At yesterday's "Lunch with the Luminaries" panel at GDC, five of the planet's most prestigious gaming industry figures had the opportunity to sit down for light snacks, civil discourse, and, of course, to flame their competitor's consoles. At least, that's what Sony exec Phil Harrison had in mind, as he warned EA Blueprint's Neil Young that the Wii is unfriendly territory for third-party developers -- due to Nintendo's overwhelmingly successful games on their own home console, everyone else can only hope to market their games to "only 40% of the installed base."
Young didn't deny this claim, but retorted that the development of their most recent game for the Wii, Smarty Pants, was "very easy to build very quickly" and "fundamentally much more fun" to create -- apparently, more fun than it was to actually play. Have third-party developers resigned themselves to living in Nintendo's shadow, prompting them to fire out "easy to build," mediocre titles? We don't think they quite understand -- if only 40 percent of Wii owners are buying your games, it's because the other 60 percent know better.
(Page 1) Reader Comments
Seriously it's a shitty excuse to complain that your games aren't doing well because Nintendo is fuckwin. Here's why third party developed games don't do well.
1. Most of them are shit, so us hardcore gamers aren't going to touch it.
2. No advertising. For alot of these games I don't even think developers even try to advertise these games to public. Hey EA, UBisoft, etc.. People need to know what you're selling. You can't just put out a game and just hope people find it. It doesn't work that way. You're not Nintendo where everything they make(regardless of it being good or not) become million sellers. Casual gamers need to be informed.
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Then again, coming from the competition this kind of statement isn't surprising.
And one other thing. To all those people also saying Nintendo should go third-party: what the fuck will happen then? Do you think suddenly there will be a drop in third party console games across all consoles just because Nintendo is too good? Bullshit. Make a proper game, do some proper advertising.
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Correct me if I'm wrong
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I'm wrong
Bleh, I need to do research before I post
Sony has 10 million.
But if we assume 10% of siny users bought it just for blueray then they are about even.
Wow, well said.
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There's plenty of room (for example) for FPS's, since I think Metroid Prime 3 and Resident Evil 4 are the closest things the Wii has to an FPS...
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That almost sounds like a veiled insult.
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OH Phil! Shh not in public. Yeah see you soon.
(swoon)
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Carnival Games: 655,000
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: 626,000
http://wii.ign.com/articles/852/852438p1.html
How many 3rd party games have sold 600K on PS3???
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Need for Speed: Carbon .72 million
Ridge racer 7 .63 million
Need for speed Prostreet 1.02 million
Devil may Cry 4 .72 million
Guitar hero III .85 million
Elder Scrolls Oblivion .68 million
Pro Evo Soccer 2008 1.30 million
Smackdown vs Raw 2008 .71 million
Madden 08 .75 million
Fifa 08 1.14 million
Assassin's Creed 2.25 million
Call of Duty 4 2.36 million
Amazing what a quick check on a website as extremely inaccurate as VGchartz will turn up...
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Simple fact - if you can reach 40% of the install base of any console, you're doing something extremely well.
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When you use 140 million as the PS2 base, 25% is a ridiculously high number. Use 20 million as the Wii's base, and 40% doesn't seem so large an audience anymore, no?
I was more than a little off with my numbers - the best-selling PS2 game was GTA: San Andreas, which actually sold to only 12.9% of the install base for the console. Along similar lines, the best-selling PS1 game, Gran Turismo, only sold to about 10.6% of the install base. Let's face it - even in the best-case scenario, you're marketing to a niche market on the PlayStation family of systems.
With that in mind, let's look at the Wii. Even pretending that the install base does not grow from this point onward (which is ridiculous, but for the sake of argument we will), selling to the same proportional niche as the PS1 gives you sales of 2.3 million - not bad at all.
Want to get into more fun facts? Third-part games, regardless of the system, always sell more poorly than the first-party games. GTA: San Andreas actually holds the all-time record for the third-party game that sold to the most install base. The second-place finisher to that is the original Street Fighter II.
Meanwhile, looking at the all-time best-sellers regardless of console, it's dominated by first-party published titles. Is it coincidence that the best-selling Crash Bandicoot games came from when Sony was publishing the series themselves? Or that only one XBox game not made by Microsoft could even crack the 10% mark?
Here's the simple truth - third-party titles always have a harder time selling, regardless of platform. Your best hope is to release on the platform with the largest install base. While it might be true that only a small percentage of Wii owners are interested in your third-party game, it's just as true on the other consoles. The difference is, the aggregate total interested in your game is larger on the Wii just because the install base is larger.
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http://kotaku.com/gaming/2007-b%27c%27/scee-explains-ps3-bc-backpedalling-307768.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/no-regrets-on-missing-rumble-says-harrison-210506.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/blu_ray/phil-harrison-spins-another-blu+ray-lie-192737.php
Honestly, it makes me wonder he has this much time to always talk trash about Nintendo when Sony is in 3rd place. you'd think he would be too busy... ya know... IMPROVING their situation. His goal should be to make the PS3 like the PS2.. hard to do that when all you do is talk smack about a system that most of the people who play it dont log onto sites like this to read your negativity lol.
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So Phil... did you recover already from the pwnage that Reggie give to you?
http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/03/gdc_nintendos_k.html
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Neighbor: Omg, Sony is desrupting our nice neighborhood again with its crying!! Someone call the Wahhbulance!!!
Wahhbulance Driver: I heard a call for help and arrived quickly!!
Neighbor: Oh, thank heavens you arrive!!
Driver: Lead the way.
((Driver breaks down Sonys door drags it out and throws em in the truck and the day is saved!!))
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Nintendo is marketing this as the casual gamer console and apparently 3rd parties are supposed to believe otherwise. Soccer moms and casual players are probably more likely to buy Nintendo's games because of recognition or none at all because it already comes with Wii Sports (also Nintendo's game).
I have nothing against Nintendo or the Wii (i've owned all their consoles so far),but if you're going to be grimy about certain stuff at least play like the big boys and do it in public.
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And also, nearly 2 million Wiis get produced every fucking month, you complete idiot. It's not their fault people are buying all of them.
...and I'm pretty sure they have more than enough money, hey, even Yamauchi is now the 3rd richest man in Japan...
So IMO, I do think that there is something behind this whole "shortage", although I don't really know what could Nintendo get gaining out of it...
I remember when the Wii first came out and was hard to get. I was going to buy one for my little cousin as a christmas present. I couldn't find one for her (got one for myself at launch though). I figured well her birthday is in March so certainly by then the holiday rush will have died down and I can just walk in a local best buy or wal-mart and pick one up. AFRAID NOT! Still over a year later they are impossible to find on a regular basis in my area. And it's funny because my friend works at a local gamestop and he told me that they dont know when they will get them, how many they will get and its first come first serve. He says they usually get 2-5 every week or two. Now, it would appear to me Nintendo is artifically keeping the demand high by controlling the supply. Pretty much what happend to the real estate market over the past few years. 2-3 years ago people would buy houses and then put them right back on the market a week later for $50,000 over what they paid and have multiple full priced and above full priced offers before the property even got re-listed on the MLS. Same sort of thing with Nintendo. They are keeping demand high by only releasing limited quanities of a highly sought after product. And people buy them with no intention of using them in many cases for no other reason except re-sale on e-bay and amazon. I am not saying this is some evil plan by nintendo or that this practice will have a correction period like the housing market (completely different but some similaraities). But it does appear that they are purposely controlling supply to keep the demand high. I think they have warehouses full of wii's and more constantly in production. There is no reason that over a year later Nintendos production has not streamlined and improved. There should be no such thing as a Wii shortage over a year after release.
Someone did the math a while ago on a blog. It might have been Kotaku.
But basically, it's not as simple or cheap as you'd think.
To open a new factory, Nintendo would regularly have to be selling about 1 million Wii's a month (or about double what they're usually selling a month), otherwise it would be cost prohibitive.
If you open two factories, you have to be prepared to sell double the volume until, at the very least, that factory is fully paid off. And even then you have to budget for things like taxes and fees every month.
And that's assuming that everything is produced in one 'factory'. That's not the case, either. Pieces and parts come from multiples factories across the world, so you have a coordination issue, too.
They HAVE upped production over all since launch, but there are still sell outs. It's probable that Nintendo feels they couldn't consistently sell 1 million Wii's or so a month over the next several years, which would result in overstuffing the retail channels sooner or later...IE - Nintendo gets stuck with the bill for a bunch of unsold Wii's. That happened with the Gamecube, and I'm sure Nintendo doesn't want it happening again.
Thus it makes more sense, long term financially, to not open extra channels and lines. You can't just say to a factory, "Hey, open up a new manufacturing like for us for the next month". You're talking long term contracts when it comes to this stuff.
There is no doubt that they're sitting on SOME supply, of course. Smash Bros is about to release in the US and Wii Fit is getting ready to drop shortly after...and Mario Kart later on.
But I'd be willing to bet that MS's 360 shortage, if it was indeed real, came about due to them possibly anticipating GTA4, for example.
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I like him, he should talk more often.
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In the past the formula for devs has always been "hey look, a popular game on a popular console - let's copy the shit out of it and ride its coattails all the way to the bank."
And frankly, some of the best games I have played have just been made by taking mario out of mario 64 and replacing him with a dragon/gecko/guy with weird hair or taking samus out of metroid and replacing her with the son of dracula/some belmont/some other belmont.
C'mon devs! Where's your sense of stealing decent ideas for profit?
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There are legitimate criticisms to be made of the Wii and the userbase it's established. I'll bet a certain percentage of owners -- maybe even 60% -- are ultra casuals and granny gamers who will never buy much more than Wii Sports for it. But that has to do with marketing and the demographics Nintendo has reached, not with their games magically denying sales to everyone else. If Phil would just say *that*, he'd come off as much less of a douche.
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All up until the release of the systems, Sony was calling Wii "Teh Ghey", kiddie console, POS etc....
Now it must be pretty humilitaing getting stomped into the floor by "teh Ghey" Kiddie console POS.
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Then there will be nowhere to hide from that shadow
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Just wanted to address this comment on its own.
Actually, it's completely Nintendo's fault that people are buying all those Wiis. It's Nintendo's fault for making a system that people want. It was just as much Sony's fault, for the same reason, that they sold so many of the first two versions of the PlayStation.
And to be honest, there's no shame in that. That's the whole idea. They're supposed to be making systems that people want to own. That's the reason they make consoles. Never have any illusions otherwise.
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