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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - id Boss: 3rd-Party Wii Development "Not Really Justified"

Arius Dion on 13 April 2009

Come one dude. You know Third Party support for The Wii was lacking big time early on. Publishers of MANY TP's said as much. No one expected the Wii to be the success that it has become. The priority, resources and investments were given to the HD consoles, as a result alot of revenue has been bought in but profits have not been. Which is most companies have been posting losses and seeing alot of red.

What you seem to be saying is "TP's tried and failed on the Wii" What is funny though is I keep reading contrary arguments from the horses mouth, not just forum posters. Wii sold the most third party software in 08 despite not having the big name "AAA" products. You may want to disect that by claiming "Shovelware" but regardless that in and of itself is quite telling. Imagine the results when the efforts and quality software does become available.

I find the carrot that is always held over the Wii's head is pretty lame. As if ONE games sales proves something. If "Mature" games (M rated games) don't sell on The Wii, how do you explain RE4 (a 2yr old port) Red Steel (a flawed game) UC (On-rails shooter) W@W ( a game lacking many features compared to its HD counterpart) All going platinum+.

You make a compelling argument (not one I agree with) but a compelling one nonetheless. But I have to voice my disagreement if you are attempting to say that third parties gave Wii as fair a shake as 360 or PS3, that is just not true.



Bet between Slimbeast and Arius Dion about Wii sales 2009:


If the Wii sells less than 20 million in 2009 (as defined by VGC sales between week ending 3d Jan 2009 to week ending 4th Jan 2010) Slimebeast wins and get to control Arius Dion's sig for 1 month.

If the Wii sells more than 20 million in 2009 (as defined above) Arius Dion wins and gets to control Slimebeast's sig for 1 month.

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WereKitten on 13 April 2009
noname2200 said:
WereKitten said:

...but Activision won't make MW2 its third COD on the Wii?

Wait, when did this happen?

 

Actually you're right, shouldn't pass rumours as facts until something is made official. Feel free to substitute MW2 with another franchise that went missing on the Wii. RE5, or Prince of Persia?



"All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." - Mark Twain

"..." - Gordon Freeman

LordTheNightKnight on 13 April 2009
noname2200 said:
WereKitten said:

...but Activision won't make MW2 its third COD on the Wii?

Wait, when did this happen?

 

 

It's fallacies like this that make me not bother anymore. This is clearly someone uninformed.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

Mr.Y on 13 April 2009

Red Steel 2 is in the works, isn't it?



noname2200 on 13 April 2009
LordTheNightKnight said:

It's fallacies like this that make me not bother anymore.

Then don't. The only reason I jumped in was to see if I'd missed some bit of news. After this post, I'm back to being out.

Mr.Y said:

Red Steel 2 is in the works, isn't it?

Correct. And in spite of myself, I'm interested.



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LordTheNightKnight on 13 April 2009
Mr.Y said:

Red Steel 2 is in the works, isn't it?

 

Confirmed. Ubisoft wants it by the end of this year, and with Motion+ support. Plus they've been working on it for a while, in order to make this as great as the first one promised to be (but couldn't since it was rushed).



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

LordTheNightKnight on 13 April 2009
noname2200 said:
LordTheNightKnight said:

It's fallacies like this that make me not bother anymore.

Then don't. The only reason I jumped in was to see if I'd missed some bit of news. After this post, I'm back to being out.

Mr.Y said:

Red Steel 2 is in the works, isn't it?

Correct. And in spite of myself, I'm interested.

 

Sorry. I mean that other guy, not you. It just came out wrong.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

WereKitten on 13 April 2009
Arius Dion said:
Come one dude. You know Third Party support for The Wii was lacking big time early on. Publishers of MANY TP's said as much. No one expected the Wii to be the success that it has become. The priority, resources and investments were given to the HD consoles, as a result alot of revenue has been bought in but profits have not been. Which is most companies have been posting losses and seeing alot of red.

What you seem to be saying is "TP's tried and failed on the Wii" What is funny though is I keep reading contrary arguments from the horses mouth, not just forum posters. Wii sold the most third party software in 08 despite not having the big name "AAA" products. You may want to disect that by claiming "Shovelware" but regardless that in and of itself is quite telling. Imagine the results when the efforts and quality software does become available.

I find the carrot that is always held over the Wii's head is pretty lame. As if ONE games sales proves something. If "Mature" games (M rated games) don't sell on The Wii, how do you explain RE4 (a 2yr old port) Red Steel (a flawed game) UC (On-rails shooter) W@W ( a game lacking many features compared to its HD counterpart) All going platinum+.

You make a compelling argument (not one I agree with) but a compelling one nonetheless. But I have to voice my disagreement if you are attempting to say that third parties gave Wii as fair a shake as 360 or PS3, that is just not true.

I'm not saying that all third party efforts failed. There are successful ones, even "mature" content games and especially smaller games. Put them all together and of course it might well be that the Wii sold most third party software.

And I'm not even saying that third parties overall put the same effort into developing for the Wii. I'm saying that they started on equal footing, and that if later they relaxed their efforts it must have been for practical reasons, certainly not because of astral conjunctions. The id boss explained a line of reasoning that is probably as much as valid for other third party developers that want to pursue big multiplatform projects: the Wii market for them is unproven territory because certain genres seem to sell much less on the Wii. Thus, that's a risk that they prefer not taking.

They might be wrong, and maybe Rage would sell 10M copies on the Wii, but it is _their_ evaluation and has an undeniable logic. If there were positive enough past cases their evaluation would surely be different.

Being over defensive and denying that developers have to consider the known preferences of the market, or affirming that they lack logic means letting affection cloud your judgement, which leads me to...

@LordTheNightKnight

And I can't help but notice, that if you fix my fallacy with another example you still have the same argument, and you still aren't answering.

 



"All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." - Mark Twain

"..." - Gordon Freeman

Arius Dion on 13 April 2009

I get that. And in my opinion is that they didn't start on equal footing.



Bet between Slimbeast and Arius Dion about Wii sales 2009:


If the Wii sells less than 20 million in 2009 (as defined by VGC sales between week ending 3d Jan 2009 to week ending 4th Jan 2010) Slimebeast wins and get to control Arius Dion's sig for 1 month.

If the Wii sells more than 20 million in 2009 (as defined above) Arius Dion wins and gets to control Slimebeast's sig for 1 month.

Cobretti2 on 13 April 2009
WereKitten said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
"Check the 360 launch lineup again. You'll find titles that followed proven trends on the original xbox (QT4 followed Doom3, other FPSs), several sport games that were little more than safe higher-res ports, MS' own games and little else."

But they didn't do that on the Wii. The 360 didn't come with the audience magically built in. Neither did the PS3, or even the PS2. This is just a fallacy to think the Wii is somehow excluding a hardcore audience. The developers who are reaching out are finding them, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Please, check your facts, will you? Wii launch lineup:

- EA: a Madden game and Need for Speed: Carbon

- Activision: 5 games among which COD 3, Marvel UA and a Tony Hawk game

- Ubisoft: 7 games among which Rayman Raving Rabbids, Far Cry, Splinter Cell DA and Red Steel

- Atari: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2

A total of 32 games, 29 from third parties. The 360 had at launch 18 games, 15 from third parties.

Of course some of the launch third party games ended up being really bad, but does it look like a games list from developers that are scoffing at the Wii? To me that looks like a honest initial committment, probably more impressive than the one that the 360 got.

And again, if all developers who tried reaching out were getting a good response, why would they not develop more games for the Wii? Are they simply insane at Activision/InfinityWard to develop Modern Warfare 2 for PC/PS3/360 but not for the Wii? Do they hate money?

Pretty much all were bad.

 

lets have a look

 

 

Activision
Call of Duty 3 (rushed out port so it would launch)
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (crap)
Rapala Tournament Fishing (crap)
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (not a real tony hawk game but a racer with bad controls)
World Series of Poker (talk about cream of the crop games)

Atari
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (rushed but ok)

Atlus
Trauma Center: Second Opinion (good)

EA
Madden NFL 07 (half decent)
Need for Speed Carbon (crap controls and generic game) 

Konami
Elebits (ok)

Midway
The Ant Bully (well the name says it all really)
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy (crap)
Happy Feet (crap)
Rampage: Total Destruction (not exactly a masterpiece lol)

Sega
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (was decent) 

SNK
Metal Slug Anthology (ports of old games)

Tecmo
Super Swing Golf (ok)

THQ
Avatar: The Last Airbender (lame)
Barnyard (lame)
Cars (lame)
SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature From the Krusty Krab (lame)

Ubisoft
Far Cry: Vengeance (crap port)
GT Pro Series (crap port)
Monster 4x4: World Circuit (lame)
Open Season (lame)
Rayman Raving Rabbids  (ok)
Red Steel (half ok)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent (lame rushed bad controls)

Vivendi Games
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (lame)

 so out of the 29 3rd party launch games about 5 were something that was worth buying by a gamer.