Game Devs Warming Up To More Mature-Rated Games On the Wii 129
With the success of the Grand Theft Auto franchise responsible for the majority of publisher Take Two Interactive's earnings in the past year, the company's executives are looking more and more at expanding their M-rated products onto the typically family-friendly Wii. Take Two's CEO said, "Even though we think M-rated content is much more appropriate for the PS3 or 360, we have to look at the Wii as a viable platform across all our labels. We have to, because we can't ignore the installed base. You just can't." They're already planning to release GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS to test the waters on a Nintendo platform, hoping for a better result than the controversy over Manhunt 2 last year.
Re:Crossplatform (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but the concern is that a game publisher will not use 2 different teams to write the same game at the same time.
Instead we may end up getting PS3/360 games that have been dumbed down, or made to be more chield friendly in order to make the game available on all platforms at the same time.
I also own and use all three systems but I have a very clear expectations as to what each system is for. The Wii is used for family entertainment, or for playing with a larger group of adults as light entertainment. The PS3/360 are used for "Hardcore" gaming.
The original post was about games along the lines of GTA and other M rated games. If those games are made available on a Kid-Friendly console the fear is that the "Hardcore" gaming systems will end up with fluffy Kid-Friendly games.
Remember, many of those millions of Wii systems come with soccer moms who have nothing better to do than write emails to Nintendo to complain about content their kids are being forced into seeing. Just look back at the BEER-PONG game. In the last couple of days before it was made available for download on the Wii Nintendo was pressured into changing the name, and modifying the color of the beverage in game... so as to be more Kid-Friendly.
Re:A fair number of ``M'' rated games already (Score:4, Informative)
Resident Evil Wii edition --- what's up w/ requiring pressing _2_ buttons to fire a pistol?!?)
That was a design choice forcing a small gap in time between "Draw pistol", "aim" and "fire pistol". This was in all versions of RE4.
Mad World (Score:3, Informative)
One game that must be mentioned is Mad World:
http://www.sega.com/platinumgames/madworld/EnglishUK/index2.html [sega.com]
This really looks like some pure crazy psychotic pleasure. Its black and white and red - the red being blood, and the black and white being everything else. I won't be buying it, but I am sure that there is a whole army of people who will.
Re:Crossplatform (Score:2, Informative)
Both X360 and Ps3 lose money on every console purchased
I don't believe that's true any more for the 360, although I haven't dug up a link to cite. However, you're right that the Wii is more profitable and has been so for longer.
This translates to cheaper licensing fees for developers
Does it? I haven't seen any comparisons on licensing/dev kit costs, but I'd be interested to read them if you know of any.
Even more, there are avenues such as the virtual console and wiiware to release on which will give Take-Two a chance to release some smaller things, or older games as well :) I think it's pretty well acknowledged that XBLA is the one to beat in the download-to-console segment.
Exactly like PSN and XBLA, but less popular
To not to sell to the wii would be idiotic considering its outsold the other two consoles by a vast margin.
It's true that the hardware numbers are hard to ignore. The problem is that the Wii's attach rate is terrible, particularly for 3rd party titles. It doesn't matter how many Wii's there are out there if no-one's buying the games. I know that I haven't bought a Wii game since Boom Blox, and there's nothing whatsoever on the radar I'm interested in. And before you stereotype me as some kind of anti-nintendo troll, I stood on line on the street for hours to get that thing on launch day. I even flew to LA the year before to try it out @ E3. Now I never even switch it on - huge disappointment.