sold a million units.

How many blockbuster RPGs are there on the Wii? Zero. Maybe you could count Super Paper Mario at a stretch - that sold two million units.

How many traditional fighting games are there on the Wii? Zero. Brawl is the closest, and it's done pretty well.

How many traditional racers (non-kart) are there on the Wii? A couple, certainly nothing from a top-tier development team.

You get my point. The traditional big-selling genres are virtually non-existant on the Wii, aside from Nintendo's own first-party efforts. Instead we have lots and lots of minigame collections and quirky niche games. I would argue that since ALL of the "performance" games have gone onto 360/PS3, there's an underserved market for these titles on the Wii, one where a third-party publisher could potentially make a tidy profit. That's what I would do if I were in charge of a third-party publisher right now: I'd say "we need an 8.5 shooter and an 8.5 RPG on the Wii right now, since we'll have the market to ourselves."

At the very least, that's how I'd answer the "what should third parties do?" question. That and publish a lot of multiplatform 360/PS3 games.

What is gameplay to you? If you take away graphics and with it:

Atmosphere, rousing story telling, immersion, emotions like horror, shock, awe etc. You are left with the definition of a game from 1980.

Graphics IS a gameplay element.

Its weird that some really expensive games do not get basic gameplay mechanics right but thats a different matter. I think in this day and age we can expect both: Great graphics and great gameplay mechanics. There are enough games which provide that and we should punish those developers who cannot get it right.