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Wii Market Not 'Worthwhile' for Epic Games
Posted July 23, 2009 by James Brightman
With more than 50 million units sold around the globe, the Wii has an installed base significantly larger than any other platform this generation. It's pretty hard to ignore that market, and most companies have been scrambling to figure out just how to get a piece of the Wii action. Not Epic Games, though.
In speaking with IndustryGamers recently, we asked Epic VP Mark Rein if his company would make an effort to modify its popular Unreal Engine technology to fit the Wii or even handhelds at some point. Rein just doesn't believe the market is there on Wii, and he doesn't want to waste Epic's resources in custom designing an engine for the platform.
“If you stretch something too thin, it becomes very thin. How do you support that? We don't make games for that platform because we don't see a market for the kinds of games we make – let's be honest,” he said.
We noted that more third parties are trying to push hardcore games on the Wii, but Rein countered, “And they've been huge financial flops... It's just not where the market is. Look at EA. Do you see the same Madden game on Wii? Of course not – it's a dumbed down game.”
We further pressed him that even if it's a different market for Wii that there would be some way for Epic to apply its Unreal technology to the platform to benefit Epic's business and aid publishers with their portfolios on Wii. He answered yet again, “You'd just be stretching it too thin; I just don't see it as worthwhile.”
He added, “But you know if Nintendo comes out with a Wii 2 or a Wii HD, and it's got a couple more processors and a little more memory and better graphics, then yes we'll be on it. I'm not saying there's no interest in being on as many platforms as possible, but it's just that you have to be on the ones you're good at. We're a very high-end engine, and we have the best tools and awesome visuals and great physics. It's more likely the platform will rise up to meet us than we'll go down [to customize our technology for it]. And eventually I think that'll be the case, and it'll be true of handhelds and even the iPhone.
“That's how we got to where we are now to be honest. We were a PC developer and we developed on the high-end and then Xbox and PlayStation kind of picked up on the low-end into our wheelhouse a little bit. So we did some games for those platforms, and then for PS3 and Xbox 360 were right around what we were designing for, so they're good fits. And you have to stick to what you do well.”
Rein continued by noting that some of these Wii games are “good cautionary tales” in terms of what the publishers attempted to do and how the market received the titles. “There are some good publishers out there that make some great triple-A games that make hundreds of millions of dollars, and I'm not going to name them, but then at the end of the year when they look at earnings, they lose money! Or they make only tens of millions of profit on billions in revenue. It just shows you what happens when you think, 'Oh great, they're diversifying, they're stretching outside their comfort zone,' and now they're making less money,” he said.
Ultimately, for Epic Games, Rein said its low-end platform is Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Epic's Chair Entertainment is currently preparing to release Shadow Complex for XBLA next month, and Unreal Engine has been used to power a number of XBLA games in the past.
“We do the PC extremely well, and we do the 360 and PS3 extremely well, so to me there's still more gold to be mined on those platforms than starting a new mine [with Wii or other platforms]. Starting a new mine is ridiculously expensive... It takes a while to get on new platforms, get it right and get it moving. If you keep turning your focus to other things, it takes you a long time to get there. So we see the three platforms – 360, PS3, PC – as still the large opportunities. And the truth is, those platforms is where the business is; for third parties that's where the money is,” he remarked.
With seemingly every big game on the market relying on Unreal Engine these days, Epic Games is clearly in great shape, and it would explain the huge grin on Mark Rein's face every time we meet with him (or maybe he just likes us?). We asked Rein about Epic's future expansion plans. The company over the past couple years acquired both People Can Fly and Chair Entertainment – should we expect further strategic acquisitions?
“Not really,” Rein answered, “Both Chair and People Can Fly were acquisitions of people we were already partnered with. PCF worked on Gears of War PC with us, we knew them very well, knew their talent level and what they could do. And for Chair, we were pretty close with them because the two principals of that company had worked with our prior engine and we were friends. We loved what they did with Undertow, and we love the idea of these shorter form games that can still be very high quality. If there's an indication of what you can do with Unreal Engine 3 for under a million dollars, it's these guys. And now, I'm actually getting a few guys to work up some projects for under $50k, to make some interesting puzzle games and show what our engine can do there too. So I don't think we'll be buying anybody, but these were very strategic. It was never our intention to say 'Let's go grow the studio by buying people.' We grow by hiring really talented people. That's our primary method.”
Wii Defense Force Assemble
