Publishers wary to make Wii games. Guess why?

BTP

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=22368

Publishers wary of creating Nintendo titles, says Wii developer

Matt Martin 13:46 24/01/2007

Perception of poor third-party performance sees big names hold back

Big publishers have been wary of creating new titles for the Nintendo Wii due to the perception that first-party titles are better supported than third-party games, says Brian Dreyer, business development manager for Frontline Studios.

The trepidation of companies to support the console and its motion sensitive controller has left a gap in the market that independent studios have been wise to exploit, claims Dreyer

"Nintendo hardware is traditionally seen as great for first-party titles, but not so much for third-party games," said Dreyer, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz

"That fact really scares a lot of publishers and frankly we've seen a lot of publishers take that wait-and-see attitude with the Wii," commented Dreyer. "Rightly or wrongly, publishers are more frustrated with that than independent developers are."

While publishers such as Ubisoft and Sega have supported the Wii since launch, others, such as Capcom, are yet to get boxed product to market.

Frontline is currently working with Digital Amigos and Nibris on the Wii project Sadness. For the developer, the attraction of working on Nintendo hardware is the innovative elements of the console that provide a different approach to game development.

"It's the marketing warfare," said Dreyer. "Nintendo is the challenger, it's the underdog and it has to be coming to market with something that is completely different."

"Gamers are yawning at these supposedly great-looking games on other systems. With the Wii, we're back to the fundamentals, the nuts and bolts of any videogames experience, which simply means it has to be fun,"

Of course this is overall nothing new when it comes to Nintendo systems, but you'd think that something would be a little different by now considering just how different Wii is to anything that's out there. If people are still willing to camp out at a store to get their hands on the system two months after launch, shouldn't some of them be going "Hmm...maybe there is something to this" and create.....I don't know.....a new IP? Nothing that requires a large budget, but still something worthwhile? A puzzle game, or something? If it bombs, don't make something like that again. Sure you took a hit, but at least it wasn't a huge one. If it sells well, oh hey look, more money coming to you.

I swear, it just feels like some of them are looking for excuses.

Gyral

Why is it every time I see an article like this, it's from someone working at a company I've never heard of before?

Mastervastere

"Gamers are yawning at these supposedly great-looking games on other systems."

We are?? How come nobody told me??

werehippy

I'd think the fact the Wii is so different would be more of a deterrent than Nintendo's traditional dumping on third party software. It takes more effort (translating to more time and effort) to develop for a completely different and innovative system, and then the software is tied to a smaller market since you can't port the game to other systems (except possibly without even more cost).

The big third party companies, at this point, have to weigh spending more to sell to a smaller market versus going the more traditional route and selling to the larger combined PS3/360 market (or being courted into going exclusive to one or the other).

mntorankusu

Shit, I don't know. Maybe if third parties put out something that wasn't a port, cash-in, or a piece of crap, someone would buy it.

Animal Spirits

The real story is, somebody is still convinced Sadness is a real game.

I hope it is.

xzzy

Based solely on his words, it seems like a self-fullfilling prediction.

"We don't make Nintendo games because no one buys third party Nintendo games, so we continue to not make Nintendo games."

Maybe it hasn't occurred to him that people don't buy third party titles because the ones that do get made is shovelware? If a Katamari (as an easy example) game were to hit the Wii for example, I guarantee it'd sell like hotcakes.

Vyolynce

mntorankusu wrote:

Shit, I don't know. Maybe if third parties put out something that wasn't a port, cash-in, or a piece of crap, someone would buy it.

Another helpful hint: when you do release your quality titles, don't do it during the holiday clusterfuck so it gets lost in the shuffle. Even better, release it during the long stretches in-between those first-party titles you're apparently so worried about.

When I read in the quote that Capcom has yet to bring boxed product to Wii, my immediate reaction was, "they must not have figured out how to make MegaMan, Street Fighter, or Resident Evil Wii-friendly" (although RE should be a no-brainer).

Lunker

"Nintendo hardware is traditionally seen as great for first-party titles, but not so much for third-party games," said Dreyer, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz

You know, every time I hear about this conundrum, I'm reminded of the students in class who would complain about the smart kid in class scoring high on a test and ruining the grading curve for everyone else. "My Zelda clone would have sold better on a console that didn't have to compete with Zelda!"

The truth of the matter is that good third-party games sell like hotcakes on Nintendo systems. (Aside from Beyond Good & Evil, but that's separate from the Nintendo dilemma .)

werehippy wrote:

I'd think the fact the Wii is so different would be more of a deterrent than Nintendo's traditional dumping on third party software. It takes more effort (translating to more time and effort) to develop for a completely different and innovative system, and then the software is tied to a smaller market since you can't port the game to other systems (except possibly without even more cost).

The big third party companies, at this point, have to weigh spending more to sell to a smaller market versus going the more traditional route and selling to the larger combined PS3/360 market (or being courted into going exclusive to one or the other).

...which would make sense, if development costs for the Wii weren't significantly less expensive than for the other consoles.

Heir

Hey, if it gives indie developers a chance to get a foot in the door with fun games, then that's cool.

That being said, I really don't see this turning out like the gamecube. At least I'm hoping it doesn't.

slash000

werehippy wrote:

It takes more effort (translating to more time and effort) to develop for a completely different and innovative system,

Actually, it costs a heck of a lot less to develop a game for the Wii than it does for either of the other two.

The big third party companies, at this point, have to weigh spending more to sell to a smaller market versus going the more traditional route and selling to the larger combined PS3/360 market (or being courted into going exclusive to one or the other).

It takes a hell of a lot more sales on the 360 and PS3 to justify developing for those two. Part of N's strategy is making it incredibly inexpensive to develop for the Wii. The question is whether it makes business sense to develop a single game with a low budget and release it to what will probably be a moderate-sized market and hope that it sells 'okay' to make money, or to spend a hell of a lot and release it on the 360 and/or maybe PS3, and hope that the game is a hit with sales.

Recoil42

Mastervastere wrote:

"Gamers are yawning at these supposedly great-looking games on other systems."

We are?? How come nobody told me??

Sorry, you were just imagining that you were enjoying Gears of War and Resistance.

Derrick

I think some developers are still behind the curve.

PS3 isn't selling well and probably won't until they change their price point. So that's kind of a moot issue.

Wii is selling like hotcakes.

Develop for the hotcakes, you retards.

japan

Mastervastere wrote:

"Gamers are yawning at these supposedly great-looking games on other systems."

We are?? How come nobody told me??

Well I am, for one. Though I find it's mostly directed at the PS3. The 360 and Wii both have selling points beyond "looks prettier than previous gen." The PS3 seems to be offering an identical experience to the PS2, just in HD.

slash000

Vyolynce wrote:

mntorankusu wrote:

Shit, I don't know. Maybe if third parties put out something that wasn't a port, cash-in, or a piece of crap, someone would buy it.

Another helpful hint: when you do release your quality titles, don't do it during the holiday clusterfuck so it gets lost in the shuffle. Even better, release it during the long stretches in-between those first-party titles you're apparently so worried about.

When I read in the quote that Capcom has yet to bring boxed product to Wii, my immediate reaction was, "they must not have figured out how to make MegaMan, Street Fighter, or Resident Evil Wii-friendly" (although RE should be a no-brainer).

They announced Resident Evil Chronicles or whatever, which is supposedly in development as a sort of 'overview' of the series in which you play as different characters in the style of Resident Evil 4.



But Capcom seems to still be taking the wait-and-see approach like most publishers.


Meanwhile Ubisoft and EA rake the motherfucking cash in. Ubi's made a killing on the Wii with Red Steel and Rayman, and Madden has sold its usual massive quantities. No doubt helped in part by EA actually doing something fresh and interesting with Madden, for once!

Dareth Ram

They didn't mention EA's gung-ho attitude towards the Wii. I mean, they're the biggest third party developer in the world. It's kind of dumb not to mention them, but I guess doing so would diminish the articles argument...

Vyolynce

slash000 wrote:

Meanwhile Ubisoft and EA rake the motherfucking cash in. Ubi's made a killing on the Wii with Red Steel and Rayman.

And the Wii SSX may be the first game in the series I purchase. I'm not usually into sports games, especially "extreme" sports games, but the more I read about it the more I'm leaning that way.

mausmalone

slash000 wrote:

Vyolynce wrote:

mntorankusu wrote:

Shit, I don't know. Maybe if third parties put out something that wasn't a port, cash-in, or a piece of crap, someone would buy it.

Another helpful hint: when you do release your quality titles, don't do it during the holiday clusterfuck so it gets lost in the shuffle. Even better, release it during the long stretches in-between those first-party titles you're apparently so worried about.

When I read in the quote that Capcom has yet to bring boxed product to Wii, my immediate reaction was, "they must not have figured out how to make MegaMan, Street Fighter, or Resident Evil Wii-friendly" (although RE should be a no-brainer).

They announced Resident Evil Chronicles or whatever, which is supposedly in development as a sort of 'overview' of the series in which you play as different characters in the style of Resident Evil 4.



But Capcom seems to still be taking the wait-and-see approach like most publishers.


Meanwhile Ubisoft and EA rake the motherfucking cash in. Ubi's made a killing on the Wii with Red Steel and Rayman, and Madden has sold its usual massive quantities. No doubt helped in part by EA actually doing something fresh and interesting with Madden, for once!

That wait-and-see period should be over by now. The Wii is selling like gangbusters the world over. You'd be stupid not to get in now when there's less of a field to differentiate yourself from.

jclast

Dreyer, of some studio I've never heard of wrote:

Nintendo hardware is traditionally seen as great for first-party titles, but not so much for third-party games....

I'm going to have to call BS on this one.

First, let's define "traditional" Nintendo hardware. I'd say, in most gamer's opinions that's the NES, SNES, GBA, and GCN.

The NES had plenty of third-party support.

Many of those SNES classics? They're third-party, too. FFIV, FFVI, Chrono Trigger, Castlevania IV, R-Type III, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, all the Disney games? Third-party games that make up a significant part of gamers' (mine anyway) SNES collections.

The GBA is a goldmine of awesome third-party games. Gunstar Super Heroes, Rebelstar Tactical Command, all the FF ports, Golden Sun and its sequel, three Castlevania games, Riviera, Drill Dozer, the Mega Man Zero series, the Mega Man Battle Network series, and the list goes on and on. You can't swing a dead cat in a game store without hitting an awesome third-party title. If anything is "traditional" Nintendo hardware, it's the GBA.

And the GameCube, despite receiving lackluster third-party support, did get good third-party games. RE4 was a GCN exclusive for a while, Tales of Symphonia, Ikaruga (yes, I know it got a DC release, but who can find that?), Eternal Darkness, Rogue Squadron games, Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2, FF Crystal Chronicles, Pac-Man Vs, Veiwtiful Joe (it was exclusive to begin with, too), and some good multi-platform games, too (like the PoP Sands trilogy).

Third-party games do just fine on Nintendo consoles. They just need to be made for it. Saying "we won't develop for Wii because nobody will buy our ports" is missing the point. Of course nobody will buy PoP: Rival Swords. It's a port of a two year old game that was designed around a standard controller. Design me a game around the Wiimote and do it well, and people will buy it. They're eating up Elebits and I'm more excited about Sonic and the Secret Rings that I ought to be considering Sonic Team's recent track record. If you don't want to develop for Wii, that's fine, but don't blame it on the fact that first-party games sell better. They sell better because they're made better. I guarantee that if you release a Wii game with as much fun and polish as Twilight Princess that we'll buy it in droves.

Yar

Katamari on Wii would be cum.

slash000

mausmalone wrote:

slash000 wrote:

But Capcom seems to still be taking the wait-and-see approach like most publishers.

That wait-and-see period should be over by now. The Wii is selling like gangbusters the world over. You'd be stupid not to get in now when there's less of a field to differentiate yourself from.

I agree, now is the time to start creating Wii games while they still really stand out, like Red Steel did. But I can understand the business approach that publishers have been taking, but really, they need to start doing something.






I wanted to mention something else related to this topic.


Some smaller publishers simply cannot afford to publish on the PS3 due directly to the development costs and limited current/expected market of the PS3. SNK, for example, said that the cost it would take to produce a PS3 game and the expected market for the system constrains them so much that they don't expect to release a PS3 game until 2009 at the earliest.

apotheos

So how is this Developers? I see one mentioned. Thats Developer.

Cantido

PS3 has no good first OR third party support come launch time. Would they rather go that route? I'm humping my Wii right now. They'd better get on the bandwagon.

AbsoluteZero

mntorankusu wrote:

Shit, I don't know. Maybe if third parties put out something that wasn't a port, cash-in, or a piece of crap, someone would buy it.

Seriously.

This shit is retarded.

Sixfortyfive

Doomed.

slash000

Also, it's not so surprising that Capcom hasn't released a boxed product to market for Wii. Guess what, they haven't done so for the PS3 yet, either. These systems just launched. But to the article's credit, more Capcom games have been announced for PS3, at least.

Edit: beat'd.






Hey, if Capcom really wants to make a quick and easy buck, they should release most of their back catalog on the Virtual Console.

AbsoluteZero

slash000 wrote:

Also, it's not so surprising that Capcom hasn't released a boxed product to market for Wii. Guess what, they haven't done so for the PS3 yet, either. These systems just launched. But to the article's credit, more Capcom games have been announced for PS3, at least.

Edit: beat'd.

Lots of people bet on the wrong horse this time around, methinks.

StriderEdge

AbsoluteZero wrote:

slash000 wrote:

Also, it's not so surprising that Capcom hasn't released a boxed product to market for Wii. Guess what, they haven't done so for the PS3 yet, either. These systems just launched. But to the article's credit, more Capcom games have been announced for PS3, at least.

Edit: beat'd.

Lots of people bet on the wrong horse this time around, methinks.

Well Inafune did say he is making a Wii game now. Thats what 2 Capcom games? Capcom will learn though... like they did with the PSP when their lawyer game on DS outsold their onslaught of titles for the PSP.

cloudeagle

I can honestly see why this random developer I've never heard of is worried... for the N64 and Cube, third-party games DID sell like crap. But the status quo is starting to shift. The Wii is selling like crazy. Sony's product is showing signs of weakness. What was true last-gen may not be true this gen.

Besides, remember Ubisoft? The little company that's spat out a large number of Wii games so far? On IGN, the company crowed that their Wii titles sold better than anticipated, and that Red Steel and Rayman Raving Rabbids were the number two and three top sellers for the Wii so far. Excite Truck, a Nintendo game with huge support put in the freakin' kiosks, fer fuck's sake, sold horribly.

Third parties can do damn well on the Wii in this new environment, if they're willing to make good, distinctive games.

AlphaTwo

My 13 Game collection (including Wii Sports) tells me they are wrong:

4 Nintendo Games / 9 Third party titles...

Veevee

AlphaTwo wrote:

My 13 Game collection (including Wii Sports) tells me they are wrong:

4 Nintendo Games / 9 Third party titles...

My 6 game collection (including Wii Sports) and soon to be 9, agrees with you.

MiSTieOtaku

So, basically, the article is saying Publishers are wary of making games for the Wii because often third party titles suck. Which is due mainly to their either haphazard or complete lack of use of the system's innovate design (DS touchscreen and now the Wiimote). Why does this come off less like, "We won't make them because they won't sell well", and more like, "We won't put any effort into making them good so they will sell well"?

wha???

My understanding is that it's tough to write games for the ps3, and that at the moment the system's capabilities are not nearly shown in the current round of games. That being said, is it really that easy to port something from the 360 to the ps3?

Elessar Elfstone

I have 5 games for my Wii (sports included) and don't see any purchases in the future. None of the other games out now are that interesting to me (maybe Madden to try out the controls) and I dont see anything down the pipe as well. And most of my anticipated games are first-party titles.

hughtron

Taken from The Engine

I didn't write this, incidently.

As a bit of background for those who don't know, I've been working in the games industry now since '94, since 96 in management, so I've spent quite a bit of time dealing with industry trends, corp. mechanications/mentalities, and the cyclic nature of the game industry which goes on 3-4 year waves.

Two years ago, when Sony did their 'tech sneak preview' of the PS3 at E3, and the press was crowing about how 'real everything was, and how it would revolutionize the world, blah blah fucking blah, myself and a couple other Art Directors and senior producers from various companies were at a bar in downtown LA feaking out. Not because we saw this as a GOOD thing, but because we saw the business reality behind what was being shown, and that in our experience in dealing with Sony that

a.) The APIs/software tools for the console to get those stunning images were going to be a fucking nightmare and a half

b.) the level of detail was an exponential increase in the amount of assets that had to be created for any given scene, animation, model, etc. since you now had hi-def models with ultra hi-rez textures, that supported multi-pass mapping (normal maps, specular, diffuse, opacity, etc) skin/muscle deformers for animation as well as the standard animation rigs, full facial range of emotional vert targets, plus phoeneme targets so that character can converse with convincing expression in realtime... and it just kept going.

c.) the hardware needed to support this kind of visual and math calc juice is expensive as fuck and there was now way the console could come in at $299, which is the magic number for a launch console. That isn't something I'm pulling out of my ass here, that's from Ken Kutaragi of Sony himself at the E3 developer price announcement for PS2 years ago. he said "of COURSE we are pricing it at $299. 3DO and Philips PROVED that to do otherwise is SUICIDE."

d.) With Sony being the dominant player in the field and there not being a viable alternative, and the games industry relying by its nature on the 5 year infusion of a new console to boost interest, we are looking through all of this, and trying to come to a different conclusion, but downing drinks faster and faster as we start seeing the PS3 as an 'extinction level event' for the games industry on the level possibly that the atari 2600 was with publishers overextending themselves on the PS3 launch and with no returns and no viable alternative, shops simply shut down and go away.

so... cut forward to LAST E3... Nintendo unveils the Wii.

All of a sudden unlike the era of the 2600, where there was no 'escape hatch', or alternative avenues, there's the Wii. Prior to E3, pretty much every one of us in the industry mocked it. the name, the controller, that Nintendo had lost their fucking minds... and then you spent 2 minutes with it and that was all she wrote. The comparison I made was that Sony and MS were in this Polygonal arms race of mutually assured destruction... and Nintendo for awhile was going along with it, trying to catch up... and then it was like they woke up one night after a really horrible bender in a really seedy part of town, with a horrific woman pinning their arm to a flea-bittne mattress, and they said "WTF, how the hell did I get HERE?!? I was making GAMES! It's supposed to be about FUN!! people ENJOYING themselves first and formost!" and really in the industry the one this you can say about the DS is that more interesting interface experiments have happened because of that platform, and hence how people think of playing games, than in the last 10 years. That same kind of thought process is where Wii is coming from, the kind of inclusive, mass-market gaming as an actual immersive, intuitive experience. As Keiron said, to write it off as a waving-the-hand gimmick is asinine. It is a better, more naturalistic way to give inputs and commands to a game. THAT is the reason that the rate of sales on the Wii is faster than any console since the 2600.

Nowit's interesting to note that, in the industry, both the DS *and* the Wii got slagged by a LOT of publishers and developers prior to launch/unveiling. When my company made the choice to move from PC game dev to handheld (and now Wii) dev, we could not get a deal for a DS-only game. We could get a PSP-only game, but NOT a DS-only game. This DESPITE the fact that the DS at the time had an installed user base 4 times the size of the PSP and was selling at a rate of 1 million units a month. The PSP wasn't (at the time) moving 200k a month. But, because of the strength of Sony's perceived invunerable hide, and Nintendo being the 'weak' company', that's how every publisher leaned. NOW, not ONE publisher wants to hear a project pitch that mentions PSP or PS3. Period. They want DS and they want Wii, and if you've got XBox360 and it makes sense from an ROI stance, that's great, but in those cases it really is about the game and the hard cost analysis, since you are back into games that cost much much more to make.

So, 'what is the future of games like?'

Expect companies to go out of business, get bought/consolidated, etc quite a bit over the next year in the post PS3 launch debacle fallout. Publishers bet on the 3-to-1 rule for a launch when they develop for the launch of a console which is that there are so few titles out at launch time that for every 3 consoles sold, 1 copy of your game will get bought if you are on the shelves at launch time.

A friend at EA a year ago was telling me what they were spending on launch titles and I was saying 'that's fucking insane... on the 3-to-1, they'd have to think Sony could move 12 million PS3s in year one and that's fucking NUTS!!!" (this was pre-E3) Sure enough E3 rolls around and Ken Kutaragi makes the announcement that they are going to sell 12 million PS3s in year one. 4 months later, without ever MENTIONING the previous number, there is an announcement that Sony is 'on track' to sell *6* million PS3s is year one... So, back of the envelope loss of EA alone? 150 million off the PS3 launch. You may not see the full effect of that until next year because some of those titles have been delayed, but there is no way those titles will make their money back, much less profit. Going down the list There are 5 Publishers I know have overextensions higher than 50 mill. due to PS3 launch titles. For some of those publishers, that could be fatal.

Sony continues to lose exclusives left and right, Don't be surprised if you see Final Fantasy as a MS exclusive title on XBox 360, which will be the wedge they need to crack the japanese market. Metal Gear IV (if it actually appears on PS3) will be the last Sony Metal Gear title), and Sega, Capcom, and Konami all pull their first-run deals from Sony as well.

MS's Handheld gaming system launches and with it you will see both with it/XBox360 and with the Wii/DS and blending on the idea of persistant gaming, where the Wii connect 24 for example really *is* a connect, and the DS, becomes a mobile input controller if you are around a wi-fi hotspot so you can continue a mode or part of your game when you are away from the console.

With The consoles (Xbox Live Arcade and WiiConnect) hi speed net capabilities and commuinty resources, expect to see more social systems games, and more games that develop organically with mod communities (which was once strictly the purvue of the PC crowd) We've actually just done this with The Star Trek game for the DS and PSP, and there are various other games that have done it unoficially, which makes the fact that now publishers are actually looking to this, pretty ironic.

I think more and more, PC gaming is a dead horse unless your name is Blizzard or id or valve. the cost to develop, vs the potential for retun is just too risky, and no publisher will take a risk on it.

But I will say this, between the input mechanisms and the HW capabilities of the DS and Wii, I think this is a fantastic time to be making games and there's going to be some incredibly unique games that come out of this. The whole 'it doesn't look as good as...' arguement to me is a load of shit because really past a nuche market, you sell 500k units and it plames out. OR you sell something like brainage which does 7 million units by focusing first and foremost on the gameplay and the experience. I really think that's what we're going back to, and why the Wii and DS have been so successful.

mausmalone

wha??? wrote:

My understanding is that it's tough to write games for the ps3, and that at the moment the system's capabilities are not nearly shown in the current round of games. That being said, is it really that easy to port something from the 360 to the ps3?

Tough as in "OMG I'm going to rip my hair out and then kill myself because nothing works" -- at least from the articles I've read.

The bottom line is this: If the budget required to make a PS3 game necessitates that you sell 500,000 copies of the game just to break even at all (according to Namco, not some no-name developer) then you'd be stupid not to at least consider whether or not you'd make more money on the Wii.

It may just wind up that even though you're not selling as many copies as, say, Nintendo, you'll be making a profit on the Wii instead of a loss on the PS3.

jclast

I've got 6. Of those, only 2 are first-party: TP and Wii Sports. Otherwise I've got Ice Age 2, Gradius, Toejam and Earl, and Bonk's Adventure.

Of the games I've got my eye on, none are first-party: Sonic and the Secret Rings, Elebits, Metal Slug Anthology, and Super Castlevania IV. Yeah, the third-party market sure is shit on the Wii and nobody buys the games.

Daedalus

apotheos wrote:

So how is this Developers? I see one mentioned. Thats Developer.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6304687408656696643

mausmalone

The Warlock wrote:

apotheos wrote:

So how is this Developers? I see one mentioned. Thats Developer.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6304687408656696643

GIVE IT UP FOR MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[spoiler:af5155bd5d]Secretly, we all Steve Ballmer. Don't deny it.[/spoiler:af5155bd5d]

Dr_Keenbean

Companies do not want to make new and innovative games for the Wii because if they are a smash hit, said company will be unable to milk the cash cow on other systems via ports given the Wii's unique control system.

However, I say give the system a year. Like the DS it will likely take that time for the games to truly become amazing.

Mastervastere

I used to have 8 games for the Wii...now I have 3 (Wii Sports, Wii Play and Zelda).

If it wasn't for the virtual console games I've purchased, I'd have probably sold it by now.

It's early days, but I certainly regret buying it so soon...