Are Third-Party Wii Games Finally Coming Into Their Own?

Gravy Monkey writes "It's not too difficult to criticize the quality of many third-party Wii games — whether they're unique titles, bad licenses or lazy ports to the new system. However, will this change as more quality third-party games appear on the Wii? Recently, Wiiware title 'Lost Winds' picked up some great reviews, as did the Blastworks game. The recent review of a new game called Order Up on IGN caught my attention because they praised it as the way all casual games should be made. Is this the beginning of a new era for Wii games where quality casual games from third parties manage to grab the attention of both mainstream and hardcore gamers alike, instead of being a console where only first-party titles sell?"

Re:Anyone who's played Boom Blox would have to say

[omnicron13]

If you look at metacritic [metacritic.com] 5 of the top 10 games are third party, as are 13 of the top 20. While Nintendo has the plurality of the top games, they don't have a majority.

Re:Give them some time

[alvinrod]

It's fairly true, actually. If we look at the sales of games like Boom Blox and Zack & Wiki, both of which have been said to be good games that make use of the Wii's capabilities, they really aren't all that great.

VGChartz lists .41 million in sales for Boom Blox [vgchartz.com] and almost the exact same number for Zack & Wiki [vgchartz.com].

Of course if you can make a quick mini-game compilation and get nearly 2 million in sales [vgchartz.com] or port a game from the last generation of consoles and get around 1.5 million sales [vgchartz.com] why bother actually creating anything new and original?

It's not that companies wouldn't like to make great groundbreaking games, but if you can turn twice as many sales at half the cost on a collection of mini-games or porting your hot IP from last generation, why bother with anything else?

Re:Give them some time

[Darkness404]

Because a really great game can get you recognized forever. Think about Square, most of the games they made flopped. It only took one good game (Final Fantasy) to become a hit for Square to be the legendary game publisher it is known as today. If Square just did some more really crappy games that sold decently but no one really liked, I doubt they would have the fanbase that they do today.