Software developers worried about the Wii, hesitant to make games

Pre-emptive strike FTW!

But you're right. The SDF will be here soon enough. Especially after that fat guy beat us up this morning.

looks like I got the honors.

Of all the things Gabe Newl hates(PS3,MAC,DX10, anything new)he did say he likes the wii.

I'll be the first to buy him a copy of Wii Fit.

As a SDF member, I will take the high road and avoid recognizing karmic justice. Now we just need someone, anyone, to complain about developing games for the 360 and the circle will be complete.

Jaffe will you please report to the white courtesy phone? We need hyperbole on line one please.

Thats because they use to push 100k+ weekly not so long ago... wait till this week's numbers come out.. less than 20k..

xoxox

Did you really expect it to keep up those numbers? Has any system ever kept up those numbers? (aside from the DS)

Thanks for the hugz 'n kissez, Konny. Big ol' smoocheroo for you too.

I realize the drop in sales is significant, but that doesn't take away from the hilarity I personally find when reading about a $250 piece of hardware managing to push "just 168,000 units" in a month, Nintendo or not.

$42 million is not "just" anything.

Oh crap the Wii is ONLY outselling everything else ever by a TINY ASSLOAD. Waa waaaaa. I wanted a huge buttload of a lead! Not this barely outselling 360 and PS3 combined! Weak! I'll make games for the PS3rd place now instead!

Is it just me or are ALL developers whiny pussies? I thought it was just a few, but damn, it gets worse every year. I wish I had their names so I could boycott their shitty derivative trash. Oh wait, I'll probably get lucky and not buy it anyway!

You do know the 360 has been out selling the Wii for the past two weeks (Teh haloz).

I thought that too, hmmm the transitive property.

Hopefully this doesn't happen. I own a Wii

Personaly I think it could... but who knows...

FUD, direct from IGN

You said it. For some reason, when it comes to a Nintendo console, these guys just have this defeatist mentality. Where's our MGS4 kind of effort? Where's our FFXIII kind of effort. I guess they just don't believe in the Wii, as in it's not the kind of picture they want to see or the heading they want to go. They probably don't even want to consider the pitfalls of a PS3/360 kind of world, where the prices are high, the technology grand, and the limitations such a world will entail.

I've always had this sneaking suspicion that most third-party developers just look for this golden excuse just so they can throw up their hands and say "well, we've tried" (remember that movie You, Me, & Dupree and the job interview scene). It's either kiddy, lack of online (yeah, a game couldn't possibly good without it), demographic isn't right (like you couldn't build that on a Nintendo platform), etc.

Heck, even some commentators here can't even acknowledge the Wii's sales as a good thing (apparently Nintendo fans are "obsessed" with sales now and it's really not all about sales and is apparently something deeper... like sales attachment). Why, some are even cheating. Before it was "well, 360 still has the biggest userbase," but now it's the PS2's got a bigger userbase or that the 360, PS3 AND PC has got a bigger userbase and that's it's better for than supporting the Wii because you can just make and port around a game between those behemoths. What next? "Wii, PS2, and PSP are bigger together; take that."

People are now even deluding themselves that somehow you can't have deep, mature, epic games on the Wii. The PS2 had many, but the Wii, oh God it's so "weak" it can only run text (wait a minute, text-based game can have deep storylines - AHA!!!). Beautiful graphics? Forget that. Common retort - "it's not just about better graphics, power means better AI, physics, etc." My retort to that - well, I'm pretty sure many games last gen had great AI and physics, you people said so yourself. You think all 360 and PS3 games just happen to have great AI and physics? No. It takes work too, so you can't just compare some lousy PS2 game with poor AI and compare it to, for instance, MGS4's AI. I can easily take the worst on the "next-gen" consoles and compare it with the best example from the last gen. The point is, regardless of which system, all have potential for beautiful graphics, relatively smart AI, and good physics. The only thing limiting people's opinion of the Wii as a sucky piece of tech is merely preference. Pure subjective preference. And if that means these third-parties don't care for the system and it bombs, it's certainly due to the lack of trying, and by trying I don't mean the shovelware, token effort they call "support." There are reasons why people bought PS1s and PS2 y'know, and potentially, it can be the same reason why people would buy and keep a Wii (outside of top Nintendo games to boot).

Indeed, I always wanted to get into the gaming industry, but then I found out its a business all about money and scandals...developers are starting to lose focus on whats important..the fans.

Funny, I thought it was about making something you love. Fans are those annoying little twats that think they know better then you, and just because they got their pocket money this week they think you have to treat them like gods and not the worthless bags of blood and organs that they really are! Most people with talent don't always do what the fans want because the fans are usually idiots that want the same old shit, and flip out like ninjas every time you try something new.

Indeed. I think developers are just dumbfounded as to how so many people are actually enjoying all the 8-bit recycling and Mii crap. They're not doing things they like, they're doing the same thing that bad developers always do: try to pander to the mass market. This time, however, they just don't understand why the mass market likes the Wii. How can a game like Happy Feet be among the best-selling games of 2006 with such horrible reviews?

I think the problem will be market saturation, though. Will party games still be popular when there's 100,000 of them available?

They'd be better on PC... If they didn't have that legacy console crap in it, like mouse acceleration, that makes you want to choke any QA tester for the PC version. Or simplistic controls. Or Simple console-friendly PC-UNfriendly UI. Or...

No Halo 3 will probably make an 8 core PC with quad SLI curl up, whimper, and die. I've played the Halo games on the PC; they are coded to act worse than any game of its generation on the PC.

I don't think many argue that point. But they are also good at looming large over 3rd parties.

Yeah, i don't really see their marketing going anywhere

But developers who think Nintendo puts them at a disadvantage to insure "the success of their own games."

Those are called mediocre developers. If you don't want to compete with Nintendo, then you pride yourself in your mediocrity

Publishers not wanting to compete i can understand, but developers should be shooting for the moon, right?

if a fad lasts a long time then it's obviously not a fad now is it?

If it lasts for a long time, wouldnt that exempt it from being a fad? And Nintendogs is a fad, I dont think anyone who bought this game is anticipating a similar sequel

To Ska Orea and zwarrior: That was kinda my point. Nintendo is good at turning something that might seem like a shallow fad at first into a lasting success.

VGCharts has Metroid Prime 3 corruption at 500k even, and Resident Evil 4 wii edition at 800k.

Where do you pull you're numbers from, other than your ass?

Conversely, Initial estimates from japan show wii either holding flat or up to 25 to 30k (an improvement of 25%-50%). Meanwhile, sales of your precious PSP software FF Crisis Core are down to around 19k, an over 90% decrease from launch week. PSP sales look to still be strong at 80-120k. DS sales look to be flat at 75k.

So you're wrong. Wii sales are going up for last week, crisis core sales are down, and PSP is flat. Just another heads up, they show worldwide wii sales at 12.22 million, 360 at 11.64 million, and the mighty PS3 at 4.92 million.

Do you ever get tired of being wrong?

So you're saying Super Paper Mario, Mario Party 8, and Mario Strikers Charged are the only games that have sold well on Wii? Because those are the only three games I know of with Mario in the title.

Unless I'm totally mistaken and just not noticed, MP3 isn't out in Europe.

I may be wrong but I've been looking to get it.

Maybe all mah Orange Box distracted me.

You're right. MP3 is only out in the US. Its not even out in japan right now, though I don't expect it to do very well there.

So its got 500k on US sales alone.

Konny is wrong again.

Hmm, most of the post got cut off. As I was saying...

Funny how the North American sales are up every week by the same amount the Japanese sales are down... I can't imagine what's going on there.

Anyone still thinking the Wii is going to turn out to be some fad is delusional.

I'm not worried at all about the number of games on the system. Now, if someone wants to do a piece explaining where the *good* games are...

How do you explain that Madden '08 sold 20x more on 360 than Wii with a smaller install base? Its basically the same game. Go ahead, give it a try.

Madden sells in America, 360 has more units sold in America.

Plus, 360 owners have worse taste in games.

Pretty easy to explain. 360 owners mainly comprise of Halo/Gears of War loving jocks in the US ... which taps directly to the Madden demographic.

Was this supposed to be a challenge?

i would like to see where this 20x came from.

or is konny just continuing to make shit up?

That Madden '08 phenomenon occurred because there's a high correlation between being a sports-jock/fan and being a 360 fan (Sure, the Wii did well with Wii Sports, but that's more casual audience than actual sports fan). Take ESPN-simulating out of the equation and go to actual videogame-style videogames and the dynamics shift.

I don't know the numbers, but I suspect Call of Duty 3 may have done better on the 360 than on the Wii (even though it also looks just about the same). I would chalk that up to a chicken and the egg problem that FPS fans (like me) are facing. Third parties are (irrationally) afraid of the Wii, thus very few FPSes have been coming out for Wii (exactly 4, with even less on the horizon, and literally half of the ones that are out are complete half-assed hacks anyway) which pushes FPS fans into 360 territory. Of course, if the FPS developers would pull their heads out of their asses long enough to quit dry-humping Unreal Engine 3 and actually bother to port more than just Call of Duty 3 to the Wii, then the fact that the Wii has an actual, you know, POINTING DEVICE, would bring a lot of FPS gamers back to the Wii.

Plus, 360 owners have worse taste in games.



FUCK YOU...

I have Madden for Wii and not Xbox360.
Wii version looks horrible in comparison, but it's definitely more fun than the normal button mashing.

Publishers are making money. Publishers love the Wii

This article talks about developers

neogeo status!?
what kind of crack are you smoking?
microsoft running what show? can i remind you of the red ring of death. the countless people that had to send their faulty systems back for repair. if you cannot see that the wii is just a fad, you seriously must be smoking crack. developers arent lazy, nintendo only pushes their own (children) to the spot light. you all can bring up the sale number all you want. a fad is a fad. when something so gimmicky sells multi millions proves the point that it is a fad. wii is so out of the box that it hurts itself. when you grow up and get tired of wagging your wii control and you get tired of talking to your boyfriends online. we'll see where you end up.