Analyst: Investing in Wii development is 'fool's gold'

Yes, well this is where Nintendo fails.

You target a casual market, you're going to get people who play games casually.
That means the large majority of Wii players get a game and probably pick at it for months on end.

I see what he is saying. I don't think that developing the Wii would be a mistake necessarily, but the figures for how well the system is selling is VERY misleading for game developers. Let me give you an example: two of my friends are not gamers. Cool people, but aren't really interested in the whole video game scene. However, like so many others across the country, they picked up a Wii because it's the hot thing, it's moderately fun, and it's very, very accessible. Now of the millions of people that picked up the Wii, there are bound to be a few million like me who picked up the Wii as "hardcore" gamers, who were excited for games like Galaxy and Twilight Princess.

However, excluding those, lets say 8 or 9 (basing this on sales figures for super mario galaxy via vgcharts + 1mil for the people who fall in "hardcore," but didn't pick up Galaxy), this leaves 10-11 million Wii's floating around who essentially form fluff numbers. This is where my other friends come in. Those friends who bought the Wii? Today, they have Wii sports, Wii fit, and one or two other games, neither of which are "core" games.

What does that mean? Well for developers, the numbers they see for Xbox and PS3 ownership are far more saturated with these "core" gamers. To truly compare consumer base numbers between the Wii, 360, and PS3, you have to account for these fluff numbers, the 10 million or so players who bought the wii for wii sports.

If you keep your development costs in check, its very easy to turn out a solid Wii game and profit. Look at the original Kororinpa: it only sold 100k, but apparently profited enough to warrant a sequel. Same with No More Heroes. Now NMH had some obviously cut corners (that shoddy overworld), but overall it was a solid game, sold decently, and scored profit and unprecedented success for Grasshopper Manufacture.

Now something overly ambitious (like The Conduit) might be riskier in that regard, but its easy to make something quality and prosper.

Even the worth while game can't top Nintendo's heavy hitters. It could be the best game ever, but would still pale in comparison to Nintendo's titles cluttering up the retail shelves. And I'm sure that 3rd parties aren't willing to take that risk.

The Wii might have a huge install base, but particular target markets are much broader and more difficult to pinpoint. At least with the 360/PS3, a good number of players are playing the Halo's/Killzone's, while the Wii's market is consisting of all ages and sexes. It's easier for developers to know what works and what doesn't. The return on investing in the Wii might be worth it, but the risk of it not succeeding amongst a stiff competition from Nintendo's first party titles probably deter many.

Makes sense to me - the audiences for the consoles are completely different.

I don't usually generalize, but loosely speaking Wii gamers are typically "non-gamers" so to speak - they are the casual people that don't typically play a ton of video games. I do NOT mean the latter to be an insult, simply a comparison. Of course not a steadfast rule - but a generalization.

360 and PS3 gamers encompase a larger number of "normal" to "hardcore" gamers. More passionate about IP, more fickle, and likely to spend more time and money on the console than with a Wii. When you think of a "gamer", you typically think of someone with one/both of these consoles, no?

While there's a huge number of Wii owners - porting a 360/PS3 game onto the Wii doesn't necessarily mean success. Remember, you're catering to "non-gamers", and they don't like the same type of games. Casual games and party games are the most successful there - so it would indeed be foolish to invest the money to port a "gamer" title to the "non-gamer" platform.

The Oxygen channel (womens cable network) may get millions more watchers per day, but that doesn't mean showing a porn movie on the network will be successful.

As mentioned earlier today, the problem is that, compared to the 360 and PS3, people don't play their Wii's very much. The Wii only gets about half the playtime of 360 and PS3 per owner, on average. Why is this? Well, we could point to games, but the most obvious reason is that lots and lots of "non-gamers" went on and bought Wiis because they were a big fad and proceeded not to buy any other games than Wii Fit/Wii Sports/etc. and have now lost interest in the little white box. So those non-gamers are inflating the number of Wiis sold, but they might as well be worthless to game developers.

"Fool's gold" and "red herring" pretty much sums up what I've been saying about the Wii for the longest. This dude makes sense, to me, when u look at things. Core gamers leave their Wiis to the side after the novelty wears off and casual gamers pretty much do too...unless they are using Wii Fit to get and stay in shape.

I would think Nintendo's "real base" are children who's parents only bought them a Wii ,in this gen's arena (the Wii is just old gen tied into one console, if u ask me), and even then, many a time, the parents' don't buy that many games. Then the kids usually end up playing the same 3 or 4 games over and over for months (I remember those days with my Colecovision and NES) because the parents will not just go out and buy new games like that.

Anyone who works at a retailer where they sell Wiis kinda knows this already. It's damn near impossible to get a "casual" "gamer" (yeah, two separate quotes) to even try buying something good when there are crap games around, let alone come in to buy a game more often than a grand child has a birthday party.

I once tried to convince someone to get Boom Blox and they instead purchased some mini-game collection because it said "30 Great Games!" on the box.

The cheaper develoment and publishing costs associated with Wii games as opposed to PS3 and 360 games along with the frighteningly superior marketshare make investment in Wii development a no-brainer.

Third party software for the Wii has been performing well, and this is after the majority of it hasn't even been marketed properly. If the likes of Zack & Wiki and The Godfather Blackhand Edition had been advertised then more units would have been shifted. The latter especially is a personal disappointment to me in terms of lack of marketing and sales turnover as it's one of the best implementations of motion controls I've experienced. I can't recommend The Godfather highly enough, it's great fun.

Sure there may be 19 million wiis, but 5 million are soccer moms/little kids who never went beyond Wii tennis/fit etc, and another 5 million are covered in dust in closets of hardcore gamers or lost/loaned to their mom/little bro

I agree. The only thing at the moment that is keeping the Wii ahead is Wii-Fit.I have seen the games coming up for the Wii for the year coming. It doesn't look good. Nothing really to get excited about. The only reason most developers invest in the Wii is that they already have bigger games out or in the works and can risk investing in the Wii because even if the game fails it's no big loss.
For example Capcom can invest in a Wii game because its heavy hitters, Street Fighter and Resident Evil 5 are already out there. Even if they make a game for the Wii and lose out because it fails, it doesn't matter. It's just a few million, while Street Fighter and resident Evil 5 rake in the big money. Do you think that companies like Capcom would take a risk on a Wii game if they didn't have the Xbox and PS3 to fall back on? Do you really think that they would expect the Wii to bring in the profit they need to fuel their business? Face it in the grand scheme of things the Wii is small potatoes. No company who wants to sell over 4 million unit and go platinum would put it on the Wii.

I love pyrite.

Why are these analysts inevitably Sony dicksuckers? Every time they put out one of these announcements, it's always something like "the Wii is just a fad," or "The Playstation 3 will win this console war eventually," or "The Xbox 360 gives you cancer," or "Obey Sony or die." Get with the times. The age of Sony as an industry leader is over.

I currently own own a Wii and a DS, and 75 percent of my game collections for either system are from 3rd party developers. I sometimes look at the stack of boxes and wonder if I dislike Nintendo games. I don't even own brawl -or paper mario or anything like that.

I guess I own around 12 Wii games - and 20-30 DS games. Nothing recently with the pinch on my wallet, though most of my virtual console purchases are third party as well.

Lately, my attention has shifted and I'm not exactly interested in sitting in front of a television like I used to be - so I'm only really interested in DS games, and eventually buying a PSP depending on where things go. (Not that I plan to buy DSi less I come into extreme disposable money)

The fool is him for not realizing how many of those 360 n PS3 owners overlapped.

I think most analysts are fools. Didn't all of these guys miss completely the success of the Wii, assuming Sony would once again rule all? After a miss like that you wonder why anyone listens to them anymore.

Nintendo knows how to make sales...


....just not any that really cater to my needs, wants, or tastes.
To each his own. If it weren't for the Homebrew Channel + community that supports it (and by Homebrew, I mean homebrew - I DON'T mean PIRATED) I would have no reason to power my Wii console on anymore.

My LG Vu gets more gameplay than my Wii. That's sad, but whatever. From time to time it's fun to play Wii Bowling.

@ CTC XBL-supapaypamawio PSN-ctclaw

20+?? You spend that much on wii??

The writers biggest argument is that the 360/PS3 outnumbers the Wii by 3 millions units. That may be true but how many of those 360/PS3 owners actually own both systems? Everyone I know does. Does the writer actually think that we would buy the same game for both systems. Not only that, most of the PS3 owners are Japan/Europe gamers and they like total different games than Americans do. So the numbers don't look so good now do they? What is the cost difference of development between the Wii and 360/PS3 ~let's say for COD5? That's an apple to apple comparison. Not only that 'TIME'. I hear that Dead Space Extraction has only taken a little over a year to develop. That's fast (I hope it's good) compared to the 3 to 4 years it takes for a 360/PS3 game.

Its sad that people still think of the Wii as a fad :(
Poor deluded souls