Are Game Publishers Late To the (Wii and DS) Game? 211
simoniker writes "A new 'Analyze This' feature on Gamasutra examines analysts' views on the rise of Nintendo's Wii and DS, and how well game publishers have reacted to it, with Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter commenting: 'It's hard to criticize anyone for putting too much faith in the PS3, as most [publishers] haven't created "cutting edge" titles yet for that platform. Most of the PS3 titles so far have been perennial titles, like Madden, Tony Hawk, etc ... I'd say that most failed to capitalize on the DS and Wii opportunity. The exception on the DS side is THQ, which has made every game it can for the platform. On the Wii side, Ubisoft took a big chance by making ten games for the [Wii] launch window, and it has performed very well, so far. I think that the others will catch up no later than early next year.'"
Duh, when game companies have to innovate.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The platform itself is calling for something different, and different takes time.
The biggest mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
No Star Wars light sabre-centric game out (or even officially announced, for that matter), no type of Gardening game (think about it...what would sell to grandmas around the country better than a Garden simulator using the Wiimote?)...etc, etc, etc.
Really, the possibilities are VERY large indeed when it comes to the Wii's control sceme, despite its lack of power. I know these things aren't put together overnight, but developers really need to start pushing stuff like that out soon, before the Wii commotion dies down.
DS and Wii are at different stages in their lives (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the DS, some of the great third party games are Trauma Center (six months after release), Phoenix Wright (~year after release though a remake with extra content), and Meteos (~year after release). I can't think of a really great third party game for the DS that was available at release, except maybe Castlevania, but definitely not one that took advantage of the DS's unique capabilities.
It took a while for the DS to catch on for developers, and it's the same sequence for the Wii. This was a mistake for many publishers, besides Ubisoft which took a "gamble" with the Wii and I guess it paid off. The development time for a console game is probably longer than that for a handheld, so we're waiting a little longer for those great third party games. I'm sure they'll come though.
Re:Duh, when game companies have to innovate.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is what bothers me a little bit about most developers approach to both the Wii and DS. Since the DS, everyone has been espousing how their unique additional features will open up developer creativity, which it certainly has. However, many developers seem to take it as since the additional functionality exists, they must use it. In my opinion, this sort of thinking hampers creativity, and leads to the "mini-game-itis" that both consoles have had in their conception; it's one of the easiest things to do that uses all that functionality. Certain game types just weren't made for the Wiimote's unique functionality, and they don't have to use it. I don't really what to play a 2D fighter by waving the Wiimote all over the place, so please don't force me to.
I think Nintendo notices this, and that's why they've released peripherals like the classic controller for the Wii. I just hope that developers realize this too: innovation is great and all, but not at the detriment of gameplay.
Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
There, fixed that for you. The fact that most publishers completely ignored the GameCube while Nintendo released some very good games, means that obviously most of the games that are being bought are going to be from Nintendo. One notable exception is Resident Evil. Same thing seems to be happening on the Wii. Nintendo is releasing a lot of really good games, meanwhile, the other publishers seem to be ignoring it, or at least did at the beginning. Most people don't even bother checking who the publisher of a game is. All they want to know is whether or not the game is good, and base their decision off that.
Re:Welcome Real Game Development (Score:2, Insightful)
If your company is so short sighted as to not jump on the Wii band wagon, then your company has many ways of dying. The first is that what if the Wii continues its success? Sure, it has been a long time since Nintendo was successful for a 5 year stint. However, Nintendo is likely to make its next generation console an improvement on this one. That is to say, a more accurate Wii-mote and HD output graphics. The second way you folks are killing yourself is let us say all the game companies collude to continue pumping out the same shit as last year with better graphics. You aren't bringing in new customers. The Wii is proving that it can expand the game market; a game market that wasn't interested in last years crap last year and will be less interested in it this year.
If you and your company cannot see what the Wii is actually doing, then hopefully someone else will take over for you. Customers are buying the Wii because they are tired of the SoS. Some customers (fan boys) will continue to buy the SoS, but the rest of us are looking for the next new thing; not last years game with a shiny new interface.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like more and more 3rd party game developers are making it clear they understand their own error in underestimating the Wii. Having more consoles out there than any other, with ongoing sales stronger than any other, is a strong positive to third parties. When's the last time you heard a company publicly say "Yes, we fucked up when we didn't strongly support this console from the beginning, we're trying to fix that ASAP"? Nobody said that about the N64 or GC, that's for certain. So whether you can see it or not, things are very different now.
You're also completely wrong about the Wii being weak being a strong negative to 3rd parties. It isn't. They don't care. Proof: Basically every console matchup you could mention. N64 vs PSX, Xbox vs PS2, PSP vs DS, NES vs Master System. In each case the largest library and the largest player base was on the weaker system, in some cases vastly weaker. The last time the most powerful console "won" was the SNES vs Genesis generation. The game developers only care about power if the players care about power, and so far no indication that the Wii's lack of power has hurt sales.
Everyone is late, so they are on time (Score:3, Insightful)
Same thing happened with the dot com bust. Everyone was going gung ho, expecting higher sales in 2001, when suddenly, everyone stopped buying and the bottom fell out of everyone's earnings. Customers were buying because of the Y2k scare, but when it never came, they didn't have to buy any more.
The CEOs are praised for having such good earnings before 2001, and then bemoan their luck after 2001 when they say "oh well we didn't see the crash coming." Everyone saw the damn market crash coming EXCEPT these slow CEOs. I'll admit no one knew exactly when it was coming, but it was coming soon enough.
Same with the Wii. They all were geared towards the old consoles, and now they all are getting bitten in the ass because the PS3 is overpriced and buggy, and the xbox is "eh, whatever." But the Wii is something that is getting new customers, and requires new thinking. Big slow corporations don't like to think in new ways until they are forced to.
There are of course exceptions, but the ones that do everything like everyone else don't tend to care that much or get severely penalized. They are average humans after all.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is often being accused of selling stuff that's just "good enough" and more often than not awkward to use with unique gimmicks that only exists on that platform, yet it was cheap and ubiquous just as personal computers took off. They also happen to be mildly successful and have 40bn in the bank. Without stretching the analogy too far, Nintendo has managed to place a Wii in very many homes. You can say what you want about the platform, but bean counters will see "potential market". They'll tell the developers to suck it up and produce for the market that makes them the most money. The tech-geeks looking at specs and the wierd controller just aren't the ones deciding the platform.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
PSP is PS2-level hardware while DS is N64-level hardware. Speaking of N64, it was vastly more powerful than the PSX (see Waverace vs Jet Moto if you don't remember), though the PSX had the advantage of CD storage which was important for some games but not most. Mostly the ones that used lots of FMV. Gameboy vs every pre-PSP portable is a perfect example.
Pretend power is important all you want. History says otherwise. Game developers understand this.
I don't remember ever seeing a console succeed whose full potential could be realized so quickly. Less than a year into the Wii's lifespan, we already hear speculation from developers that they're approaching the limits of what the Wii can do
And I don't remember ever hearing anyone say that having it take 5+ years to figure out how to get the promised performance out of a console is a good thing. The Wii is the same architecture as the GC just with ~2-3x the frequency. It's hardly surprising that it takes developers less time to figure out how to max its potential than the PS3 given 5 years of experience with the GC, and judging from their comments they prefer it this way.
And how do you explain all the games for the PS3 and 360 which have no planned ports for the Wii, even after the third parties are supposed to have "gotten it"?
Well pretty much like you said the Wii encourages non-traditional game play. Half-assed ports with waggle controls added are what the companies are putting out now. Having "gotten it" they are not planning on continuing, instead they will be developing titles that play to the Wii's strengths. This is what you would expect.
You haven't actually said how any of these things are negatives for game developers... they just seem like things you aren't impressed with. Game developers are impressed by market share numbers. Game developers have openly supported the Wii and said they made a mistake not supporting it and are changing course in order to do so. Why you think that means the opposite of what it seems to, that 3rd parties won't be supporting the Wii, I don't know.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Just answering your question. The fact that hardware power has not and has never been a dominant factor in console success is true in both the portable and home console market. In that way they are very similar. The history is very clear on this.
So in other words, the N64 wasn't really all that much better than the PSX? The idea that CD storage wasn't important is total bull, BTW.
In terms of "horespower", as in "ability to draw pretty pictures", then no the N64 was way more powerful than the PSX. And sorry, but most games didn't use the CD's capacity. Because most companies back then couldn't afford massive amounts of FMV. For those that did, clearly the N64 suffered. Yet for those that didn't, the PSX didn't die merely because it was "obsolete". Because nobody cared if the games were fun.
As opposed to either being stuck with an obsolete console for years or having to migrate to a new one every couple of years with all of the hassle that entails?
So "able to squeeze maximal performance from" means "obsolete" now, meaning the PS3 will never become obsolete since nobody will ever figure out how to keep all the SPEs busy, just like Sony said. Once again, this is a plus from a developers point of view. And based on the ongoing sales of the PS2, I think it's clear people care about "obsolete" a lot less than you.
And the Wii's strengths are towards gimmickry, not towards the magnificent games we've been seeing on the other systems like Bioshock and Oblivion, neither of which would really be difficult to port to the Wii if it had the required power.
I didn't know magnificent games required a certain power level unachievable before this generation. I guess Halo 1 was ass then. Of course it would have sucked less without being hindered by terrible controls. Good thing being able to aim in an FPS is just a gimmick, just like those PC users and their mouse gimmick.
Seriously, you sound like the DS detractors in its first year (which, since your first post made it seem you aren't aware, I'll let you know was light on quality 3rd party support and heavy with "gimmicky" mini-games). Competitors called the analog stick a gimmick too when Nintendo introduced it to consoles. Until they universally adopted it.
Because those go against the things that the market wants. The fact that a lot of Wiis are being bought doesn't mean anything if the games aren't being bought with them, if the Wiis are just being bought out of impulse and hype.
The market disagrees with you. The game development studios disagree with you. You want to know what happens with a console selling based solely on hype? Look at the the hysteria at the PS3 launch compared to it's performance this year. That's what hype with no substance gets you. People buy Wiis because they play them at a friend's house and find it to be fun.
Really you just don't like the Wii, and that's fine, but stop pretending that your opinion actually represents things game developers see as a downside, especially when they're saying the opposite.
Re:DS and Wii are at different stages in their liv (Score:2, Insightful)
11/20/04: DS release
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01
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03
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06/13/05: Kirby Canvas Curse
06/28/05: Meteos
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08/22/05: Advance Wars DS, Nintendogs (same day release)
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10/04/05: Trauma Center, Castlevania (same day release)
10/12/05: Phoenix Wright
After that came a torrent of games like Mario Kart, Sonic Rush, Animal Crossing, and in the spring Metroid Hunters. It took about 8 months to get the first true* DS game, Kirby. By the time we were at the holiday season a year from release, we were getting superb games left and right. The stuff we had at launch (Mario 64, Feel the Magic, and after a month or so Warioware) pretty much parallels the same stuff we're putting up with on the Wii now. 8 months after release, we're now seeing the fist true* Wii game in Metroid.
In Japan, Brain Training took off early at just 6 months, and rocketed the DS skyward higher than anyone only looking at "good" games could have predicted. Wii Sports is doing the same thing for the Wii, it's not a difficult parallel to see. Not the only parallel to see, either, what with Zelda TP/Mario 64DS, Warioware/Warioware, Brawl/MarioKart DS, and depending how far you twist the inkblot, Forever Blue/Nintendogs.
The Wii, however, is a little different. Third parties, seeing how well the risky DS had done, jumped on the bandwagon much sooner than they did with the DS. That's how we got stuff like Elebits and *cough* Red Steel right off the bat. Unfortunately, the Wii seems to generally be taking way longer to design and develop for than the DS did, so third party support this holiday season is looking a little lighter than the DS's '05 season was. By the time next holiday season comes around, though, we should see an explosion of titles similar to the DS's holiday seasons.
Nintendo seems to be copycatting their own success, and when "copy" means "try something completely different," the industry could use all the Nintendo they can get.
Sony seems to be doing something like that, too, as you can draw many similar parallels between the PSP and PS3. If only their "copy" was bit less like "copy" as well.
*"True," meaning a AAA ground-up designed innovative game, and not a pile of minigames.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
The PS2 was huge because the original PlayStation was a huge success. Sony came out of nowhere to dominate the console market by releasing the right product at the right time. The number of exclusives that Sony got helped seal the deal. It didn't hurt that Nintendo shot itself in the foot by trying to stick with cartridges instead of optical media, so people wrote off the Gamecube as a failure before it launched. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you look at why the PS2 was successful, it got to market earlier than its competitors with a good product at a good price.
Then, how do you explain the Dreamcast? It launched earlier, had good games, and at a reasonable price. Even included a modem for internet connectivity. No, what really helped the PS2 was the marketing campaign and the unquestioning support of developers. The PS2 defeated the Dreamcast before launch because it promised the moon and the stars and people decided to wait for the PS2 instead of buying the Dreamcast. (Remember the "emotion chip" that was so powerful it would show real emotion on character's face? Or, at least, on the faces of pre-rendered movies.) I'm sure it really stung for Sega, because they were derided for having made the Saturn so hard to program for. They turn around and produce a extremely nice system to work on, then get trounced by the PS2 which was a real bitch to work on. I remember one of the top programmers at the company complaining on a daily basis about how hard it was to get anything to work on the PS2. But he had to because the company was backing the PS2 110%.
Note that this "generation" of games is a bit different. The increase in graphics isn't as huge as it had been for the previous generations. The jump between PS2 and PS3 graphics is a fraction of what the jump between PlayStation and PS2 graphics were. Add in that many people don't have HD TVs yet (see the articles about most people not even knowing about the HD capabilities of the XBox 360, etc), and you have people that aren't buying a console because it looks, "ZOMG SOOOOO MUCH BETTER!"
What Nintendo did for the Wii was to go in a different direction. If Nintendo had built the Wii to appeal to the same hard-core audience that all the console makers had been chasing for the past decade, then we would have seen the Wii falter. If they had focused on graphical presentation, they would have probably been crushed (along with everyone else). No, what they did was to appeal to a new crowd that was interested in more than just the prettiest graphical presentation. So, even though the publishers wrote Nintendo off as lost, once again, people decided that the Wii was cool enough to buy without having the latest version of Madden on it. This catches all the publishers by surprise (they are the ones that decide which projects get funded), so they're now scrambling to take advantage of one of the most popular platforms for this generation.
So, this explains why things have turned out the way they did. Publishers wrote off Nintendo because they were able to do that successfully last time. Didn't work quite so well.
Some insight from someone who has seen the inside of the beast.