One-Third For Third Parties

[Nester the Lark]

According to Edge Online, John Riccitiello, CEO of EA, stated that two-thirds of all game sales for the Wii belong to first-party Nintendo titles, with the remaining third made up of all third-party publishers' games combined. He went on to state that even tho EA will continue to fully support the Wii, he considers the PS3/360, PC, and even the PS2 to be EA's "home territory."

If this is true, then I don't have to tell you it's not good news for the Wii.

On the other hand, we really haven't seen too many third-party games that would deserve the kind of success it would take to encourage more growth. Wii owners are still waiting for breakout titles that would promote more competition with higher quality standards. Games like The Conduit and Mad World hope to be those breakout titles, but there's a chance that they'll be too generic and too abstract, respectively, to achieve it.

That doesn't mean we haven't already seen games on the Wii that could've helped raise the bar. But when games like Zack & Wiki, Okami, and No More Heroes all suffer poor sales, it sends the wrong message.

So, we have to ask: Where are these core Wii gamers? What is it, exactly, that they're waiting for? And are there even enough of them to push sales as high as they need to be?

[TV Eye]

Again, I feel like I need to bring up the topic of advertisement. The Wii is targeted as a casual console meant for children, and middle aged woman. But when you bring up games like Okami and No More Heroes, you're delving into the Hardcore territory, which hasn't been advertised or even been made aware of in Nintendo's "grand scheme".

I own a lot of third party and mature games for the Wii, as I base all my purchases on reviews, and not commercials. But sadly, the rest of America isn't as aware as I am.

[Koopaul]

As always, I blame Reggie for the poor advertisements dedicated towards the hardcore peoples. It's a shame those titles go unnoticed you know.

[Nester the Lark]

Well, it's not actually Nintendo's responsibility to advertise third-party games. It's the publisher's responsibility, so in this case, blame Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, etc.

[Wildcat]

I have to admit, 1/3 of the Wii market is better than I expected third parties to have.

[Nester the Lark]

A few days ago Edge Online reported that Ubisoft's Alain Martinez had a more encouraging outlook. He thought third-parties could thrive on the Wii as long as they were willing to put in enough quality and innovation, as well as look for opportunities to release games when they weren't in direct competition with Nintendo's.

I'm not sure we've see that from Ubisoft, tho, especially considering the remarks they made earlier this year about the Wii and its audience.

Martinez also mentioned that he thought Nintendo's market share on the DS was only "30-35 percent," leaving a good portion for third-parties.

[Wildcat]

Heh. Ironic UBI Soft is saying that, since they're shoveling Petz garbage onto the Wii at an alarming rate.

[Da Robot]

Dec 14, 2008 14:52:07 GMT -5 Wildcat said:

Heh. Ironic UBI Soft is saying that, since they're shoveling Petz garbage onto the Wii at an alarming rate.

This should make you slightly happier about Ubisoft, the Tom Clancy titles are coming to the Wii since Ubisoft finally reworked the game engines to help optimize the visuals for the Wii. (No there weren't any pictures of those games but here's some boxart below).


Source.



Surprisingly enough, that info came all the way back in the middle of September and I only just heard about it this morning.

[Wildcat]

The Tom Clancy games don't do much for me, to be honest. If Beyond Good & Evil 2 was coming to the Wii, that'd be a whole different story.

I have no personal issue with UBI Soft, BTW. I just found their comment ironic, that's all. ^_^

[Nester the Lark]

Here's an interesting article by N'Gai Croal at Slate.

His basic idea is that the Wii should be the lead platform for third-party developers. If the most successful platforms on the market today are not the highest end (Wii, DS and iPhone), then what sense does it make for publishers to focus on the high end platforms as their main base?

In his words:

Yes, the data show that the video-game industry's revenues continue to rise. But how sustainable is that when development budgets are tilted toward 360, PS3, and high-end PCs and away from the market-leading Wii and low-end PCs. If a remake of Resident Evil 4 sold extremely well on the Wii, surely there was an opportunity for Dead Space. The liberating sense of movement in Mirror's Edge could have translated well to the Wiimote and nunchuk. But because EA built those games for the top-of-the-line machines, the Wii wasn't even a possibility. So with Nintendo as top dog, I think it's time for publishers to throw it a much bigger bone by leading development on Wii, then up-porting the games to the more powerful systems, which should result in a larger addressable audience. (Hard-core gamers' flames coming in 3 … 2 … 1.)

[Da Robot]

Dec 16, 2008 23:35:06 GMT -5 Nester the Lark said:

Here's an interesting article by N'Gai Croal at Slate.

His basic idea is that the Wii should be the lead platform for third-party developers. If the most successful platforms on the market today are not the highest end (Wii, DS and iPhone), then what sense does it make for publishers to focus on the high end platforms as their main base?

In his words:

Yes, the data show that the video-game industry's revenues continue to rise. But how sustainable is that when development budgets are tilted toward 360, PS3, and high-end PCs and away from the market-leading Wii and low-end PCs. If a remake of Resident Evil 4 sold extremely well on the Wii, surely there was an opportunity for Dead Space. The liberating sense of movement in Mirror's Edge could have translated well to the Wiimote and nunchuk. But because EA built those games for the top-of-the-line machines, the Wii wasn't even a possibility. So with Nintendo as top dog, I think it's time for publishers to throw it a much bigger bone by leading development on Wii, then up-porting the games to the more powerful systems, which should result in a larger addressable audience. (Hard-core gamers' flames coming in 3 … 2 … 1.)

No I'm not going to flame you.


I remember reading that same article from GoNintendo and someone in the comments was saying the whole reason why PS3/360 are getting those titles is because they were planned years in advance . . . which does sound a little plausable given that most can take about 2 years or even 3 (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed took 4!)

And it does appear that some developers have caught on given that games such as The Conduit, Madworld, Dragon Quest X and Monster Hunter 3/Tri are also coming and even the Ghostbusters Wii game is not a port of the PS2 version, there is starting to be an air of change now but it's annoying considering the Wii has been out for 2 years.

I really wish this point had been bought up last year or did no one notice that Super Mario Galaxy was one of the major 3 games* last year to awarded game of the year 2007 by most of the industry.

I hope at this time next year, the quality of Wii games should be higher than this year.

End rant.


* The other 2 main games being Bioshock and Portal, there might be a few other but those 2 and SMG were the most popular ones.

[Saim]

Damn, that's terrible.

In my case, Nintendo-published titles are 5/13 of my Wii games. I guess I'm an exception to the norm, eh? Perhaps more hardcore "gamers" will buy more third party games (the ones that are actually good, like De Blob, No More Heroes, etc.), although casuals will more easily be roped into third-party movie licenses and party games. Red Steel did pretty well, although that was an over-hyped launch title. In fact, Ubisoft and Sega seem to be doing pretty well on the Wii, generally.

Contrast that to Sony-published games on my PS3 - 3/4 (Ratchet and Clank, Warhawk and Resistance), although this is probably because I've only just bought the system I few days ago, and two of those are Insomniac games, which is understandable. I didn't really enjoy Warhawk, either.

My Xbox 360 Microsoft-published titles are 7/18 of my games. Of course, without Rare and Bungie titles, there would be hardly anything.

So in terms of third party-ness

1. Xbox 360
2. Wii
3. PS3

Which is somewhat surprising... although Sony has developed a fair few good exclusives for their system, and this is also increased by Insomniac and other developers that they own, it would make more sense with the Wii.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's an interesting follow-up to N'Gai Croal's article about how third-parties should lead on Wii. You can read it on his blog at Edge Online.

He asked Reggie Fils-Aime when he thought the focus would shift:

If the Wii is the leading console now and for the foreseeable future, when are we finally going to see independent publishers and developers shift the bulk of their development budgets to the Wii rather than the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and high-end PC triumvirate?

But in a deft name-taking move, he turned the question back on me, asking me what I believed it would take for the current state of affairs to reverse itself. After a brief pause, I answered as follows: they will not lead development on the Wii until they’ve first exhausted every other option.

Basically, he seems to think that publishers are too used to starting with the high-end and working down, and they don't know how to handle going in the other direction.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's another thing to add from Edge Online: according to Satoru Iwata, "Third party titles sold more [in the U.S.] on Nintendo hardware than on any other platform for two consecutive months." He also adds that, as of last December 2008, 30 Wii titles have sold more than 1 million units.

Of course, for all we know, that might consist of software like Mini-game Collection Vol. 12 and Music Game X.

[Nester the Lark]

According to Edge Online, analyst Michael Pachter believes that Nintendo's third-parties will finally establish themselves on the Wii this year.

"...We believe that most of the publishers we cover will manage market share gains on the Wii over the next year," Pachter wrote. "We saw Nintendo capture 60 percent of Wii software sales during 2008, but note that Nintendo’s share dropped to 40 percent in December, indicating that third parties are beginning to capture market share."

North America is about to see the releases of several "core"-aimed games just this month alone, including Deadly Creatures and The House of the Dead: Overkill. From what I've heard, other publishers are watching these titles very carefully to see how they perform.

And remember what Rainbow Studios said: if Deadly Creatures doesn't sell well, it's back to mini-games for them.