A lot of people have said that Nintendo is following the pattern of the DS with the Wii. A few similarities have been mentioned such as the obvious change in input method and types of games that Nintendo have been making for their systems. The one thing I want to look at though is the game support for the DS throughout the years and how that compares to the Wii thus far. This might show what we can expect to see from Nintendo and third parties in terms of software support in the years to come. The Nintendo DS launched late 2004 in Japan and the Americas and early 2005 in Others. The titles that were released at the respective launches of all three major regions were: · Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt (Bundled Demo) · Asphalt Urban GT · Super Mario 64 DS · WarioWare: Touched · The Urbz: Sims in the City · Project Rub · Rayman DS · Robots · Pokémon Dash · Ping Pals · Polarium · Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits · Spider Man 2 · Tiger Woods PGA tour · Zoo Keeper · Retro Atari Classics · Sprung! The Dating Game · Madden NFL 2005 · Daigasso! Band Brothers · Mahjong Taikai · Chokkan Hitofude · Cool104 Joker & Setline · Kensyui “Dokuta Tendo” Note: underlined games are Nintendo published. So in the launch window the DS had amassed a total of 5 Nintendo published games and a bundled demo. Of these Super Mario 64 DS and Metroid Prime Hunters (demo) are the only ones that can be considered ‘core’ games. Also there were 17 third party efforts in this time and quite a few can be called casually oriented games. So how does the launch of the Wii compare? Here’s a list of the games in the launch window of the Wii Note: underlined games are Nintendo published. The Wii had a far more expansive list of launch games than the DS did and in a shorter time frame. Here we can see a total of 5 Nintendo published games with 2 being core games and 3 being casual games. Of the 3 casual games, Wii Sports is bundled with the Hardware in regions other than Japan and Wii Play is bundled with a Wii Remote. There are 33 third party games on offer of which have around the same percentage of casual games when compared to the DS depending on the criteria. *Thoughts* The Wii launch had much more third party support behind it DS – 13 Wii – 33 So we have a launch base, but we need a much broader look at the library of the DS so observe any patterns. So fast forward TWO years after launch to December 31st 2006. What did the DS’ library look like? Let’s take a quick look at how the DS’ library was shaping up.
All DS Games Ending December 31st 2006 Total Games – 308 Nintendo Published Games – 67 Third Party Published Games – 241
This means that Nintendo published software accounted for a huge 21.75% of the total 308 game library of games and third parties contributions account for the other 78.25%. Let’s put all these figures into perspective shall we? Wii launched in late 2006 in all major regions so to compare its’ software library to the DS’ we will have to look at software released up until December 31st 2008. We haven’t reached that date yet but we can look at the expected release dates of games to compare the two libraries. So without further ado...
All Wii Games Ending December 31st 2008 Total Games – 603 Nintendo Published Games – 36 Third Party Published Games – 567
There is definitely a discrepancy between the two software libraries. On Wii, Nintendo software accounts for only 5.97% of the total library. Also the amount of third party ‘support’ on Wii is astonishing compared to the DS. When People say the Wii is not getting proper third party support however, they mean that the Wii is not getting core games or even high scoring casual and/or original games. Will this change? And just how much will Nintendo support the Wii in the next 2 years? Will third parties increase support in the right way? To answer the latter question we can now look at how the DS library grew from January 1st 2007 to December 31st 2008. This can then be used so guestimate how the Wii will fare between January 1st 2009 and December 31st 2010. All DS Games from January 1st 2007 to December 31st 2008 Total Games – 822 Nintendo Published Games – 44 Third Party Published Games – 778
So the DS’ 3rd and 4th years had less support from Nintendo and far more support from third parties. Nintendo accounted for 5.35% of the DS’s library in those 2 years, down from 21.75%. Let’s look at this in another way.
1st Two years 2nd Two years % Change Nintendo Published Games 67 44 -34.33% 3rd Party Published Games 241 778 +222.82%
Looking at this table clearly shows a massive increase of 222.82% OVER the previous two years for the DS library from third party publishers.
It also shows that Nintendo dropped their support to only 65.67% of the previous two years which is indicated by the 34.33% drop.
In fact even if the numbers were wrong it’s clear that there was a massive increase in third party software support and a decrease in Nintendo published software. What does this say for the Wii? Not considering any other variables and using the above data for the DS, this is what we get:
|
|
1st Two years |
2nd Two years |
% Change |
|
Nintendo Published Games |
36 |
23-24 |
-34.33% |
|
3rd Party Published Games |
567 |
1830 |
+222.82% |
Now obviously that’s a whole heap of shovelware right there =P but seriously, that amount of games is definitely out of the question so what happened?
The most obvious explanation is that Third Party publishers got onto the DS later than they did for the Wii and have been pumping out more ‘shovelware’ for the Wii than the DS.
Now it’s up to you to ponder these figures and decide just how the third party support is going to change.. Obviously this short analysis doesn’t take into account the level of core games but that’s just too much work besides I’d like to see how the fanboys on all sides spin these numbers. So go at it!
Note: all numbers are from VGChartz or Wikipedia and my counting abilities so if they’re slightly off, I apologise. Let me know and I’ll fix things as soon as I can.
