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Big Budget Games and the Wii
Anticipation
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
With the recent NPD results showing two salient figures:
1) Metroid Prime 3 had sold 220k copies in its first four days
2) Resident Evil 4 Wii is still in the top 20 console games
It seems likely that both of these titles are headed to million seller status by Christmas (RE4 Wii is already beyond 750k sold), or will at least get very close.
Noticing these two facts got me thinking: how many big budget games -- with well established development teams and 6+ million dollar budgets -- have actually been produced on the Wii? It's amazing to think how few there are, but here is the list I came up with:
1. Zelda: TP
2. Super Paper Mario
3. Resident Evil 4
4. Metroid Prime 3
5. Red Steel
And of course we must acknowledge that RE4 was not a 6 million dollar game for the Wii specifically, but it is an excellent port of a highly respected game. And now notice: it appears that all 5 of these games are, or soon will be, million sellers. Two of the five are third party titles.
Which means that big budget games are actually succeeding quite well on the Wii -- even though many seem to claim otherwise.
My question is: why don't third party companies seem to be recognizing this yet? I'm aware that they've begun bringing in "casual" games to the system, which seems to be a euphemism for terrible games with low production costs and short dev cycles. Is it simply too early to see such games in development? Or am I wrong in my assumptions about third party approaches to the platform?
Sources:
http://ir.capcom.co.jp/english/news/html/e070831.html
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5371&Itemid=2
1) Metroid Prime 3 had sold 220k copies in its first four days
2) Resident Evil 4 Wii is still in the top 20 console games
It seems likely that both of these titles are headed to million seller status by Christmas (RE4 Wii is already beyond 750k sold), or will at least get very close.
Noticing these two facts got me thinking: how many big budget games -- with well established development teams and 6+ million dollar budgets -- have actually been produced on the Wii? It's amazing to think how few there are, but here is the list I came up with:
1. Zelda: TP
2. Super Paper Mario
3. Resident Evil 4
4. Metroid Prime 3
5. Red Steel
And of course we must acknowledge that RE4 was not a 6 million dollar game for the Wii specifically, but it is an excellent port of a highly respected game. And now notice: it appears that all 5 of these games are, or soon will be, million sellers. Two of the five are third party titles.
Which means that big budget games are actually succeeding quite well on the Wii -- even though many seem to claim otherwise.
My question is: why don't third party companies seem to be recognizing this yet? I'm aware that they've begun bringing in "casual" games to the system, which seems to be a euphemism for terrible games with low production costs and short dev cycles. Is it simply too early to see such games in development? Or am I wrong in my assumptions about third party approaches to the platform?
Sources:
http://ir.capcom.co.jp/english/news/html/e070831.html
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5371&Itemid=2
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edit: Also, these are the stats that excite publishers:
* Wii Sports (8.32 million) (packaged with system in all regions except Japan)
* Wii Play (4.49 million)
* Wario Ware: Smooth Moves (1.82 million)
* Mario Party 8 (1.03 million)
* Rayman Raving Rabbids (1 million)
Why make an uber-epic 2-disc monster when you can put out something smaller for a tenth of the budget and still sell over a million?
As to the first question: It isn't. The cut off point was chosen near-arbitrarily: if we can agree that 3 million dollar games aren't big budget (Raving Rabbids falls in to this category) and that 8 million is a big budget, then somewhere in between is where we draw a line in the sand. 6 million seemed reasonable. If you'd like to set the bar higher or lower, let me know.
Or better yet, just tell me if I'm missing any "big budget" games that the Wii has seen -- however you define that term. Because even lowering the bar to 5 million... I'm not sure a single game would be added to this list.
And as for budgets of those 5 games, they have each been released, except for Prime 3. I do NOT have links to these figures, so feel free to try to prove me wrong, but I'm quite sure I've read all of this:
Resident Evil 4: Initial cost of 10 million
Zelda: TP: Approximately 11 million
Red Steel: Famously 10 million
Super Paper Mario: 7 million
The original Metroid Prime cost 7 million, so unless the budget was cut for some bizarre and unknown reason, it should be in the same region, at the very least.
This leads to a bit of a conundrum. How do you do a big budget game that will hit the biggest percentage of the install base as possible, when the demographic is very different to what you've usually had to deal with? So, I'm guessing that's why you are seeing a lot of 'lower budget' games. They're going for the scattershot approach because the audience is so wideranging.
There's also the matter of development costs of the Wii being a lot lower.
Meh, I might be totally off. The words don't seem to make much sense when I read back over them.
Actually, I agree with a lot of this. Given the wide ranging attempts by so many companies to put low budget, low development quality games on the system, it seems clear that third party developers are simply throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. So far, there have been some successes (Raving Rabbids) and some failures (Carnival Games appears to have flopped, and Big Brain Academy is still Nintendo's worst performing game on the console by a significant margin, according to NPD).
But here's what I'm getting at: absolutely every game that's been given a large budget has done well on the system. Every single one. There have been no failures or flops when it comes to the more traditional route of gaming. Consider the following:
http://www.metacritic.com/search/process?ty=3&ts=&tfs=game_all&sb=5&game_platform=wii&x=29&y=3&release_date_s=&release_date_e=&metascore_s=&metascore_e=
Every single game that has been released on the Wii and received a metscore above 80 has sold at least 1 million copies, save Madden 07. The system has a superb batting average for traditional game sales. These new "casual" style of games are meeting with mixed success, while the traditional ones are performing in stellar fashion. I'm certainly not suggesting that these companies abandon the new casual market -- in fact, I personally hope they do not, as I consider myself a casual game consumer when discussing consoles -- but on a purely empirical basis, it's interesting to see how this is playing out. If every single traditional, big budget game has performed well on the Wii, where is the further development to follow suit?
Pretty much.
Honestly, it's bloody awful to see how abysmally many developers/publishers handle the wiimote and the wii hardware/features in general. These guys aren't morons by ANY extent, so it generally gets chalked up to publishers wanting a quick buck, but is that really fair? Just now we're seeing people making innovative uses of the analog sticks in sport games and to another extent in different genres, via features like skate's flickit system and the stickhandling controls of NHL 08. If it took them this long to figure out how to use the analog sticks to a bit more of their potential (still a bunch more that could be done), then it makes sense that designers are still baffled by the wiimote and don't know how to approach it rather than using the pointer and emulating button presses with "waggle".
This is no different than the PS3. The potential is there but the designers and developers will need time to break their habits and make use of the tools at their disposal. Don't get me wrong either, i've always been a HUGE supporter of people in the development community, especially designers, but they need to be allowed to get creative with the mechanics to make them work, or to at least lay some groundwork.
[EDIT]Problem isn't money, it's time.[/EDIT]
I think it's a matter of being cautious. You make a good point of the highly reviewed games selling well, but the sense I get is a lot of developers are focusing too much on the controls of the Wii. A game doesn't have to use motion control as in depth as Rayman does to be a good Wii game.
Developers/publishers who get this are going too far in the 'wrong' direction, where you will see a game primarily developed for the PS2 and then a Wii port is created almost as an after-thought. It's a no-brainer from a money point of view, but it means the Wii as a platform suffers.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Nintendo has sucessfully built a brand that has similiar fanbases to Apple and VW, who are loyal specifically to the company's 'lifestyle' - in essence, they're going to buy everything branded with their company's logo on it as they can. In the instance of nintendo, this hurts 3rd parties.
Someone will try to argue that it's because 3rd party games aren't coming out for the wii, and that's true. But there's a reason why 3rd party games were getting dropped for the gamecube left and right even though it was neck and neck with the original xbox, and it wasn't because the games were selling as well.
Personally, this is the wii's greatest disadvantage and definately it's biggest challenge. Not just how to get 3rd party developers creating games, but insuring that 3rd party developers are able to sell their games as well.
At the moment it's all wishful thinking, but the components for the scenario to come to pass are there, and the install base is only going to get bigger.