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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 5, 2007 12:23:33 GMT -5
Here's a blog post from Adam Russell at 1up.com in which he explains how the current trend of 3rd party support is actually bad for the Wii. What he's essentially saying is that 3rd parties aren't interested in competing with Nintendo's 1st party games, and would rather pour money into developing big budget titles for the 360 and PS3. Being that the Wii is relatively cheap to develop for, they crank out quick & dirty ports of PS2 games that sell reasonably well, and then use the modest profits to fund the big budget games on the other consoles. It's not an unreasonable argument. A number of third parties still say they expect the PS3 to be the dominant force in a few years time, despite its weak beginning. A chart from Kotaku shows that Nintendo's early successes against competing consoles don't always last. And Shigeru Miyamoto, himself, has said, "a lot of times it seems that when [third parties are] putting games out on Nintendo hardware, those games are being developed by their third-string team or their fourth-string team" ( source). On the other hand, most 3rd party support started late. It wasn't until after last year's E3 that most companies began investing strong confidence in the Wii. The quickest, cheapest way of getting software out in time for the early months of the system's life would be compilations and easy ports. I always thought of it as a jumping off point. Still, Nintendo's earliest 3rd party supporter, Ubisoft, isn't exactly exactly bucking the trend. And even if the there are strong 3rd party sales, will it lead to more original and higher quality games down the road? What do you guys think? Is poor 3rd party support worse than no 3rd party support, or is the best yet to come? |
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Post by nocturnal YL on Apr 5, 2007 13:14:29 GMT -5
I've just tried some 3rd party games today, and I'm actually a bit unstisfied. They have simple control methods like merely using the Wii Pointer or have only one or two kinds of gesture. Games like WarioWare and WiiPlay have already shown how the controllers can be used, and yet I can see games that looks like if hey can be played on other consoles - or at most, can be replaced by the DS (using only 2-dimensional action or just the Pointer - he DS can pretty much do that, huh?)
I think it's like a better-than-nothing... I don't suppose only someone like SEGA can utilise what Wii can do... (by the way, SEGA is really good at utilising consoles made by other companies - I don't see they use Dreamcast's functions like the GB-like memory pak much, but they really did amazng jobs like making the only online game for GC (Phantasy Star Online) and making use of the GC-GBA link - oh, and the F-Zero GX/AX interaction as well)
BTW... I think you're just trying to copy me, huh? "YN"?
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Post by mrmolecule on Apr 5, 2007 16:37:45 GMT -5
Some of my friends (with me) were discussing at lunch how the Wii's control may make playing traditional games awkward or complicated (for the button-masher types).
It made me worried.
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Post by Smashchu on Apr 7, 2007 9:24:21 GMT -5
I think either way, if it just a port or a brand new game, it will help Nintendo. But, I think 3rd parties are moving away from port town. The Wii is in 2nd wworld wide and has soild over 6million in 4 months(don't think sales are in for March yet).
Also, Japanese developers are going to have to focus on the Wii as the PS3 is only half of the Wii, and since it's so hard to develop PS3 games, they'll go down Wii lane.
But, most importaintly, Nintendo will always be there. Thee system sells to a different audiencee, so if Nintendo still proudduces fun for everyone game, it will still succed. In fact, thats the biggest thing that will keep the system selling or not.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Apr 7, 2007 14:07:05 GMT -5
Stand back and take a look at the selection of Wii games available to you now, Considering it was released approaching half a year ago, where the hell is the first OR third party support?
Nowhere to be seen.
If it wasn't for the steady stream of Virtual Console releases, there is seriously NO reason to own a Wii at the moment outside of Zelda. And that's available on Gamecube as well.
Wii Sports and Wii Play were fun for a short while, as was WarioWare. Excite Truck really wasn't all that fun at all. Red Steel was below average, Raving Rabbids was a disappointment.
Meanwhile, the Virtual Console has a mass of quality titles, including ones I'd missed out on, or only remember playing round a friend's house. Again, these are mostly lazy ports (I'm in Europe remember? Nice slow games and chunky borders - they can't even be bothered to fix 20-year old localisation issues).
In short, I actually regret buying the Wii right now. But then I don't think I'd replace it with a PS3 either.
Lazy third party support is never a big money spinner anyway, riding on the hype of a movie or TV series never lasts for long enough to make an impact on sales. But without that lazy support, the Wii would have around 7 games released for it. Sad, sad state of affairs.
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Saim
Balloon Fighter
Posts: 860
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Post by Saim on Apr 8, 2007 18:04:35 GMT -5
Rayman Raving Rabbids and Red Steel where great. At least for multiplayer. The singleplayer was terrible for Rayman, and ok for Red Steel. The reason the Rayman singleplayer was crap is because you had to finish it to play every game multiplayer, while Red Steel was to repetitive (shoot some people, pick up key, shoot some people, sword fight, shoot some people).
Super Monkey Ball was good. WarioWare Smooth Moves isn't better than WarioWare Touched, but is still good. And I haven't gotten Excite Truck because it looks bad (only 2 players multiplayer, singleplayer never good in racers).
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Post by Dances in Undergarments on Apr 8, 2007 21:24:20 GMT -5
singleplayer never good in racers). F-Zero GX says hi then proceeds to beat you over the head with its awesomeness. |
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Post by Wildcat on Apr 9, 2007 11:11:57 GMT -5
Burnout Revenge then runs over the carcass of the F-Zero beatdown.  Heh, it's all good. I don't like a vast amount of racing games as it is, but there are some quality ones out there, and some I've been stunned with the enjoyment of playing it alone. Anyway, the Wii is in a bit of a pickle right now. Sure, Super Paper Mario is coming out this week in the US, but the key third party games are far off. UBI Soft tried, but I think things got rushed out before they were truly ready to meet the launch. And then they slapped together a few shipshod ports along the way. Capcom, Square-Enix, Koei and Namco Bandai played the waiting game, and have recently been revealing some of their games (which sound interesting, for the most part). Konami is keeping up the original properties with Dewy's Adventure. EA has been the most consistant third party so far with the general quality of their Wii games so far (which is a bit surprising). It would appear that we need to just wait a bit for some of the good stuff. It's help if there ws more from Nintendo itself to ease the wait, but I guess the VC is the way they're making us wait. *shrug* |
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Post by Dances in Undergarments on Apr 10, 2007 1:59:26 GMT -5
Oh s*** yeah Burnout Revenge is absolutely awesome. Fair call.
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Post by Spud on Apr 10, 2007 16:23:17 GMT -5
Never Played Burnout Revenge but I just wached the videos on IGN. One of the few racing games that when your going fast it looks like your going fast.
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Post by wanderingshadow on Apr 10, 2007 17:21:33 GMT -5
Poor 3rd party support may not be a big help, but it can't hurt either. The Gamecube and Nintendo 64 didn't have really great 3rd party support, but they did all right. With Nintendo systems, third party games are icing on the cake, you know? Or gravy on the roast. Either analogy works for me.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Apr 11, 2007 8:25:17 GMT -5
Not any more. Nintendo barely scraped through in the last generation. They made their profit margin, sure, but mostly with GBA which had astounding sales and excellent third party game sales (most of which were crappy games, sure).
Nintendo themselves are aiming to do a lot better with the Wii than they did with the Gamecube. But at their current rate they are looking to lose early-adopter interest.
And that's FIRST party support. Third parties are signing up to develop for it, but so many of them jumped on board late that we're left with a gaping hole in the meantime. The DS wasn't that different, but then games on the DS take considerably less time to develop.
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Post by Nester the Lark on Apr 11, 2007 11:42:09 GMT -5
In defense of third parties, I have to say that I'm generally impressed with their intentions. Some of their products are sloppy, but certainly not all of them. And I agree with Wildcat about EA; I'm surprised and delighted at the quality of their Wii games, even if they're rush jobs.
This "gaping hole" is what I refer to as the "off season." Nintendo's sporadic release habits haven't changed much in the last 10 years, except that right now, they don't have to carry the console on their own. EA blames their 25% drop in sales for February on not having enough Wii games available, and Take-Two has recently stated a strong commitment to the platform. I think things will get much better.
As for right now, I don't see any emergencies. Nintendo is not going to lose any "casual" gamers. These people don't care about buying new games every month. (It's easy for dedicated fans like us to forget that most normal people don't take this stuff so seriously.) Then there's the hard core gamers like us who aren't likely phased so easily. Again, I think it's just the normal slow time of the year.
If you're starved for gaming, it's a good time to go back and check out some of the games from the past year that you may have passed up the first time around.
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Post by Fryguy64 on Apr 11, 2007 12:13:25 GMT -5
Oh, I have more than enough games to play through. Contact, Sonic Rush, Metal Slug Anthology, not to mention a bunch of VC and Gamecube games. But until mid-year, Nintendo is releasing hardly anything. Clearly this will pick up later in the year when I expect we'll be getting all sorts of good stuff, including SSBB, Metroid Prime 3 and maybe even Super Mario Galaxy! But again, later in the year. Christmas will be busy, but we usually have a must-have game by Easter - at least in Europe  |
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Saim
Balloon Fighter
Posts: 860
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Post by Saim on Apr 18, 2007 19:12:38 GMT -5
singleplayer never good in racers). F-Zero GX says hi then proceeds to beat you over the head with its awesomeness. Yes there are exceptions, in fact I'd say F-Zero GX's singleplayer is better than it's multiplayer. |
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