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.
Manhunt 2 is rather crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Manhunt 2 failed not as the platform was not up for M-rated game, but as it is rather paints. The Manhunt IP is just no that good anyway, add on to that the fact that R* is doing nothing with it other than scream "it has lots of blood and shit" and you have a rubbish, over hyped game.
Re:Crossplatform (Score:5, Insightful)
Wii's are currently outselling both the 360 and PS3 by a massive margin, and although that is undoubtedly down to casual gamers the quantity of mature gamers with Wiis is still going to be sizeable. As a developer, ignoring an oppurtunity to put a title on a high selling console which has lower developement costs (peoples expectations regarding graphics are much lower) and with less competition (most Wii games are crap, especially none Nintendo ones) than on other consoles is an opportunity they shouldn't miss.
Hell considering Sony are still selling 200,000 PS2s a month I'd probably have teams working on titles for 360/PS3, and other teams working on Wii/PS2.
Re:Crossplatform (Score:2, Insightful)
Who says they have to make the same game cover 3 consoles?
The realist in me. The Wii will either get a rubbish cut down version of the 'real' game, or all three will get a lowest-common denominator version.
Hell considering Sony are still selling 200,000 PS2s a month I'd probably have teams working on titles for 360/PS3, and other teams working on Wii/PS2.
If you are going to dedicate an entire team to doing a Wii specific game which, for instance, actually takes proper advantage of the controller, it would make more sense to aim for the Wii's primary demographic, than to aim for a small subset which is better covered by any other platform.
Animal Crossing is more mature (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how most "mature-rated games" actually sound *immature* to me. I mean, stealing fancy cars and shooting big guns ? Wow, count me in, NOT.
I actually think a game like Animal Crossing is way more mature. YES, Animal friggin' Crossing, people! Just look at the plot : you move in a new city, all by yourself, you have to pay your mortgage with money that you earn by _working_, you learn to participate in the cultural life of the town by donating to the museum, you have to take care of public space, plant trees and flowers to make a great place for everybody. You meet a lot of people, some are okay, some are unbearable but you have to learn to live with them, and some will become your friends. Sometimes you'll have to help them out by buying their stuff, or finding the keys they lost. Some of them will eventually move out to other towns and you'll never see them AGAIN.
Now THOSE are some major life lessons, folks.
Re:Crossplatform (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, you're not alone. I'm in the same position, my Wii sits unused to make room for my 360, about the only entertaining game I found on the Wii that I go back to was ghost squad, because arcade style shooters can be a bit of a laugh for 5minutes now and again, but for me that sums up the Wii- 5minutes now and again, with now and again being defined roughly as every 3months.
The 360 was shifting twice as many retail games per console as the Wii and PS3 last time I saw stats for it (earlier this year). I'd imagine this has changed now though as the 360 has many more family titles and is cheaper than the Wii to buy now - I bet with the 360 selling for under £120 in the UK (vs. £170 for the Wii) now at it's cheapest version there are people who'd buy it + rock band or scene it or whatever for the family, and nothing else, but I digress, that only exagerates the point that casual gaming is not a path for high software sales per console, you can at best hope you shift enough consoles so that three games or whatever per console is enough to make up software sales numbers.
The point is when the 360 was limited to hardcore games the attach rate was much higher than that of the Wii and you're right- this is because hardcore gamers are the ones that spend money on games, whilst Nintendo has captured a larger audience it's not an audience that for the most part will buy more than one or two games a year at christmas time and nothing else. There are exceptions to every rule, but the point is that back when those last stats were released, even though Nintendo had double the installed user base, it still had sold less games than Microsoft had with the 360.
I certainly welcome more mature games on the Wii and less party games, I might actually have reason to use it more then. Most stuff so far feels little more than fancy demos of what can be done with the Wiimote- well sorry, but we're past this point now, we know what it can do, we no longer want to pay to see what it can do, we want to pay to actually play through games with decent story lines, interesting themes and characters.
I felt the Wii when it was first unveiled had so much potential to immerse gamers simply because the control system put you in the action, but the amount of games that took that and ran with it have been few and the rest have just been games you can't ever become immersed in. We want games with real content, with real substance, with worlds that we can be part of and interact with using the Wii mote.
I'd say Nintendo's biggest threat now is the next generation, if Microsoft and Sony take their idea and couple it with their usual state of the art systems and a plethora of games with deep and interesting story lines whilst Nintendo continues to push the same party games then they're going to lose the momentum the Wii gave them, they really missed a trick already by not cashing in on the depth of games they could have developed for the Wii. The Wii uses the same disc format as the 360 and doesn't require development of ultra-high detail models and textures so why aren't we seeing a plethora of games with deep and impressive, ultra-interactive worlds to explore?
Re:Crossplatform (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the Wii is pretty much exactly like the last two Nintendo consoles. There will be 15 or 20 absolutely great games, 75% of which are first or second party. Probably 6 or 7 of those games have already hit.
If you take a look in the reviews, there are some spectacular games out there, but you'll have to look past the shovelware to find them. Much like how the installed base of the GameCube or the cartridge format of the N64 made them substantially "different" enough from the competition to discourage some releases, the last-gen hardware in the Wii will probably keep many of the potentially bigger cross-platform names out of the Wii pool.
As someone who has owned every Nintendo system back to the NES, I'd suggest you keep your fingers crossed but get ready to accept that there will be some cool games from each major franchise and a couple of new and surprising ones. Unfortunately, months will pass between each worthwhile purchase.
Re:Animal Crossing is more mature (Score:1, Insightful)
I think it says a lot about society when maturity and violence are assumed to go hand in hand.
Re:Crossplatform (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you ever play Eternal Darkness? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_darkness) Gamecube exclusive, M-rated, and an absolutely lovely entry into the Horror genre. And it's MUCH more disturbing than the casual violence & theft beloved of the GTA franchise.
Nintendo does not have to equal kid-friendly. I'm glad developers remember this from time to time.
Rated H (Score:3, Insightful)
Cartoons are cute and all, but I like blood, gore, and adult themes.
Cartoonish art styles and adult themes aren't mutually exclusive. Have you investigated the world of R- and H-rated anime yet?
Re:Animal Crossing is more mature (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also got a fantasy component: you can actually pay off all your mortgages. Now there's a desirable fantasy for millions of us!
Re:Crossplatform (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is when the 360 was limited to hardcore games the attach rate was much higher than that of the Wii and you're right- this is because hardcore gamers are the ones that spend money on games, whilst Nintendo has captured a larger audience it's not an audience that for the most part will buy more than one or two games a year at christmas time and nothing else.
Look, its a great theory, I'd give you a +5 insightful for the hypothesis, but the reality just doesn't line up.
According to NPD, The current attach rate for Xbox360 is 7.0; Nintendo's is 4.64. Putting the Wii attach rate around around 2/3rds what the 360 is at. [Note I beleive NPD reports on american sales so Wii sports would not be counted towards the attach.]
However the Wii has sold ~42M units worldwide while the Xbox360 has moved ~25M units. That means 195M (42 * 4.64) games have sold for the Wii vs 175M (25 * 7) games for xbox 360.
The Wii has outstripped the xbox 360 by enough that its overcome the attach rate. If the libraries for both games was the same, and the titles sold in the same proportion, a given title would have sold more copies on the Wii than on the 360. Now, of course the libraries are different, and on the Wii you have to compete with Nintendo's own first party blockbusters.
but the point is that back when those last stats were released, even though Nintendo had double the installed user base, it still had sold less games than Microsoft had with the 360.
This as you can see is no longer true. Your hypothesis is wrong. The Xbox had a 1 year head start and a higher attach rate, but the Wii has still surpassed its software sales. Further, the Wii attach rate is actually steadily -increasing-. While not there yet, the Wii is becoming the new PS2, where the massive install base ensures any title released on it outsells the other platforms.
I'd say Nintendo's biggest threat now is the next generation, if Microsoft and Sony take their idea and couple it with their usual state of the art systems and a plethora of games with deep and interesting story lines whilst Nintendo continues...
No offense, but take your blinders off. Nintendo is selling in droves to gamers who don't want that. My 4 year old son plays BoomBlox, MarioKart, WiiSports, MarioParty8, Zack&Wiki with his grandmother on the Wii. They have so much fun my parents bought a Wii for their place. Sony / Microsoft will NEVER EVER capture them with 'deep and interesting story lines'. Neither my 4 year old nor my mother would EVER play them.
If the Sony and MS do what you suggest, they'll be EXACTLY where they are today next generation: fighting over the 'male tween' crowd, that wants to play 100+ hour 'deep' games and cares about texture resolution.
The Wii uses the same disc format as the 360 and doesn't require development of ultra-high detail models and textures so why aren't we seeing a plethora of games with deep and impressive, ultra-interactive worlds to explore?
2 reasons:
1) Because people like you, who want deep impressive ultra-interactive worlds to explore, already have a 360, and would bitch about the lack of ultra-high detail models and textures on the Wii version. Developers know this. That's why the Wii has a dearth of that kind of title. They know everyone who is interested in that kind of title already ALSO has a 360 and wouldn't buy the wii version if both were available.
2) Because developers didnt think the Wii had a shot in hell of dominating sales the way it did. So they've mostly only had time to scramble quick and dirty titles to try and cash in. Only in the last year have they begun ramping up to release the 'big' titles on the Wii.
Because the Wii, with its continued growth, will soon reach the point where the developer can sell YOU the game on the Xbox, and still release it profitably on the Wii, even though all the review sites will jerk off about the xbox's superior graphics and and rate the Wii version the worst of the 3 due to its lack of HD, lack of dolby dts, and lack of xbox live "achievements".
Re:Crossplatform (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take a look in the reviews, there are some spectacular games out there, but you'll have to look past the shovelware to find them. Much like how the installed base of the...
PS2. No seriously, last generation the PS2 had the lowest rated games (in aggregate) due to all the shovelware (Dreamcast had the highest). This is a product of being the market leader.
People see the vast amount of money to be made, and though some make a "Shadow of the Colosus" or "God of War", most are content to shovel out a "Ninja Bread-man".
No GTA, but Bully is there... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, there's no reason there couldn't be a good Wii GTA, except that it would be much more disturbing than other console versions. In ordinary GTA games, your character does all sorts of bad things while you sit around pushing buttons on a controller. In a proper Wii version, you'd be miming doing the bad things yourself, which will seem a whole lot worse.
Well, there's a version of Bully for Wii - the main "immersive" aspect is fighting (motion controls for throwing punches) - other than that the controls don't make a significant difference. I had a lot of fun with it, personally.