EA's Riccitiello: Wii could use price cut, support toward third parties

@Jack Kevorkian

I like how EA tells Nintendo how it should run its business.

"Give us more kickbacks so we make better games, or lower the system price."

If I were Nintendo, I would say sure, but all EA games gotta sell for $5.

@Lerkero

I only buy exclusives for my Xbox 360, and thats turns to about 3 exclusives a year + 3 other 'Exclusives' at that I will be upset over the following year cause they go to PS3 with updates/extra content

Sony? Lets just say theres 1/2 exclusives a month. Every month.

Nintendo? an exclusive every 3 months, at worst.

@Lerkero

"better PS3 first party games."

that's quite arguable.

@maveric101
aw snap here it comes

@jobocan 70 million people is roughly 1.2% of the worlds population. So a little smaller than "everyone".

@Jack Kevorkian yes, because theres no such thing as a second hand market, and every house hold only has 1 person in it, so 1 person owning a wii doesnt ever mean that several people have access to it.

@jobocan

Well the PS2 sold 140 million.
There's nothing stopping the Wii reaching numbers like that other that the comparitively high price and lack of HD.

@Esposch
Yeah, it's a good thing the PS2 had the best graphics last gen or it wouldn't have sold much.

Oh wait, it had the worst =p

@KaBob799

The PS2's graphics were comparable to the competition. In fact, they were far better than the Dreamcast's.

@TraceurRyuk Prepping for LBP2 Madworld is as good as anything Nintendo ever put out on the system.

@TraceurRyuk Prepping for LBP2
There are a lot of great third-party games on the WIi, but it seems like they're treated more as side projects than the great games they are, so most of them are marketed poorly (if at all).

@Jack Kevorkian

....Yeah, MadWorld's a poor example. It's a fun game, but it's also short and lacks the staying power of numerous first-party Nintendo games.

Something like Monster Hunter Tri would make for a better comparison, but that's still kinda iffy and up to interpretation.

@TraceurRyuk Prepping for LBP2
That's unreasonable. EA shouldn't need to make a good game for the Wii without Nintendo bribing them to do it. Don't you know how the business works?!

@Jawmuncher
I think that's something we can all agree to.

@Jawmuncher

i was sad when they didn't do it again for the anniversary on July 1st.

@GameGoal

Yeah, I completely agree. I've been saying this ever since I bought my PS3 back in March and became addicted to PSN and the trophies: the Wii really needs something like PSN/XBL, the Wii shop is alright but online multiplayer and social networking is extremely lacking.

I bought my Wii day one release (lined up for the midnight launch actually) all those years ago, so my eyes were opened when I recently bought my PS3...

@GameGoal
The Wii will never be a social platform on par with 360, PS3, Steam, etc. It is a technical imposibility, due to how the system menu is designed. Unlike most other operating systems, where new features are patched and integrated with the existing environment, every update is "stacked" on top of the other. A couple of examples:
When Nintendo added SDHC compatability to the Wii, older games that used the SD card slot (Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, etc.) still couldn't read SDHC cards, because that update was "stacked" above what system updates they were programmed with.
Or how Nintendo switched from MP3 to AAC support for music on the Photo Channel, Excite Truck still could only use MP3 for the custom soundtrack, because that's what it was programmed with.

Even if Nintendo did try to tack on a social feature or single login system for Wi-Fi Connection, older games wouldn't be able to utilize this at all. It isn't that Wii games can't be patched (apparently, the last couple of CoD games for Wii can be patched over the net), but they have to be designed with patching in mind. Plus, there's the issue with the limited internal storage of the system, a good chunk of it gobbled up by the system menu.

When they focused so much on reinventing the controller, they were pretty short-sighted in the technology for the console, and I speak not of its graphical capabilities.

See, this isn't how it is with 360 or PS3, either. When Microsoft replaced the blades with NXE (and the NEW New Xbox Experience), this was reflected by ALL 360 games (i.e. You wouldn't see the old blades menu if you hit the guide button in early games like Dead Rising).

If the 3DS is any hint of it, Nintendo is well aware of how short-sighted they were with DS and Wii, given how it will allow you to transfer DSiWare purchases to a 3DS (possibly an indication of a single login account) or the ability to browse the web while you pause your game.

The Wii cannot be fixed, but their next home console will make up for all of their mistakes... I hope. If nothing else, at least the Wii does have a great library of first- and third-party games.

@BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam

I agree that the Wii OS has problems: Bushing and the others at Hackmii have exposed those problems. The problem isn't necessarilly the stack approach but the fact that it offers so little shared libraries and resources for games to use. Games have to have their own code for it, which explains the examples you gave.

But it's still possible for the Wii to be more social than it is. They could make an update to allow you to see if your friends were online. Achievements? No, probably not. But there are social features and services that the Wii could offer, as their Japan-only updates have hinted.

Microsoft is well experienced with the need to be able to patch its OSes. :) So, it's not surprising that they have a better platform for adding new features.

However, I have a problem with people wanting the Wii to be more like the 360. I have a 360 for that, although that doesn't mean that I game anymore on the 360 than the Wii. No, Nintendo needs to learn from what they missed and make that next innovative leap that the 360 and PS3 don't have. 'course the PS3 tried that with PS Home. The question might be if Nintendo has the interest and knowledge to do that.

@guttertalk
I don't want the Wii to be 360, but I do want to see Nintendo evolve their online strategy to be on par with their competitors.

@BPMOmega XBL PSN Steam

I don't think it's a dying system either. However, I can't shake that Nintendo is going to announce a new console in 2011, partly because they have that 5-year interval going. Yes, the DS has lasted a long while but that's large because they had the DS Lite and DSI iterations.

@Dragonclaw

And you know why there are so many awful titles? Because Nintendo finally caved in with the Wii and dropped their certification standards to be more friendly for 3rd parties. All it did was attract a lot of lazy bastards looking for a quick buck. That seal of quality use to mean something until fans and developers bitched and moaned until the Nintendo Wii happened.

@Anticrawl
Yeah dude, no previous Nintendo console has EVER had shovelware. EVER. Sure.

@A Sandwich - Amen, brother.

Personally, I've got a pretty big stack of third party Wii games, but this is probably due to having pretty well no taste at all for purported "AAA" megatitles on the XBox or PS3. I even have an XBox and so many games that come out for it are just so poorly designed from a conceptual standpoint. To each their own though.

Anyways, I completely agree that these companies should take their lumps. There are two types of third party Wii games that sell really well: unmitigated crap that gets sold based on its walk-by/cover appeal, and games that are just insanely good. The problem is that people like EA are jumping onto a console where the unchallenged developer is freaking Nintendo, probably the most consistently great developer in all of video games. If EA were to hire someone with the acumen of Shigeru Miyamoto (which is obviously impossible), perhaps then they could start competing - but don't expect Nintendo to throw money behind your steady stream of ultimately pretty bad, boring, or in cases insufferable games.

Has EA made a single exclusive worth playing on the Wii? Have their ports been anything but slapdash? No? Then Riccitiello doesn't really have anything to complain about.

(One final note: Nintendo clearly does support certain games when the quality is there or the games are distinctly designed for Nintendo sensibilities. Look at the marketing pushes behind Dragon Quest IX, Monster Hunter Tri, and the Professor Layton games, for example)

@jessed75

Hopefully the you mean the sequel because the first one wasn't that good.


Yeah I've played Just Dance 1 & 2. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

@mcnerven and i cant tell you how many people i know that have a main game or two for ps3, but use the machine mainly as a bluray player, or how many people that every time i see them on live, theyre only on netflix. so while the wii for some people are "mario kart machines," the ps3 and 360 are movie machines for others.

the biggest probelm is that these third parties keep on making weird or niche games for the wii and market them as "hardcore" or else they make a ton of shovelware.. and then they complain about how the games dont sell.

madworld, house of the dead overkill, zack and wiki, resident evil darkside chronicles, dead space extraction, no more heroes, and so many others are perfect examples of games that would sell pretty poorly regardless of what machine they were on.

resident evil, all of the call of duties (save for black ops), guitar hero, rock band, monster hunter 3 are all perfect examples of how to do third party wii games.. dont make some weird version of the regular game and expect it to do as well as its 360 or ps3 counterparts.

as much as I love them, on rails shooters historically don't do well. why not just make a port of dead space with lower textures? or even better, they could have made a side story that had the same exact game play as the first game, and i bet it would have sold well.

instead though, we'll keep seeing terrible ports (dead rising), overly violent games that are purposely done in a niche style (madworld, no more heroes), and casual cash ins (ea sports active).. and the 3rd parties will still be blaming nintendo.. as if these same games would sell like halo on 360 or uncharted on ps3.

@shouryuuken

Well said.

@shouryuuken Yeah, those are all very valid points as I too know people who only use the PS3 for BluRay and so forth. I guess what I should've said is I don't personally know anyone with a large collection of Wii titles whereas I know some people with a huge library of PS3 and X360 games. Though, that gets back to quality of 3rd party titles too. Xbox 360 / PSN have Dead Space, Red Dead Redemption, Batman Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect 2 and a whole assortment of amazing 3rd party titles that aren't found on the Wii whereas almost any good 3rd party Wii game is also found on other systems as a better version, like Rock Band.

The more I thought about this the more I started to consider the effectiveness of the Xbox 360 dashboard as it does a decent job of letting you know what new games are out, new dlc, XBLA, demos and so forth. The Wii on the otherhand is the same every time I turn it on and rarely offers support for demos or gameplay sneak-peaks. Maybe that plays a much larger role in 3rd party success than anyone could've guessed.

EA's CEO should probably point out the various ways Nintendo could support, such as having a more marketable navigation/dash board, than just complaining.

@shouryuuken

Just to jump in, I think while your points are valid, Dead Space Extraction is actually a legit awesome game. I'm not saying it would have sold well given its genre, but love and care went into it for sure.

I think a good example of a hardcore game that marries the best of both console worlds is Silent Hill Shattered Memories. Definitely a game thats greater than the sum of its parts.