To clarify: You've already covered that point and better in your other paragraphs.

"Go beyond your own opinions.

The second step is to stop thinking the opinions of enthusiast gamers (which includes developers, journalist, and many people online) determines how good a game is for everyone. Stop thinking the way you measure a game is what matters to the expanded market. You don't have to agree with their opinions, but stop being myopic about yours.

Here's a quiz. Why did Carnival Games sell so well?

1. It's a casual game that's simplified to the point grannies like it.

2. It's cute and inoffensive.

3. Those people like crap better than good games.

4. Who knows? The market is unpredictable.

5. Games at carnivals are the predecessors to arcade video games, and some people just want to relive that experience. In short, it's an effective (if not perfect) carnival game simulator.

If you answered 5, then you made a huge leap in figuring out the market. It's also a big clue into many bestselling games, even the core ones. Many are, for the most part, successful simulators.

Simulators make hit games.

Gran Turismo - Race car simulator.

Grand Theft Auto - Crime spree simulator

Gears of War / Halo - Action hero simulator

Call of Duty - War hero simulator (just the wars differ)

Wii Sports - Sports simulator, and it doesn't even limit itself to one, like Madden.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympics - Olympics simulator, with the bonus of playing two of the most iconic game characters.

Guitar Hero / Rock Band - Take a wild guess."

For example, it doesn't need to be restated when you've made that point abundantly clear. You don't need to Malstrom this, you stated it quite clearly and restating it again less eloquanty (spelling sux) doesn't help your cause.

The game developers don't 'get' the HD systems fully either. The developers failing there would fail anywhere really so I don't feel you can nail a causation there.

The 4th comment I got was basically blaming the Wii core audience. The reason? "they beg for big third party exclusives and when they get them they do not follow through, ever, because it is not a game made by Nintendo"

Last I checked, most third party exclusives were NOT the kind those gamers were asking for. And if you also define "big" as bug budget, then that leaves two such games: Red Steel and Monster Hunter 3. And those games actually sold. Sure they didn't sell Gears of War numbers, but not that many HD games sell that well either.

A good thread.

The Wii audience, is in fact the general gaming audience, Ps3 and Xbox are the hardcore audience.

In every industry, the general consumers are characterized by these things:
1. Time conscious, They want their product to achieve its MAIN purpose quick and easy, no hassles
2. Cost conscious, therefore Are not interested in small iterative improvements in successive products

It is therefore easy to see why it is always a certain type of game that sells well, the arcade style game.

Why? because arcade games achieve the purpose of games better and quicker then any other type of game, and that is, to have FUN.

Mario kart, Wii Sports (and resort), NSMBW, Wii Fit.

It is also easy to see why sequels don't seem to work very well with these types of games.

This is contrasted with the hardcore audience which are actually synonymous with the type of consumer called 'early adopters' and also, in general, rich consumers with too much time on their hands.
1. Want their time to be consumed, therefore actually like time consuming games, which pretty much is every AAA title game on Ps3/Xbox
2. Not cost conscious (so act as if their rich), tend to buy every sequel even if the improvements aren't that substantial (Final fantasy).


Because of this, Nintendo is in a very peculiar situation being in the game industry.
The game industry, traditionally, has been very sequelitis,repeating same gameplay with only small differences, but the main audience of the Wii don't like that, so nintendo is actually forced to make their system moving titles to be extremely unique, one after the other.

This wouldn't be so much of a problem if 3rd party companies actually made games for the audience of the Wii, instead of making hardcore games on the Wii and expecting it to do as well as on PS3/Xbox, which has most of the hardcore audience.

lol, with all you have written, it looks like devs would need a whole new degree just to develop for the wii. You have to ask yourself if its more worthwhile for them to keep thinking up new bright ideas (to avoid releasing "more of the same") for this "expanded" audience every single time when they also have the option of scoring with a runaway hit like Modern Warfare and rereleasing an updated version every 2 years on PS360.

One of the reasons devs can afford to ignore the wii is that 50% of the market is pretty much figured out (PS360 users). It's just natural to do things you are familiar with as this grants the highest chance of success. Isn't it odd that games like Ar Tonelico III which can obviously be done on wii are ps3 exclusive especially when wii has more than double ps3 sales in JP? It doesn't have high end graphics which seems to be one of the main excuses for why people think devs stick to ps360 (the idea that the uncreative games can just be disguised by graphics). I'll need some serious convincing to believe sony moneyhatted that one.

To cut the long story short, the criteria for wii success is just too damn complicated. When you have to consider so much before developing one game, doesn't dev time/money end up increasing thereby killing off one of the strongest reasons for developing for the wii?

Short term, you have a point, long term it would be disastrous.

What no other company seems to be thinking, is what happens when the 'hardcore' audience (which is no one new, its the leftover audience of snes/PS1 days) dissapear?

This is why it is godam stupid that no other company is targeting the kids but nintendo, how can an industry survive based on the same customer forever?

well you clearly seem to "know" the market, make a game for the wii then :)

The other part that confused me is on simulations. Isn't every game a simulator, by definition? Except maybe the Brain Training stuff or Wii Fit, but we've seen how that sells :/.

When those gamers "disappear", there's a very great chance that our current devs would have "disapppeared" as well (how old is Miyamoto again?) so their audience now is probably going to remain the same till they "disappear" themselves. Also, do you think the kids today are going to keep playing the targeted kids games when they become adults?

A lot of kids play stuff like MW2 and their parents dont care. If anything I'd say that developers are better off sticking to adult games as kids would buy 'em, adults will buy 'em whereas kids games are only bought for kids. The word "for" is noteworthy because kids don't even have their personal income and mostly have to rely on getting games as presents on special occasions not whenever they feel like.

Lots of industries survive on the same customers, times may bring different new concepts but the basis is the same. You seem to think the current game industry demographic will move away, thats where you're wrong. PS360 mainly targets 18-40 yo males (from what I've seen several times in random articles). Is this demographic shrinking? Last I checked boys aren't stopping at 17yo. The only exception would be Japan where they just aren't giving birth to kids anymore.

CoD series, any soccer series, MadWorld, Madden series, the Conduit...

just to name a few.

CoD, Madden and soccer games didn't bomb hard, The Conduit and Madworld would have struggled to break 300k on HD consoles, while having costed several times as much to develop.