If only they were stuck in their ways from the 80's and 90's when they made mostly all great games. Maybe then we could see a traditional Castlevania game and some Contra. At least they still make some great Castlevania games on the DS.

Although they still made some good ones for the Wii. Hopefully they can rebound because I don't like seeing publishers whose games I played as a kid being a third rate publisher now.

Si.

I hope you realize that those critics are right. The Wii doesn't have many good games and the best way the prove it is showing the review scores. In fact, some would use "no third party support" and "no good third party support" interchangeably, myself included.

If a person says that the Wii does not have third party game support, is he really wrong? Obviously what he means is that there are no good games, and you can't really point to the many mini-game collections to prove him wrong. The point I'm trying to make is that critics of the Wii have basically been saying the same thing for a while, that there are far fewer good third party games on the Wii, and they have been completely right.

I know that you and many others seem to think that the whole world is against the Wii. That the critics are always coming up with new ways to bash the system. That before it was "no third party games" and now when the games did come they changed it to "no good third party games", citing review scores. Believe me, only a few select idiots are "out to get" the Wii. It's not hating if you're truly just stating facts (and review scores are great example of facts).

I guess they were triple AAA budgets...  Eeeeck... I love my Wii, but 3rd party AAA is very rare on it...  Oh well, Nintendo more then makes up for it on 1st party titles.  That is reason enough to have a Wii.

Critics are human beings and their reveiws are their opinions. Metacritic combines the opinions of a whopping 30 people (or less).  Thirty people sharing an opinion does not make it fact.  That you agree with those thirty does not make it fact either.  (Is it fact that Superman II is the second best film of all time? That's what metacritic says.)

Critics are over whelmingly hardcore gamers. The wii has fewer hardcore games, and the hardcore games it does have will always be missing two elements that have huge appeal to hardcore gamers (cutting edge graphics and standard controllers) Ergo, it is totally expected that critics will give wii games lower scores.

Think about this list from another thread. Hardcore gamers in that thread rushed in to say that the games on there suck. I disagree. Most of the games on that list I either own of am thinking of owning. Those games appeal to my values. That most of them have sold well indicates other people share those values also.

Just tie this altogether, I don't think many wiifans think the world is against the wii, but I do think its fair to say that when it comes to extended activites of gaming (like participating in forums or writing game reviews) that there are more HD console fans than wii fans. Certainly I don't think any of them are "out to get" the wii, but neither do they show it or those who enjoy it any respect.

A title's budget, not your personal opinion, determines the "AAA" status of a title.  A "AAA" title does not have to be a critical success to have "AAA" status -- same thing with movies, which is the industry where the labelling comes from.

Anyone who knows the difference between "AAA" and "A", in terms of college sports leagues, movies, etc. understands what this means.  There are plenty of "AAA" college sports teams who would be bested by better "A" division teams, were they pitted against one another.

CoD3 and SW: Force Unleashed were, unquestionably, "AAA" titles.

Has nothing to do with my personal opinion.  I haven't even played either of those games.  But surely there has to be something besides budget.  It has to be widely accepted as a quality game.  If a game cost $100 million to make and gets an average review score of 1 would you seriously suggest it is AAA?

Budget.  That's it.  Sorry.  

Yes, there are plenty of crappy AAA games, but that doesn't change the economics of what "AAA" means.  A "AAA" title is a title that a publisher is willing to throw a lot of money at, which is what its all about, in the end...  investment and return.

This thread is no different.  Asking the question "are publishers willing to put AAA titles on the Wii?" or similar, is effectively asking "how much money are those publishers will to throw at a single Wii title?" -- which is relevant in this discussion (and many on this site), because largely games with budgets over, or at least close to, 20 million USD (which is generally considered "AAA", if you're a game developer) are good games.  There are exceptions, but money invested usually does make a pretty substantial difference in product quality.

But with the Wii, AAA is 5 to 10 million in costs.

The typical Wii title costs that much, but that doesn't qualify it as "AAA".  Engineering expenses on Wii titles are generally cheaper -- although frankly, on good Wii titles, they're still going to be pretty high (much higher than 5-10 mil for the average Wii shovelware title).  Fitting a good engine onto a smaller/less powerful platform takes talent and manpower, just like utilizing a high-end platform to its fullest does.  Engineering expenses, however, are only a small portion of the development costs of a game.

Designers aren't going to change in price -- if you want a large, ambitious "AAA" title, you need a bunch of good designers to create it, no matter what the platform is.  For that matter, if you want to fit your title well into the smaller space that the Wii represents, you need designers who are technically savvy... and they cost more.

You might save a couple bucks on artists... except that, again, you're going to need higher quality, experienced technical artists to do good work on the Wii, where there's more room for "sloppy" (its true) work on the HD consoles.  Its easy to create meshes and textures that are waaay too big to have at runtime in a game.  Making them reasonable, and still having them look good -- that's what you pay good technical artists for.  The Wii is definately the most difficult platform to do good art for, merely due to its limitations -- if your art design is really good, you can get around this fairly easily... but good art designers cost more $ too, and it limits your art direction options and even your game design.

In short Wii titles are cheaper, because the designs are less ambitious.  Not because the Wii is somehow magically easier to develop games for.  Wii games are cheaper because they focus on designs that are only slightly more ambitious than "last gen" titles, or because they focus on designs that will easily fit onto both the Wii and the PS2, for maximum potential profit.  The fact that your average Wii game only costs 5-10 million USD is noto a statement about the Wii, but rather a statement about how much publishers are willing to throw at a Wii game -- and its the primary reason why you just don't see many "AAA" titles on the Wii.  They really are not "AAA" from the development perspective, they never had to budget to be "AAA" to begin with.  The only publisher willing to throw AAA-sized budgets at lots of Wii games is Nintendo itself... and the result is clear -- awesome games on the Wii.

If the 3rd-party publishers would commit to throwing that much money at a Wii title, you'd start seeing some really impressive Wii games, plain and simple.  Because they believe that only 5 million will create a profitable game "for the masses" (and they're correct, for the most part), however, they don't seem to be willing to take the risk on bigger titles.

So yes, the Wii does indeed "lack 3rd party support", not in terms of quantity (# of titles), but in terms of quality (money spent per title).   With that, I'd like to point out that there is NO good reason for the 3rd party publishers to do that at this point in the Wii's life cycle -- and it looks like they are, indeed, starting to spend money on Wii games (MH3, DQ9, etc.), so this lack of 3rd party quality should be a temporary thing only.