bdbdbd said: Xoj said: MontanaHatchet said: Well if the Wii doesn't, its sequel will. Money talks. If Nintendo is the market leader next generation like they were this generation, developers will come around. The Playstation was built on casuals much the same as the Wii. And if Zelda: Twilight Princess is any indication, core games can sell on the Wii. zelda is from nintendo, this is about third parties, nintendo got a following fanbase, zelda, mario will sell great of course. but even so games like metroid prime don't sell as big. games COD sell more on the ps3 and 360 with smaller userbase. But it's CoD and it has a fanbase, of course it will sell, but how about other third parties. Montanas post was about core games. It's quite obvious that the biggest names sell the most, no matter who developed the game. Using the logic that seems to be pretty obvious in your post, it would be like saying that shooters don't sell on 360 because Halo sold so well. Metroid isn't that big name as Nintendos other core titles, namely Mario and Zelda, so it's no wonder it didn't sell as well. I believe Corruption is the third best-selling Metroid game.

Cod was big until cod4.

and then how explain the success of third party software of gears 1-2?

they were new games and sold lots.

bdbdbd said: Dno said: bdbdbd said: @DNO: Umm... How long have the recession been going? How much impact has it had on games industry? And long the companies have been posting losses? Btw. your list had a few PC devs, who have moved downstream, ie. started to develop console games instead of only PC games. I also don't think M$ should be counted for a list that's supposed to show how 3rd parties are doing, after all, M$ gets licence fees for every game sold on 360. And actually, the list had only Capcom and Konami, that aren't heavily pushing PC development. Also, none of the companies release many PS360 games, most of their games are on a completely different platforms. You can make all the excusues you want but these HUGE 3rd parties are making money and have released next to nothing on the wii.. thats a fact.   They do NOT need wii for games. and PC devs cost just as much as an HD system. and all those companies made money on the ps360 which is my point. Yes it does costs the same. That's why the PC devs move to PS360, they can port the games between the platforms. I don't think the point in this discussion really is whether 3rd party need the Wii or not (most of them do, however, only the big ones with big name titles necessarily don't), but whether the PS360 games only -development is a sustainable model. It seems to be very few games that are profiting with them, which is the point. We can pick a PS3 or 360 game that made a huge profit, or pick a Wii game that lost money, or the same thing with publishers, but that's not giving us the big picture. There are also bigger risks associated than before, just look at what happened to Factor 5 after a big flop.

 

 

And there aren't risks associated with the Wii ?

On a yearly basis there are 2 to 3 times more games released on the Wii than on the PS3 or the Xbox360, yet the number of third parties title that are successfull on that platform isn't that great.

So one could argue that it is actually harder to release a successfull Wii title...

And there are a lot of third parties title sold on the Wii as Nintendo has pointed out in several on their presentation, so it's not like they don't sell, but the competition is actually huge.....( for starter you have to fight for shelf space in retailers due to the high number of titles...)

bdbdbd said: Dno said: bdbdbd said: @DNO: Umm... How long have the recession been going? How much impact has it had on games industry? And long the companies have been posting losses? Btw. your list had a few PC devs, who have moved downstream, ie. started to develop console games instead of only PC games. I also don't think M$ should be counted for a list that's supposed to show how 3rd parties are doing, after all, M$ gets licence fees for every game sold on 360. And actually, the list had only Capcom and Konami, that aren't heavily pushing PC development. Also, none of the companies release many PS360 games, most of their games are on a completely different platforms. You can make all the excusues you want but these HUGE 3rd parties are making money and have released next to nothing on the wii.. thats a fact.   They do NOT need wii for games. and PC devs cost just as much as an HD system. and all those companies made money on the ps360 which is my point. Yes it does costs the same. That's why the PC devs move to PS360, they can port the games between the platforms. I don't think the point in this discussion really is whether 3rd party need the Wii or not (most of them do, however, only the big ones with big name titles necessarily don't), but whether the PS360 games only -development is a sustainable model. It seems to be very few games that are profiting with them, which is the point. We can pick a PS3 or 360 game that made a huge profit, or pick a Wii game that lost money, or the same thing with publishers, but that's not giving us the big picture. There are also bigger risks associated than before, just look at what happened to Factor 5 after a big flop.

its a hit driven model business. if Factor 5 made that game on the wii for 3 years and it flopped they still most likely would of went the way they went. What about acclaim that went of of business LAST gen before the "hard to devopler for" HD systems dropped?

We can switch that and look at epic who made GOW (only for 360) and now they are a huge name brand with millions of bucks.

Point is most companies do not need the wii because its only been around for 3-4 years with hardly any major 3rd party support. thats a fact

Most people always come back to the argument that you can make a cheap good game on the Wii that will sell 500k units and you will be profitable too , totally ignoring the financial strain the publishers and developers have to work with...

 

EA revenue for the year 2008 was 4 billion $ and they lost 96 million$ on that ( non GAAP).

To reach that they had 31 titles sell over 1 million units...

 

Do you even realize how many 500k title they would have to release to make that kind of revenue ? 

Answer is definitly more than the market could absorb...

They don't have a choice, they need big games that sells millions copies to survive. And multi million selling third party games are just not easy to come up with especially on the Wii...

 

PS : I guess someone is going to argue they could always fire 75% of their staff and focus on smaller gamers, yeah, right that would be really good, firing tens of thousands of game developers...

Ail said: Most people always come back to the argument that you can make a cheap good game on the Wii that will sell 500k units and you will be profitable too , totally ignoring the financial strain the publishers and developers have to work with...   EA revenue for the year 2008 was 4 billion $ and they lost 96 million$ on that ( non GAAP). To reach that they had 31 titles sell over 1 million units...   Do you even realize how many 500k title they would have to release to make that kind of revenue ?  Answer is definitly more than the market could absorb... They don't have a choice, they need big games that sells millions copies to survive. And multi million selling third party games are just not easy to come up with especially on the Wii...   PS : I guess someone is going to argue they could always fire 75% of their staff and focus on smaller gamers, yeah, right that would be really good, firing tens of thousands of game developers...

Right

 

If wii was such a gold mine where is all the support? Why are devs saying OPENLY saying that its hard to make games sell on the wii? are we to think they are lieing? we know that the DS is a gold mine and no one can say that the DS gets no 3rd party support.

Its just not the same with the Wii thats all im saying.. mab next gen this will change but it wont now or anytime soon

I'm assuming the OP meant to imply that the Wii won't get the 'core' 3rd party games, but instead he just said 3rd party support.  Right now, the Wii has the MOST third party support, if you go on sheer volume of games.  My point is, that just because they're not all the types of games that you enjoy doesn't mean that third parties aren't supporting the system and making serious money of it.

i agree, but just because it won't get the support the ps2 had does not mean it wont get some quality 3rd party titles

i think it will get a lot of support especially in the last two years of this generation

Ail said: And there aren't risks associated with the Wii ? On a yearly basis there are 2 to 3 times more games released on the Wii than on the PS3 or the Xbox360, yet the number of third parties title that are successfull on that platform isn't that great. So one could argue that it is actually harder to release a successfull Wii title... And there are a lot of third parties title sold on the Wii as Nintendo has pointed out in several on their presentation, so it's not like they don't sell, but the competition is actually huge.....( for starter you have to fight for shelf space in retailers due to the high number of titles...)

Of course there are risks, it's just that the risks on HD consoles are bigger.
Think for a moment being a publisher that should put out a game(s) on the current platforms that are getting games (DS, PSP, PC, Wii, 360, PS3, PS2, plus download services). What would you do?

The not-so-good games flock to Wii, because they are expected to have better return on investment there. Larger installbase and lower costs.

You're right about the shelf space. That's why the publishers should push their games to retail and have ads for the games to have the shelf space. It's pretty obvious that retailers manage more shelf space for titles that get advertised, than for titles that aren't. Of course, if the game is bad, people aren't buying it no matter how much it's advertised (you might have a big first week, but after that, the sales die).

It's kinda funny how everybody talks about wii being the worst in selling software, but it sells the most software and has about the same attach ratio then other consoles and the bigger your userbase the smaller your attach ratio. Just look at ps2.
Pointless discussion is pointless discussion. I don't see the ps3 selling much software either tbh, how many 5million sellers does that console already have? 1? How many 1million sellers? A lot less then the wii, I'll tell you that.

Conclusion: All consoles are domed, who gives a fuck anymore.

Samus Aran said: It's kinda funny how everybody talks about wii being the worst in selling software, but it sells the most software and has about the same attach ratio then other consoles and the bigger your userbase the smaller your attach ratio. Just look at ps2. Pointless discussion is pointless discussion. I don't see the ps3 selling much software either tbh, how many 5million sellers does that console already have? 1? How many 1million sellers? A lot less then the wii, I'll tell you that. Conclusion: All consoles are domed, who gives a fuck anymore.

Well 1st off no one said wii is the worst just that wii is not the end all be all of 3rd party sales.

of course the wii sales the most as its user base is almost 50% of the gen. (mostly nintendo titles tho wii fit, mario kart, zelda, wii play, wii sports etc)

how many 5 million sellers on wii are not nintendo? none (you can argue mario and sonic but omg mario is in it.... lol)

No console is doomed notyet anyway