Nintendo Refutes Wii Shortage

Nintendo has responded to accusations leveled against it earlier this week by GameStop, saying that Wii shortages are due to demand. Nintendo's George Harrison told Next-Gen.biz in a phone interview that "That's not at all the case. We have worldwide territories that are all competing over the available production. The Japan and European markets are doing extremely well with the Wii. People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when." An EU marketing director is also quoted at GamesIndustry.biz responding to criticism about the lack of new Wii titles, as well as the supply shortage. Nintendo's Laurent Fischer asserts that the company has a 'release it when it's ready' attitude, and that they'll release products when they meet the company's standards.

Re:Business people annoy me

[The-Bus]

I agree with you, but also note that on the business end of things, that's going to lead to failure unless you're the kind of studio (like Valve) that can shoulder interminably long delays.

I knew one of the developers for one of those really half-assed paintball games from the late 90's and he said they just didn't code for any AI, eventhough you could play against "computer opponents" -- what they had was nothing even remotely resembling AI, just some basic, possibly randomized script.

Who knows if that was the right or the wrong decision.

For licensed games, the title is more important than the content. The game needs to hit when the movie comes out, or when the album comes out, or when there's a new season of the show, etc.

Take the atrocious 50 Cent: Bulletproof game, for example. Vivendi Universal got that game out about 9 days after the movie hit theatres. In their eyes (and they're probably right) releasing it when it was "ready" (2006? Never?) would've cost them more in development time and lost sales than releasing a crappy game.

I wish you were right. I wish the market as a whole looked at "quality" games above all else. But they don't. Licensed crap like Bulletproof (or the nth Pacman or Sonic game) sells based on the name alone. Money gets made, and parents don't care because the (1)6-year old kid playing the game doesn't know any better.

The way for developers to stop making crappy games is to stop buying crappy games. But half a million people still bought the 50 Cent game (and other games like it) so this won't end.

Don't blame the business people. They're just following the money, which comes from idiot consumers. Teams like the one you describe are probably working for the good studios already anyway.

definitely holding back production

[Thanatos69]

Lets look at the numbers, depending on who you go through:

http://nexgenwars.com/ [nexgenwars.com]
360 - 10.8M
PS3 - 2.3M
Wii - 5.3M

http://www.vgcharts.org/ngwars.php [vgcharts.org]
360 - 9.8M
PS3 - 2.8M
Wii - 6.3M

so yeah, I can definitely see how they are holding back on production given that the system has been out for 4 months now and selling 1.5M a month. Could you imagine if they weren't holding back?

Re:Who let Gamestop talk?

[rhizome]

I really don't agree. In fact, I feel the Wii has the worst ratio of good to bad games out of the next-gen consoles.

Okay, this is just retarded and meaningless. You're using an online ratings site to say what you "feel," that everything besides Zelda sucks on the Wii. The only conclusion I can make is that you haven't played any of them at all, and perhaps you've never even touched a Wii. Wario Ware is an amazing piece of work that actually uses the controls nicely, SSX is great, and if you go to, say, the IGN Wii boards you'll find passionate attachments across the board for many of those games.

A criticism I'd allow is that a lot of the first wave games have been ports of existing games or engines with an updated control scheme to account for the lack of gamepad and all. People don't like SSX because the controls are too hard, other games are too short, and so on. There is definitely a bunch of whining about the learning curve on the controls and I think this is very healthy.

I think what we have here, both in the post I'm replying to and in this story overall is the fact that 90% of the gaming industry was taken by surprise by the Wii's popularity. Everybody thought graphics were paramount and the PS3 was going to blow the world away. So now we have a bunch of gaming touts who got caught out in their predictions and so now have to invent criticisms to re-establish their pundit primacy. The quickest way to predict the future reliably is that things are not very good right now: pessimism is the stock and trade of industry journalists. This isn't to excuse game studios, because most of them had to radically shift gears from the XBox360/PS3/HDTV gaming market to take advantage of the Wii's surprising popularity. So what we see is a lot of repurposed old titles released to fill the channel, then a slow trickle of new games that are specifically tailored to the unique traits of the Wii.

I think history is telling us that Nintendo hit a home run with the Wii, and all the stats nerds are sitting in the bleachers taking potshots at the visiting team for winning the game. XBox and Playstation are the stock in trade for many gamers, so it's predictable that they'd bite back when the cutesy Nintendo nerds get the advantage. Sour grapes in full effect.

Re:LOL @ "Wii Shortage"

[Cius]

Okay, I've no clue about the reality of this, but I'll relate "my friend's" story. Not "friend of a friend", just "my friend".

A friend was looking for a Wii, so he hit up Wal-mart. Wal-mart has everything right? Well, not that day they didn't. However, he managed to talk to manager that told him they were supposed to get some in through UPS the next day, a ton of them (my friend said 30 or so). Well, suitably excited, he shows up the next day and asks about them only to be told that they had none. Naturally, he bitched and moaned until they brought out manager. Lo and behold, it was the same manager he talked to. The guy instantly recognized him and told my friend that they did, indeed, have them in (again, about 30 of them) but that they were not allowed to bring them out or sell them yet. He didn't say why, he simply said he couldn't do anything. Well, my friend called him on it, raised hell again, really got on the guy about how he was anticipating their having one specifically because the guy told him they would. Eventually the guy relented and quietly slipped him one.

So, Nintendo hoarding? I dunno. But maybe retailers are up to something. I'm not sure what. Maybe some big coordinated sale like the "guaranteed in stock" thing that Wal-mart did a while back.

Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my story. Do with it what you will.

Re:definitely holding back production

[ClassMyAss]

The Wii, and less than half the price, has only sold about twice as many units as PS3s? Sony's doing better than I thought actually...(snip)...Glad everyone can do math around here when the Playstation Sux0rz articles come up.

Yet from the other side of this issue, one might notice that the PS3 has only sold half as many units as the Wii, and the Wii is still flying off the shelves within minutes of arriving, whereas PS3s are just sitting there in many locations. Even factoring in the price difference (which is far less relevant for future game development effort than number of consoles out there), this still means that there is more demand in dollar value for the Wii. I don't know how the PS3 is going to compare to the 360, but by just about any metric that you look at it is losing out to the Wii.

Don't get me wrong, I do think that Sony can build a great system. The PS2 was a stunning success, and it rightly destroyed the competition in the last round. And I'm sure the PS3 is a marvelous piece of equipment. I don't really know, because I can't afford one at the moment. But as all the console companies should realize (Nintendo learned this the hard way), past industry dominance does not insulate you from being unseated in the future, and I think Sony was really banking on the fact that they could ride the PS2's success when they set their price point - a mistake largely caused by their desire to win the much more lucrative format war over HD discs. $600 is just too much for a toy, plain and simple, no matter how many bells, whistles, and PPUs it has.