Kenny said:
In all fairness to third parties, Nintendo put them in a rather difficult position. By setting the processing power of the Wii so far below that of the competition, they made it difficult to financially and technically justify developing games for all three systems, and essentially left them with two options: Either develop exclusively for the Wii, or ignore one of the three systems at their peril. Third parties appear to have chosen the latter based on the performance of the GameCube, where Nintendo declined into near irrelevance in the eyes of the industry and gamers alike. If the Wii performed similarly to the GameCube, then the decision to dismiss Nintendo out of hand before the generation began would have worked out just fine.
Unfortunately for third parties, this generation worked out exactly the opposite way they had predicted. Suddenly, the choices changed to: Either backpedal and throw out all the investments made on developing HD assets (and convincing gamers that HD is a good thing) to follow the market leader, or ignore the market leader and suffer. I can't imagine it was an easy choice, as many third parties would have been screwed either way. In the end, it seems most third parties chose to stay the course, and justify their collective decision, no matter the cost. To that end, they declared war on the Wii, with the gaming media being a very willing accomplice.
Which brings us to today: Third parties ignore the market leader while simultaneously ascribing all their woes to it, the gaming media is collectively delivering a perspective of the market divorced from reality, the core hates the market leader, gamers that own the leading system are severely underserved, and everybody complains. Once the gaming media and the industry collectively declared war on the Wii, everybody in this generation lost. |
I think this accurately sums up the situation. All I would add is that I think Nintendo could have prevented all this from happening if they'd acted aggressively in the beginning and acquired multiple, AAA, third-party exclusives.
My pet theory is that third parties are a combination of sheep and gold diggers, who make imitation games by the truckload and go where they think there's easy money. I submit that if Nintendo had done what it takes to acquire a Devil May Cry early in the generation, before gamers got set in their ways, it would not only have been a success, but it would have spawned a wave of imitators (of various quality) on the system.
I find Guitar Hero illustrative: the rhythm genre shunned the Wii as being risky until Guitar Hero III went on to sell millions of copies on the system (in fact, it sold the most copies on that system). After that, MTV Games rushed to put out Rock Band, and nearly every rhythm game since has appeared on the system, including some exclusive titles.
Of course, there are two big problems with this scenario. First, it would require a third-party who was willing to "risk" placing a flagship title on the system early on. Second, it would require Nintendo's willingness to pay for such exclusivity. The first was demonstrably implausible, the second borderline impossible.
And by now I fear it's too late.
