Support NeoGAF

Opiate · Jan 8, 2010

Y2Kev said:
The efficient market hypothesis says stock fluctuations are fundamentally random, doesn't it

That and the h-bergz uncertainty principle, I guess. lolz

EMH has fallen out of favor rapidly as Behavioral Economics has risen, and I'd say it's for good reason. Although I'm really, really glad to see that someone else even knows what these are. I try not to be a poster prone to anger or hostility, but I don't mind being effusively kind, and I must say that I'm very happy to have talked with you over the past couple years, even if it's only on a message board.

And yeah, Quantum Physics is a tricky one in this case. I'd argue that it isn't saying that patterns don't exist, just that we cannot observe them. Which is, for practical purposes, just as bad as if patterns did not exist. For philosophical discussion though? It's an important difference.

careful · Jan 8, 2010

Leondexter said:
The only reason to "take out the people that buy mostly Nintendo games" is because your game is a low-quality game. That's like saying you're marketing your game to "Xbox 360 owners, except take out the ones who mostly buy blockbuster games."

Absolutely, there are many people that will only buy certain types of games and nothing else. Be it because of limited budget or limited interest or whatever the reason, some people only buy Madden, some only buy COD, and some only buy Nintendo games.

Flachmatuch · Jan 8, 2010

charlequin said:
Not really. It'd be a recipe for continued, ongoing success if it weren't for the technological scaling issues. The male 18-35 crowd that drives software sales on the PS360 is indeed quite reliable and it's possible to sell a ton of software appealing to these people with products that can be planned out effectively well in advance.

Why did you ignore the rest of the sentence? It's obviously a recipe for success but it also leads to a closed, controlled market, with high barriers of entry. The "technological scaling issues" are actually a tool for market control :-/

Now, this generation it's become a much, much worse idea because development costs have risen from a sustainable level up to an unsustainable one and will continue to rise; that makes this model unworkable and is causing a huge amount of pain and suffering as companies collapse and dev teams get laid off.

I think this is an unavoidable situation though and happens in lots of industries. High development costs will eventually force the smaller players out of the market (they get bought up by the larger ones) and fewer players means less competition and more control - and higher profits with much less risk. Pretty simple imo :-/

But it's not really true that companies should've looked at an unpredictable market and said "I want to bet my business on being able to succeed there." If they'd all done it at once, many probably would've succeeded, but when no one else is doing it a responsible director can't say "let's bet it all on the unpredictable Wii market!" unless they have a very good reason to believe they have the key to success there.

Companies should be at least partly forced to do that though in some ways, through "creative destruction" and not consolidation. That's how markets *should* work at least, they're a failure otherwise, a tool for centralisation and not for competition. And while I'm not saying that this behaviour isn't rational in the short term - it obviously doesn't work in the mid/long term. Money talks :-/

This is why this Nintendo's failure to work better with third parties really is a lose-lose situation. Nintendo does understand their market pretty well and certainly could've helped some 3PPs develop software that could succeed and pave the way for more predictable successes on the platform (which enriches both 3PPs and Nintendo.)

I'm not saying they're perfect, I'm just not sure they could have done more with the way they are now in this timeframe. They seem to be more methodical than the rest of the industry and don't rely as much on buying up expertise (and parts of the market), so they can only react more slowly. It might have been bad strategy from their part - but they might have been simply unable to do it.

EDIT: Also, I always feel bad for the Wii owners who have sensible, reasonable requests for support in these threads that can get drowned out by people who ask for obviously stupid shit. There's a very good reason that certain kinds of games -- sandbox games, shooters, anything oriented around online multiplayer, and so on -- could only conceivably be successful on 360 and PS3, systems that are actually designed to fit the market that buys those games, and it's always sad to me when people want to play those games but refuse to buy the system(s) they actually appear on.

Well I'm not sure that there wouldn't be room for more casual versions of this stuff, or niche games (like on the PS2), but yeah, I agree.

stuminus3 · Jan 8, 2010

SH:SM won't do big numbers. It only looks like it's doing well because the same 5 people can't stop talking about it. Such is the nature of Silent Hill!

Vinci · Jan 8, 2010

gerg said:
But I don't think that the situation is irreversible inasmuch that it might be the case that as hard as third parties tried they couldn't find success on the Wii.

This may be the semantics I so often veer off into, but I don't think you should create the impression that the market (or, as Opiate states, the opportunity) doesn't exist.

They've had years to figure it out. If they don't have even a slight handle on it, as EA seems to, then they're done. The opportunity is still there for success, that's correct - but only to those who can get their heads out of their asses long enough to figure out how to take advantage of it. This leaves... mostly Nintendo and EA to some extent, when they're not acting like morons and acting surprised when something like Extraction bombs.

But yeah... they don't get it now, they ain't getting it.

Jokeropia · Jan 8, 2010

Dr Mario Kart at Penny Arcade's forums compiled this "Games Industry Death Watch 2009" list. It's some pretty nice research and I think it's worth reposting:

Behold, my Games Industry Death Watch 2009 full list. Every studio closure/acquisition/downsizing that I could find.

January:

- Jaleco closes (IP and $7.736m/$17.68m loan sold to Game Yarou for $0.01)
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21930

- MS ACES (Flight Simulator team gone)
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21981
- MS cuts 30% of testers at MGS + unspecified GFW team
http://kotaku.com/5138389/more-microsoft-layoffs-hit-game-testers-games-for-windows-group

- Sega cuts 30 in San Francisco
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21942

- Eidos cuts 30 people at Crystal Dynamics
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21809

- Eidos closes Rockpool Games (Manchester) [mobile]
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/eidos-closes-manchester-studio

- Seta Corp (Super Entertainment & Total Amusement) closed
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21943

- EA to cut 10% of staff and 9 studios consolidated/closed by March
---- unspecifed # @ Tiburon (Madden and Tiger Woods divisions confirmed hit)
---- Blackbox (200 out of 350 jobs cut, remainder absorbed into EA Burnaby [Vancouver])
---- 21 customer service, half of QA, all of playtest group @ Mythic

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21974
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21931

- unspecified cuts at Sony and MS (kotaku sez bulk of the current 1400 cut from MS are from Entertainment & Devices)

Nexon closes Humanature studio (Vancouver) 90 Jobs lost
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/nexon-closes-humanature-studio

Unspecified layoffs at Kuju in US and UK
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/kuju-confirms-redundancies-across-studios

Ensemble closes
http://www.ensemblestudios.com/blogs/bshelley/archive/2009/01/29/goodbye-and-thanks.aspx

Disney Interactive Studios layoff ~70 at Propoganda, confirms plans to "consolidate a handful of its studios, including Avalanche Software and the Fall Line studio."
http://blog.wired.com/games/2009/01/unannounced-tur.html

February:

Brighter Minds (World of Goo) goes Bankrupt
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/world-of-goo-publisher-goes-bankrupt

THQ Mobile shuts down in San Diego, Germany and UK (~100 jobs)
http://blog.wired.com/games/2009/02/would-be-bomber.html

Action Pants (British-Columbia) acquired by Ubisoft
http://kotaku.com/5145390/ubisoft-acquires-action-pants

Free Radical acquired by Crytek
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22156

EA to close 12 facilities + 1100 jobs
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-to-close-12-facilities-following-USD641m-loss

Snowblind Studios acquired by Warner Bros
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22178

Eidos drops casual studio (Gimme5games)
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/eidos-drops-casual-games-studio

Sega cuts 18% of workforce (560 jobs)
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22239

NCSoft cuts 55 at NC West (Europe)
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/nc-west-cuts-dow-european-office

Midway files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
http://www.midway.com/us/pr/mpr_5591.html

Rare cuts artist and engineer positions (12 known)
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/rare-axes-artist-and-engineer-positions

Popcap acquires Gastronaut Studios
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/popcap-acquires-xbla-studio

Fillpoint acquires Crave Entertainment and SVG Distribution
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/fillpoint-acquires-crave-and-svg

March:

THQ cuts majority of Volition's (Saint's Row) QA staff - 86 of 102
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22562

THQ to sell or close Big HUge Games, Heavy Iron and Incinerator becoming independent.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/thq-to-sell-big-huge-games-or-close-studio

Namco to buy all branches of D3 publisher, including studio Vicious Cycle
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/namco-to-acquire-complete-d3p-businesse

April:

THQ confirms unspecified layoffs at BigHugeGames, still looking for sale
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/thq-confirms-lay-offs-at-big-huge-games

May:

3D Realms closes
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/3d-realms-closes-doors

Microsoft Game Studios acquires BigPark
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-bigpark

38 Studios acquires BigHugeGames from THQ
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/38-studios-acquires-big-huge-games

Grin Studios cuts 160 people
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=768094

Factor 5 closes
http://www.edge-online.com/news/lair-dev-factor-5-closes

June:

Management Buy-Out/Closure of Chemistry (Kuju)
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/mbo-or-closure-for-kujus-chemistry-studio

Deadline Games (Watchman Game) files for bankruptcy
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/deadline-games-files-for-bankruptcy

Crystal Dynamics cuts 25 more people
http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23989

Midway San Diego and Newcastle face closure by end of June.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/midway-newcastle-san-diego-face-closure-by-end-of-june

America's Army studio closes
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/americas-army-studio-closes-doors

Rockstar lays of 10% of New England staff
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/rockstar-lays-off-10-percent-of-new-england-staff-report

ZeniMax (owner of Bethsoft) acquires id Software
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/zenimax-acquires-id-software

July:

Heavy Hammer lays off Blue Omega team
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/blue-omega-lays-off-damnation-team

Sony Online Entertainment lays off 5% of staff
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24483

Midway Closes Chicago Corporate Headquarters and Newcastle Studio
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/60-jobs-go-as-midway-closes-chicago-corporate-office
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/midway-confirms-newcastle-studio-closure

August:

Grin shuts down
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/grin-confirms-company-closure

THQ Buys Midway San Diego
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/thq-buys-midway-san-diego-studio

EA cuts back staff at Maxis
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-cuts-back-staff-at-maxis

Raven lays off 30-35
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/raven-lays-off-staff-following-release-of-wolfenstein

September

Bottlerocket closes
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/bottlerocket-closes-its-doors

Disney acquires Wideload Games
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/disney-adds-bungie-co-founder-wideload-to-games-team

Funcom to cut 20% of workforce
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-to-cut-20-percent-of-workforce

October:

Transmission Games lays off 20
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/transmission-games-lays-off-over-20-staff-members

Ubisoft acquires Trackmania developer Nadeo
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ubisoft-acquires-trackmania-developer-nadeo

Activision lays off 30 from 7 studios
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/activision-lays-off-30-from-newly-purchased-7-studios

Activision closes Shaba Studios
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/activision-confirms-shaba-studios-closure

Optimus acquires Witcher developer in CD Projekt takeover
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/optimus-finalises-cd-projekt-takeover

Idol Minds lays off ~26
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/pain-developer-hit-by-lay-offs

Transmission Games closes
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/transmission-games-closes-doors-report

Slipgate Ironworks lays off ~50
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/gazillion-lays-off-staff-at-romeros-slipgate-ironworks

November:

Square-Enix/Taito/Eidos cuts 10% globally
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/square-enix-global-headcount-reduction-around-10-percent

EA Acquires Playfish
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ea-confirms-USD300m-playfish-acquisition

EA to layoff 1,500 by April 2010, including "several studio closures"
Tiburon, Blackbox, Redwood Shores, Mythic reportedly affected
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25999

Playdom acquires Green Path and Trippert Labs
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/playdom-acquires-green-patch-and-trippert-labs

Pandemic closes
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/report-ea-will-close-pandemic-studios-today

Krome faces unspecified number of layoffs
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/staff-layed-off-at-aussie-studio-krome

December:

Fuzzeyes lays off majority of staff
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/fuzzyeyes-studio-lays-off-majority-of-staff

Threewave studio enters reorganization
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/threewave-enters-reorganisation-phase

Rumor: Apsyr cuts staff by over 50%
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/rumour-aspyr-media-cuts-staff-by-over-50-percent

SCEA drops 30 QA jobs
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/scea-consolidates-qa-group

Paradox Interactive acquires AGEOD
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/paradox-interactive-acquires-strategy-developer-ageod

Oberon Media lays off 100
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/casual-games-firm-oberon-media-lays-off-100-staff

Now the point here is not to blame all this on HD development costs, just to underline the fact that the industry overall is absolutely not "thriving" the way things are.

charlequin · Jan 8, 2010

Vinci said:
To be fair, they did tell them (paraphrased): Don't put your shit teams on the Wii.

This is kind of like a lifeguard being like "well, it's not my fault all those children drowned, I told them not to go into the deep end!" and is pretty much emblematic of Nintendo's problem here.

They have implemented a new, very successful strategy involving the creation of a new market of game buyers that doesn't work the same way the old market does. While they're by no means perfect at selling to it themselves (see: AC Wii, Wii Music) they have far more information about how to do so than anyone else, because they invented it, and they also have access to tools that would allow them to impart this knowledge in ways that were directly profitable to themselves and didn't push 3PPs' "don't tell me what to do" buttons.

They didn't take any of those opportunities, and now Nintendo and the 3PPs alike are worse off for it.

Opiate said:
Is this a dig? I honestly can't tell.

I was honestly surprised you hadn't posted yet because the very first thing the thread brought to mind was the thing you usually say in these threads and which I attempted to summarize myself.

Opiate said:
I'm with titka on this one: it's probably time to move on for third parties. Not because there was no opportunity on the Wii: there likely were huge, unrealized ones. But they've basically blown it at this point, and I don't see how it can be repaired.

I don't think we materially disagree on this issue. I probably should have put scare-quotes around "unpredictable" or something, because it's true that it's not, like, innately chaotic, just that it presented a situation to which 3PPs could not apply their existing body of knowledge and therefore was effectively unpredictable to them.

I would argue, for example, that the DS seems to have done exceptionally well for itself in genres that home consoles have distinct advantages in

Really? The closest example I can come up with offhand are RPGs, and I think the DS' success there mostly just revealed the existence of a previously obscured subgenre distinction, the same way that NSMBW is currently showing off how relevant the difference between 2D and 3D platformers is.

Anyway, I'm not saying I could actually sit down and concept out full treatments for the kind of titles that would sell well on the Wii, but there's a pretty clear pattern on the DS -- Nintendo clearly knows what sells well on that system, and third-parties quickly seized upon a strategy that basically boiled down to "make games that the more dedicated gamers who buy Nintendo games on the DS would want to play." Applying the analogous thought to the Wii, along with the knowledge that the 18-35 male set is dedicated to the PS360 platforms, would not have been a 100% complete solution but is nonetheless further than any actual 3PP thought through the evidence available to them.

The whole gig is up

While I spend most of my time (rightly) excoriating Nintendo for their own failures to shepherd their system through this challenge effectively, I do think this a good moment to turn around and poke at the 3PPs a little. If companies don't learn from this situation, it really will have been a waste because similar challenges will arise in the future and they too will threaten to undermine the continued success or even existence of currently huge publishers.

DR2K · Jan 8, 2010

hokahey said:
Nintendo fans demand brand name.

.

charlequin · Jan 8, 2010

Flachmatuch said:
It's obviously a recipe for success but it also leads to a closed, controlled market, with high barriers of entry. The "technological scaling issues" are actually a tool for market control :-/

I don't really believe that the tech scaling issues are going to magically abate once EA and Ubi and Activision have pushed everyone else out of the market. These guys are already finding themselves unable to profit effectively on the HD market and that problem will likely get worse. (In other words, the factors pushing people out of the market are much less effective at locking down the market under an oligarchy of large publishers than similar factors proved to be for other industries like music decades ago.)

Companies should be at least partly forced to do that though in some ways, through "creative destruction" and not consolidation.

Sure. This is a lot of why I was such a strong advocate for both the DS and the Wii (as well as other outlets for such behavior like the burgeoning PC indie scene, XBLA/PSN, etc.) initially. But you need to be able to overcome the collective action problem inherent in these situations. If there's an area that presents a high risk and might present a high reward (but nobody knows yet), and you're one of twenty entities that might be able to explore it, there is no incentive for you to be the first in the pool -- if someone else is successful there you can always just trundle in right afterwards, do exactly what they did, and probably still do pretty decently. Someone either has to believe they have the answer so completely that they dive in anyway (always a risky endeavor, to say the least) or someone needs to offset the risks so people are willing to take a chance.

justchris · Jan 8, 2010

gerg said:
Well, actually, the great successes of the Wii are counter-examples to this way of thinking. Of course, this is just another reason as to why the Wii is so alienating to most third-party developers. (Or, more accurately, that this is the case is the result of a factor about the Wii's software environment that makes it so alienating to third-party developers.)

They're not entirely counter-examples. Wii Fit had a ridiculously huge marketing budget in comparison to its development budget. It wasn't super expensive to make, but it was pretty expensive to sell. But that makes sense considering their target market was primarily non-gamers, meaning they needed a wider range of marketing penetration.

And at that, it still probably cost less to make and market Wii Fit than it cost just to make Modern Warfare 2. I'm also guessing Modern Warfare 2 had a pretty huge marketing budget, but I don't have any figures.

So it still costs money to make money, its just a matter of deciding where to spend that money.

gerg · Jan 8, 2010

charlequin said:
This is kind of like a lifeguard being like "well, it's not my fault all those children drowned, I told them not to go into the deep end!" and is pretty much emblematic of Nintendo's problem here.

They have implemented a new, very successful strategy involving the creation of a new market of game buyers that doesn't work the same way the old market does. While they're by no means perfect at selling to it themselves (see: AC Wii, Wii Music) they have far more information about how to do so than anyone else, because they invented it, and they also have access to tools that would allow them to impart this knowledge in ways that were directly profitable to themselves and didn't push 3PPs' "don't tell me what to do" buttons.

They didn't take any of those opportunities, and now Nintendo and the 3PPs alike are worse off for it.

The problem with trying to impart values (and I can agree that this may be as equally liberating as it is confounding) is that values only tell you how to make something, and not what to make. It would be easy if Nintendo could simply say "people like mini-games or kart-racers".

This is not to excuse Nintendo's failure of a relationship with third parties, but I think it is fair to say that they may have a more difficult job than when Microsoft or Sony can say "an FPS or two is good".

justchris said:
They're not entirely counter-examples. Wii Fit had a ridiculously huge marketing budget in comparison to its development budget. It wasn't super expensive to make, but it was pretty expensive to sell. But that makes sense considering their target market was primarily non-gamers, meaning they needed a wider range of marketing penetration.

Pretty much any large game has a large marketing budget. That this was in a higher ratio to Wii Fit's development budget (than that of, say, Modern Warfare 2) does not change the actual figures.

I see that you come to this conclusion, but I don't see the relevance of the comparison between advertising budget and development budget. I think the point remains that the Wii software environment throws a spanner into the conventional wisdom that "more is better" for a variety of reasons.

Flachmatuch · Jan 8, 2010

Opiate said:
EMH has fallen out of favor rapidly as Behavioral Economics has risen, and I'd say it's for good reason.

Afaics EMH is the basic *reason* behind why capitalist markets are encouraged to exist. It can't fall out of favour, because it's the rationale behind using markets as a tool for efficient distribution of resources. Markets as they exist now are not a natural phenomenon, they're (at least supposed to be) a *tool*, which is why I *assume* EMH to be true in my arguments - it's the basic rationale behind capitalism afaics.

And yeah, Quantum Physics is a tricky one in this case. I'd argue that it isn't saying that patterns don't exist, just that we cannot observe them. Which is, for practical purposes, just as bad as if patterns did not exist. For philosophical discussion though? It's an important difference.

I don't think so, as the difference between something not existing and a complete theoretical inability to observe it (no hidden parameters) is completely metaphysical and utterly meaningless afaics.

charlequin said:
I don't really believe that the tech scaling issues are going to magically abate once EA and Ubi and Activision have pushed everyone else out of the market. These guys are already finding themselves unable to profit effectively on the HD market and that problem will likely get worse. (In other words, the factors pushing people out of the market are much less effective at locking down the market under an oligarchy of large publishers than similar factors proved to be for other industries like music decades ago.)

I sure hope you're right, and I think it's more luxury nature of the market that'll help in the long run, but I think this issue is basically temporary and these issues will abate - not magically, but through technology development. The industry basically advanced two or three years faster than it should naturally have, and with better tools and of course less competition and less drive for technology they'll have it easier.

Sure. This is a lot of why I was such a strong advocate for both the DS and the Wii (as well as other outlets for such behavior like the burgeoning PC indie scene, XBLA/PSN, etc.) initially. But you need to be able to overcome the collective action problem inherent in these situations. If there's an area that presents a high risk and might present a high reward (but nobody knows yet), and you're one of twenty entities that might be able to explore it, there is no incentive for you to be the first in the pool -- if someone else is successful there you can always just trundle in right afterwards, do exactly what they did, and probably still do pretty decently. Someone either has to believe they have the answer so completely that they dive in anyway (always a risky endeavor, to say the least) or someone needs to offset the risks so people are willing to take a chance.

I thought it's more of a case of managing your resources tbh.

Anyway, maybe you're right and directors actually think this way (there certainly are a few who do), but it's certainly not what many people are saying - their arguments are a lot shallower than this and very often boil down to "third party games don't sell" etc etc, that's what's really annoying.

Vinci · Jan 8, 2010

charlequin said:
This is kind of like a lifeguard being like "well, it's not my fault all those children drowned, I told them not to go into the deep end!" and is pretty much emblematic of Nintendo's problem here.

They have implemented a new, very successful strategy involving the creation of a new market of game buyers that doesn't work the same way the old market does. While they're by no means perfect at selling to it themselves (see: AC Wii, Wii Music) they have far more information about how to do so than anyone else, because they invented it, and they also have access to tools that would allow them to impart this knowledge in ways that were directly profitable to themselves and didn't push 3PPs' "don't tell me what to do" buttons.

They didn't take any of those opportunities, and now Nintendo and the 3PPs alike are worse off for it.

Miyamoto said (paraphrased, again, 'cause I'm a lazy ass), "Don't put your [shit] teams on the Wii. We won't. And your efforts will suffer by comparison to what our teams do."

That's pretty explicit and he said this at the very start of this generation, when the Wii's market was still young and malleable.

When the most successful game publisher of all time tells you something like that, you better at least listen and not immediately flood the market with trash, treat Wii owners like retarded step-children, or assume that the man has gone off his rocker. Or look at Wii Sports, or any of Nintendo's games, and say, "So trash like that sells, huh?"

No, the first impression that most 3rd parties made on Wii owners was either "We're not going to take you seriously and think you're stupid" or "Hi, new game consumer - I'm a shovelware developer."

Don't get me wrong: Nintendo shares some blame here. But given what their past history looked like, and how 3rd parties had driven forward so hard towards Sony and MS and HD in general, I'm not really sure they could have caused a turn in the industry's momentum through anything other than... well... advice.

ShockingAlberto · Jan 8, 2010

Culex said:
Hoping that it hits the mark. I just don't understand why there's little advertising or hype developed by companies for their Wii titles. THERE ARE GOOD GAMES OUT THERE ON THE WII, why not scream from the top of your mountain that your game exists?

This is something that Nintendo and third parties share blame in.

Nintendo frequently says "Look, we have this huge install base, you can make money with it." To wit:

"I'm extremely disappointed," he said. "I've had this conversation with every publisher who makes content that is not available on my platform. The conversation goes like this: 'We have a 22-million unit installed base. We have a very diverse audience We have active gamers that hunger for this type of content. And why isn't it available?'"

If you listen to the latest 4G1U, the representative from Sega seemed extremely confused by Conduit didn't sell well. His own expressed thoughts were that the Wii has a huge base, and they put the Conduit on there, so why didn't it sell? He seemed honestly befuddled, as if Nintendo promised him magic, but it didn't work with his home-made magic kit.

Nintendo keeps using this as a selling point to third parties who end up getting burned when they're not doing Mario Kart numbers. And third parties are acting like idiots believing that's the only thing you need to do.

They cut down on advertising for Wii games because they figure they don't need it. Part of the pitch is that it's a cheaper overall cost for publishers, so part of that low cost, they think, is that it doesn't need advertisement.

Ten-Song · Jan 8, 2010

Culex said:
If Silent Hill: Shattered Memories sells at least 100k for the following NPD, I think that will bode well for future titles. It was a solid title and not a spin-off.

There's no way that game will even break half of that number.

Taker666 · Jan 8, 2010

Talk to Nintendo and promise them a quality title in exchange for use of their "New" logo

New Sonic The Hedgehog Wii
New Mega man Wii
New Super Streetfighter II Wii
New Streets of Rage Wii
New Outrun Wii
New Virtua Fighter Wii
New Double Dragon Wii
New Ghosts and Goblins wii

etc. etc.

...and we all know a decent first person MotionPlus lightsaber game would sell (unless they base it exclusively on the clone wars and prequels...which nobody has ever given a shit about so god knows why they keep pushing that ahead of the classic trilogy).

Even a Lego Star Wars Saber game would probably do a million. The Wii and DS versions of Lego Stars Wars both did 3 million+ if you believe a certain banned website.

gerg · Jan 8, 2010

Vinci said:
When the most successful game publisher of all time tells you something like that, you better at least listen and not immediately flood the market with trash, treat Wii owners like retarded step-children, or assume that the man has gone off his rocker. Or look at Wii Sports, or any of Nintendo's games, and say, "So trash like that sells, huh?"

No, the first impression that most 3rd parties made on Wii owners was either "We're not going to take you seriously and think you're stupid" or "Hi, new game consumer - I'm a shovelware developer."

Nintendo can either sit around wishing that companies were doing what it thinks that they should be doing, or it can tackle the situation pragmatically and actively try to change it. I'm a bit less harsh than most when it comes to Nintendo's strategy in the west (where I think of their activity more along the lines of "nothing lost, nothing gained", and that they would do better to attract third-party support later), but when the former leads to your console's sales stumbling and falling for two years you should be doing the latter.

Don't get me wrong: Nintendo shares some blame here. But given what their past history looked like, and how 3rd parties had driven forward so hard towards Sony and MS and HD in general, I'm not really sure they could have caused a turn in the industry's momentum through anything other than... well... advice.

I think that trying to get decent third-party support in the west is a lost cause until Nintendo actually designs a console that stands a chance in attracting the audience these developers want to attract.

Taker666 said:
Even a Lego Star Wars Saber game would probably do a million. The Wii and DS versions of Lego Stars Wars both did 3 million+ if you believe a certain banned website.

You shouldn't.

Opiate · Jan 8, 2010

charlequin said:
I don't really believe that the tech scaling issues are going to magically abate once EA and Ubi and Activision have pushed everyone else out of the market. These guys are already finding themselves unable to profit effectively on the HD market and that problem will likely get worse. (In other words, the factors pushing people out of the market are much less effective at locking down the market under an oligarchy of large publishers than similar factors proved to be for other industries like music decades ago.)

Absolutely agreed.

Sure. This is a lot of why I was such a strong advocate for both the DS and the Wii (as well as other outlets for such behavior like the burgeoning PC indie scene, XBLA/PSN, etc.) initially. But you need to be able to overcome the collective action problem inherent in these situations. If there's an area that presents a high risk and might present a high reward (but nobody knows yet), and you're one of twenty entities that might be able to explore it, there is no incentive for you to be the first in the pool -- if someone else is successful there you can always just trundle in right afterwards, do exactly what they did, and probably still do pretty decently. Someone either has to believe they have the answer so completely that they dive in anyway (always a risky endeavor, to say the least) or someone needs to offset the risks so people are willing to take a chance.

I absolutely agree with the principle: it's essentially a reverse prisoner's dilemma. However, I continue to disagree with you on where to place blame. As a business oriented guy first and foremost, I tend to place blame on the people who lose money. In other words, third parties needed to take the risk far more than Nintendo needed to show them how to take it.

That doesn't exonerate Nintendo by any means, in just the same way you don't fully exonerate third parties. But where you seem to place most of the blame on Nintendo, I place it most of it on third parties, because it's their employees that are losing their jobs as a consequence of the failure.

Vinci · Jan 8, 2010

gerg said:
Nintendo can either sit around wishing that companies were doing what it thinks that they should be doing, or it can tackle the situation pragmatically and actively try to change it. I'm a bit less harsh than most when it comes to Nintendo in the west (where I think of their activity more along the lines of "nothing lost, nothing gained"), but when the former leads to your console's sales stumbling and falling for two years you should be doing the latter.

They're trying in Japan. MH3 and DQX. There you go. That's the best it's going to get, because they know those are massive franchises that cannot abide a mediocre entry; that they (Nintendo) will get what they pay for. Because they can't trust anything else to deliver.

And the Western devs? Yeah, they'll never get the West. NEVER. It'll be the thorn in Nintendo's side for decades to come.

Kilrogg · Jan 8, 2010

Charlequin, just to highlight something that I find funny about your post (no malice intended), I'll quote the end of you post, THEN the beginning:

charlequin said:
While I spend most of my time (rightly) excoriating Nintendo for their own failures to shepherd their system through this challenge effectively, I do think this a good moment to turn around and poke at the 3PPs a little. If companies don't learn from this situation, it really will have been a waste because similar challenges will arise in the future and they too will threaten to undermine the continued success or even existence of currently huge publishers.

Actually, you already poked at the 3PPs subtly but nastily in the very first lines of your post.

This is kind of like a lifeguard being like "well, it's not my fault all those children drowned, I told them not to go into the deep end!" and is pretty much emblematic of Nintendo's problem here.

Note the bolded. I don't know if you chose this analogy on purpose, but I like it regardless. It highlights both issues: that 3rd parties behave like children (i.e. they don't behave like mature companies acting responsibly, assuming and learning from their mistakes and ultimately adapting to the market) and that Nintendo is casually patronizing them, hoping that their own success alone will be proof enough that their advice should be listened to and put in practice. Turns out it doesn't work that way.

The point of my post? None, really :lol. I'm rather enjoying the discussion by the way.

gerg · Jan 8, 2010

Opiate said:
I absolutely agree with the principle: it's essentially a reverse prisoner's dilemma. However, I continue to disagree with you on where to place blame. As a business oriented guy first and foremost, I tend to place blame on the people who lose money. In other words, third parties needed to take the risk far more than Nintendo needed to show them how to take it.

That doesn't exonerate Nintendo by any means, in just the same way you don't fully exonerate third parties. But where you seem to place most of the blame on Nintendo, I place it most of it on third parties, because it's their employees that are losing their jobs as a consequence of the failure.

The intricacy of the situation is that you essentially have two: in the west, it basically didn't matter (and in many ways, still doesn't) if Nintendo attracted third-party development - their console was designed in such a way that the games these companies would want to make would sell poorly; it would be difficult to encourage these developers to create other games; and, above all, their console was and is selling well without their support.

By contrast, in Japan, their console could have used this support greatly, and it still can. Here, it was absolutely in Nintendo's interest to attract this third-party support, and thus they should be blamed for making a decision that actively worked against them. It was short-sighted at best.

(I think there might be some room to allow for the fact that they didn't fully intend for Wii Music and Animal Crossing to see them through early 2009, but all this should do is highlight the impossibility to always run a console successfully, and thus the importance of third-party support to make up for these inevitabilities.)

Vinci said:
They're trying in Japan. MH3 and DQX. There you go. That's the best it's going to get, because they know those are massive franchises that cannot abide a mediocre entry; that they (Nintendo) will get what they pay for. Because they can't trust anything else to deliver.

This seems very much like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I don't think it is necessarily the case.

Aaron Strife · Jan 8, 2010

Taker666 said:
Even a Lego Star Wars Saber game would probably do a million. The Wii and DS versions of Lego Stars Wars both did 3 million+ if you believe a certain banned website.

I know everyone hates rail shooters on Wii lately but I would looooove a port of this:

Maybe they could flesh it out to include the prequel trilogy, more lightsaber duels, etc. Shit would be awesome!

Man God · Jan 8, 2010

Wii has a historically high number of 3rd party games though, so it has no problem whatsoever attracting third party development.

The problem is solely a question of quality.

justchris · Jan 8, 2010

careful said:
Wii market simplified breakdown:
1) Nintendo fans
2) Other gamers
3) Non traditional gamers

If you're making a third party "gamer's game", I think it's safe to cross out the non traditional gamers off the list of potential market. This segment won't be buying many games.
If you take out the people that buy mostly Nintendo games from 1) & 2), then you have your market. I'm assuming a bunch of those are multiplatform owners as well so take that into consideration. Depending on the genre, I'm thinking the size of this market is not as big as people think after looking at NPD numbers inflated with #3).

This isn't actually true though. A person could be the biggest SRPG fan in the entire world, but if they've never been exposed to an SRPG before, they'll never realize it. A large part of what determines the type of games a person plays is the types of games they are exposed to. The majority of non-gamers are/were not non-gamers because they don't enjoy games. They are non-gamers because they don't believe there is any value in gaming. Nintendo has done something incredible by convincing large swaths of the population that there is value in video games. To simply write these customers off as "non-traditional gamers" is to give up on a lot of potential money. The only way a person becomes a traditional gamer is by playing traditional games, and the only way a person will play a traditional game is if something convinces them it's worth their time. That is what marketing does, that's pretty much its entire purpose, to convince people that a product has value.

Sure, you're not going to convince every new Wii gamer to expand into other types of games, but there is already a potential market there. But that market will never reveal itself if it never has the option to explore new types of games.

+Aliken+ · Jan 8, 2010

Man God said:
I'd totally play an RE Game with Mario in it.

Actually all they needed to do was Resident Evil 5 for Wii.
Same graphics as the 4 you don't need more than that.

The Technomancer · Jan 8, 2010

Jokeropia said:
Dr Mario Kart at Penny Arcade's forums compiled this "Games Industry Death Watch 2009" list. It's some pretty nice research and I think it's worth reposting:Now the point here is not to blame all this on HD development costs, just to underline the fact that the industry overall is absolutely not "thriving" the way things are.

.......0_o it was that bad? I mean, I know its been a shit year, but dyam man!

Taker666 · Jan 8, 2010

gerg said:
You shouldn't.

True...but a quick look at Amazon shows Lego Star Wars Wii hasn't drifted outside the top 100 for 719 days.

Top 100 for 2 years straight is pretty damn impressive.

RurouniZel · Jan 8, 2010

The_Technomancer said:
.......0_o it was that bad? I mean, I know its been a shit year, but dyam man!

That's why we're all so worried. People are losing jobs, less people in an industry can result in creative lapses where very few new ideas are even conceived (let alone developed), which is bad for the market.

mclem · Jan 8, 2010

charlequin said:
EDIT: Also, I always feel bad for the Wii owners who have sensible, reasonable requests for support in these threads that can get drowned out by people who ask for obviously stupid shit. There's a very good reason that certain kinds of games -- sandbox games, shooters, anything oriented around online multiplayer, and so on -- could only conceivably be successful on 360 and PS3, systems that are actually designed to fit the market that buys those games, and it's always sad to me when people want to play those games but refuse to buy the system(s) they actually appear on.

Assuming you mean GTA-likes, are you *sure*? I thought the Wii controls added a heck of a lot to Godfather, and I'd like to see what they could do with a better base game. I'm somewhat surprised Rockstar haven't snuck a compilation of the xxx City Stories titles onto the Wii, actually, that'd be a nice test game.

Having said that... how did Bully do? I fear I wouldn't like the answers, mind

hokahey · Jan 8, 2010

DR2K said:
.

Which is why Carnival Games sold a million copies?

Not that I believe that was a quality game, but quality can be somewhat subjective. Clearly it was not a brand name though.

mclem · Jan 8, 2010

GC|Simon said:
It's so easy to have success on Wii. Just follow these steps:

1) Create a game concept.
2) Make a new thread over here and ask for feedback.
3) Read the following 100 pages.
4) Create a new game concept which GAF will like.
5) Show it GAF and earn compliments.
6) Let GAF create the marketing campaign and ask GAF how much money they need.

That's it.

Your game will be a super mega hit like God Hand or Mad World!

;-)

I await the announcement of Dudebro Reflex.

The Technomancer · Jan 8, 2010

hokahey said:
Which is why Carnival Games sold a million copies?

Not that I believe that was a quality game, but quality can be somewhat subjective. Clearly it was not a brand name though.

Carnival Games wasn't a flaming pile of ass, and it presented people with something familiar, that made sense with the Wii controlls.

A bit more on topic: Yeah, I get that developers aren't all eager to make FPS and violent action games on the Wii. But where the hell have the RPGs been this gen? Or the platformers for that matter? They've been on the DS and the PSP. If some devs had jumped on the RPG production early on, they could have turned the Wii into the next PS2 for genre fans. Did no-one really see this?

justchris · Jan 8, 2010

Burai said:
The question really is why third parties need to spend the money you're talking about trying to attract a theoretical audience on the Wii when an actual audience exists on the HD consoles.

Because that audience has been proven to be unprofitable? Opiate put it another way in a different thread when he asked why Nintendo should court the upmarket consumer when those consumers have proven to be unprofitable for anyone except Capcom and Activision?

While I argued against him in that case (I believe they can be profitable if approached correctly), having a proven, easily addressed market that has so far failed to make you any actual money is not really useful.

gerg said:
I see that you come to this conclusion, but I don't see the relevance of the comparison between advertising budget and development budget. I think the point remains that the Wii software environment throws a spanner into the conventional wisdom that "more is better" for a variety of reasons.

Well, the larger argument was about whether "you have to spend money to make money" is true. The point I was trying to make was, whether you spend the money in the development process or in the marketing process, you're still spending a great deal of money if you're going after blockbuster sales. There is no way around this, regardless of what system you put your game on.

The actual comparison between marketing and development budget isn't strictly relevant no.

Jocchan · Jan 8, 2010

mclem said:
Having said that... how did Bully do? I fear I wouldn't like the answers, mind

Last figure I heard of was a bit less than Zack & Wiki's numbers in the OP.

schuelma · Jan 8, 2010

Wow, some pretty good discussion in this thread. Always love reading that, even if this is something we seem to repeat over and over again.

All I have to say on this particular article is Zack and Wiki was going to bomb literally no matter what and would bomb on any platform. The only chance of success it had IMO was if Nintendo stepped in to market the game. Even then I think there were some severe limitations there.

All in all I think this conversation is better suited to Japan because in contrast to N.A we actually have a few examples of top tier 3rd party software (relatively speaking) both succeeding and failing. The discussion as it pertains to N.A is always going to be flawed because there is still no example of a 3rd party game with no qualifiers that would limit its success.

schuelma · Jan 8, 2010

The_Technomancer said:
But where the hell have the RPGs been this gen? Or the platformers for that matter? They've been on the DS and the PSP. If some devs had jumped on the RPG production early on, they could have turned the Wii into the next PS2 for genre fans. Did no-one really see this?

Yeah. This is really baffling to me and I put a lot of blame on Nintendo for this. When the freaking 360 can have a better lineup of RPG's, I put the blame on Nintendo for not getting the ball rolling (though as always I give 3rd parties blame for that as well). This is also where I think the rise of the portables really killed the Wii.

timetokill · Jan 8, 2010

Opiate said:
I'm with titka on this one: it's probably time to move on for third parties. Not because there was no opportunity on the Wii: there likely were huge, unrealized ones. But they've basically blown it at this point, and I don't see how it can be repaired.

This would be the wrong path to take, in my opinion. Unless the Wii is truly a "fad," third parties will need to figure out how to adjust to the market realities they are in. This either means figuring out how to be successful with the expanded audience or figuring out how to cut costs on their high-risk HD games and downsizing.

Even if you consider the Wii as it stands a lost cause (which I don't, but let's go with it anyway) -- Sony and Microsoft are pushing to enter the expanded market with Natal and the Wand. Make no mistake, while some "core" games may use these technologies, these are being introduced purely for attracting the expanded market.

There will certainly be new companies that will take advantage of the money being left on the table. But I think it's clear that if these companies don't want to be left in the cold even going into the next generation, they need to figure out how to make products for a wider market. That means structural changes NOW rather than later.

phisheep · Jan 8, 2010

charlequin said:
EDIT: Also, I always feel bad for the Wii owners who have sensible, reasonable requests for support in these threads that can get drowned out by people who ask for obviously stupid shit. There's a very good reason that certain kinds of games -- sandbox games, shooters, anything oriented around online multiplayer, and so on -- could only conceivably be successful on 360 and PS3, systems that are actually designed to fit the market that buys those games, and it's always sad to me when people want to play those games but refuse to buy the system(s) they actually appear on.

I disagree. There were sandboxes, shooters and online last gen. I like sandbox, so does my nephew, my wife likes shooting things and Mario Kart says hello. We all have Wiis.

Only conceivably successful on PS360? Thats stretching it a bit too far.

It is like saying you wont build a railway station in Manchester because all the people who use trains are in London. The only reason they are all in London is because thats where all the trains are and therefore that is the only conceivable place trains could be successful. Doesn't sound right to me.

justchris said:
This isn't actually true though. A person could be the biggest SRPG fan in the entire world, but if they've never been exposed to an SRPG before, they'll never realize it. A large part of what determines the type of games a person plays is the types of games they are exposed to. The majority of non-gamers are/were not non-gamers because they don't enjoy games. They are non-gamers because they don't believe there is any value in gaming. Nintendo has done something incredible by convincing large swaths of the population that there is value in video games. To simply write these customers off as "non-traditional gamers" is to give up on a lot of potential money. The only way a person becomes a traditional gamer is by playing traditional games, and the only way a person will play a traditional game is if something convinces them it's worth their time. That is what marketing does, that's pretty much its entire purpose, to convince people that a product has value.

Sure, you're not going to convince every new Wii gamer to expand into other types of games, but there is already a potential market there. But that market will never reveal itself if it never has the option to explore new types of games.

This is more like it.

But to pull this off you need to put some effort into explaining to people/showing to people what the game is about. It is no good saying to this hidden audience that it is like GTA if theyve never played GTA or only heard the bad popular press reports, it is no good relying on a screenshot and a franchise title that the audience has not heard of.

gerg · Jan 8, 2010

phisheep said:
I disagree. There were sandboxes, shooters and online last gen. I like sandbox, so does my nephew, my wife likes shooting things and Mario Kart says hello. We all have Wiis.

Only conceivably successful on PS360? Thats stretching it a bit too far.

Technologically, of course these games are possible to develop for the Wii. Only a few games this generation use the 360 or PS3's capabilities in a manner integral to their gameplay which would mean that porting them to the Wii would require a significant change in it.

Rather, these games would not sell well enough on the Wii to justify developing them for it in place of the 360 or the PS3, simply because the majority of their potential audience exists on other platforms (and may always have done so). I am not sure that it is even a case of whether or not these games would be profitable - I would think that some of them very much could be. Rather, it is a case of the fact that even if these releases are profitable on the Wii, they are simultaneously likely to be much more profitable on the HD twins.

charlequin · Jan 8, 2010

Vinci said:
Miyamoto said (paraphrased, again, 'cause I'm a lazy ass), "Don't put your [shit] teams on the Wii. We won't. And your efforts will suffer by comparison to what our teams do."

ShockingAlberto did a pretty good job of laying out the picture of why I don't think that is in any way a sufficient prescription for success on the Wii, now or at the time it was first issued.

Opiate said:
That doesn't exonerate Nintendo by any means, in just the same way you don't fully exonerate third parties. But where you seem to place most of the blame on Nintendo, I place it most of it on third parties, because it's their employees that are losing their jobs as a consequence of the failure.

Whether one assigns more blame to the people with the clearest incentives to fix the problem and the best resources to use in doing so (Nintendo) or those with the most to lose by not solving the problem (3PPs) I think we can agree that the whole situation is a bit of a clusterfuck.

Kilrogg said:
It highlights both issues: that 3rd parties behave like children (i.e. they don't behave like mature companies acting responsibly, assuming and learning from their mistakes and ultimately adapting to the market) and that Nintendo is casually patronizing them, hoping that their own success alone will be proof enough that their advice should be listened to and put in practice. Turns out it doesn't work that way.

That's pretty much what I was going for, yeah. :lol

Josh7289 · Jan 8, 2010

schuelma said:
Yeah. This is really baffling to me and I put a lot of blame on Nintendo for this. When the freaking 360 can have a better lineup of RPG's, I put the blame on Nintendo for not getting the ball rolling (though as always I give 3rd parties blame for that as well). This is also where I think the rise of the portables really killed the Wii.

Nintendo has never traditionally been an RPG developer, so I wouldn't blame them. This is rather a case where they have a huge hole in their lineup that could have been filled by third parties, but unfortunately no one stepped up to the plate.

HK-47 · Jan 8, 2010

Milhouse31 said:
Pro-tip : If they released a movie about your game franchise, it's already too late.

+ The Silent hill franchise is dead
+ Remake don't sell as good as the original

About wii and third parties : A lot of stuff has been said but I want to point how well marketing has been handled for both the Wii & Ds. Lots of very simple and straightforward ads showing people playing and having fun (the latest NSMW & Zelda:SP in Europe are very good).

Damn poor SF IV!

hamchan · Jan 8, 2010

Take RE4 Gameplay and Graphics
Make new locales
Make a new story
Place Leon S Kennedy there
Have him go through a bunch of crazy stuff.
Call the game Resident Evil 4.5: The Leon S Kennedy Files

Do this Capcom instead of light gun games.

Hugbot · Jan 8, 2010

Ten-Song said:
There's no way that game will even break half of that number.

What's really depressing is how shocked I'll be if you're wrong.

Y2Kev · Jan 8, 2010

I am drifting through space

charlequin · Jan 8, 2010

phisheep said:
There were sandboxes, shooters and online last gen.

There were sandbox and shooter games last gen, yes, although none were remotely as relevant as they are today. (Shooters and online play didn't fully transition from being a thing of the PC realm until Halo 2, and neither was ever particularly important on the market-leader console; sandbox games didn't really peak until the very end of last generation and make up a far larger percentage of hit games now than they did last gen.)

These are all genres that appeal almost exclusively to 18-35 year old males and whose appeal is connected directly to both the use of violence in the games (which makes them a poorer fit for a system with a family-oriented demographic) and their visual quality (which is definitionally going to be far greater utilizing more graphically powerful systems.) These, and other genres with similar profiles (Final Fantasy-style "cinematic RPGs," sim racers, etc.) could not have ever been successful on Wii, no matter what either Nintendo or the publshers did, because of how poorly the Wii lines up with the desires of the audience who buys these titles.

Only conceivably successful on PS360? That’s stretching it a bit too far.

In terms of this generation's actual specific consoles, yes. The Wii, by adopting a powerlevel more comparable to systems from last generation, guaranteed that all successful games of these genres would appear on the more powerful systems.

It is like saying you won’t build a railway station in Manchester because all the people who use trains are in London.

But everyone uses trains the exact same way: to get from one place to another. Different demographics don't all use game systems the same way or want the same things out of their games. When you have a demographic that wants things like "a core-gamer-oriented, in-depth online play system" or "impressive graphical fidelity" (which the Wii does not provide) then they are going to buy a system, even an overpriced system with extremely huge and glaring flaws, that does provide those things and play these games on that system.

This is really just the reverse of the (I hope fairly obvious at this point) idea that the PS360 can't actually beat the Wii simply by offering some "casual" games. Neither system is going to serve the needs of the demographic that bought Wii Sports as well as the Wii does, and therefore such games will simply never be as successful there no matter what MS or Sony does to try to repair that.

selig · Jan 8, 2010

hamchan said:
Take RE4 Gameplay and Graphics
Make new locales
Make a new story
Place RE-character there
Have him go through a bunch of crazy stuff.
Call the game Resident Evil 6

Do this Capcom instead of light gun games.

Fixed.
Success would be that easy.

Y2Kev · Jan 9, 2010

Opiate said:
EMH has fallen out of favor rapidly as Behavioral Economics has risen, and I'd say it's for good reason.

Oh, definitely. I think the past year and a half has absolutely drove the stake through the heart of the EMH. I had a professor last year who would go on rants about how much he enjoyed the death of the EMH and the crow being served at Chicago.

Afaics EMH is the basic *reason* behind why capitalist markets are encouraged to exist. It can't fall out of favour, because it's the rationale behind using markets as a tool for efficient distribution of resources. Markets as they exist now are not a natural phenomenon, they're (at least supposed to be) a *tool*, which is why I *assume* EMH to be true in my arguments - it's the basic rationale behind capitalism afaics.

I'm not sure what you mean. The EMH is awfully controversial and has been disputed since the beginning. What do you mean by, "It cannot fall out of favor?" The rise of behavioral finance has given the EMH a kick in the nads in terms of credibility and predictive validity.

[Nintex] · Jan 9, 2010

I think they've pretty much ruined the Wii third party market beyond repair and honestly I don't understand why. In fact the third parties started out great. SSX Blur from EA for example or The Godfather. Monkey Ball from SEGA, those games made sense. But suddenly they all decided to release 'Game Partyz 4 All Playz' and the shit hit the fan. The industry is just unable to succesfully introduce new brands. Assassins Creed, Rabbids and Bioshock seem to be the only new IP's that the third parties have managed to put out. Take Red Steel 2 for example, is anyone going to buy it based on the name and the prequel

lol )? Why is Ubisoft even trying to build a franchise out of that IP. Why won't they come up with another name?

At this point they're pretty much fucked, Nintendo is clearly done with the waiting game and they'll certainly release both a Mario and Zelda game and perhaps Metroid as well. Not to mention the Wii Vitality Sensor and titles like Endless Ocean 2. The fact that Nintendo had to take-over the marketing of Monster Hunter 3-Tri in Europe says everything. I must say that there's a positive vibe surrounding Tatsunoko vs. Capcom so maybe that'll do well.

I'd say 2009 has been a wake-up call for all parties involved. Nintendo realized that they do need some sort of third party support if they want to keep the train running at full speed. But Nintendo is only going after the 'big boys'. They won't bother with Marvelous and such(which is a shame) but they're certainly happy to work with EA and Square-Enix. Not to mention they cherry pick the best new franchises like Layton and publish them overseas to aid companies like Level 5.

Flachmatuch · Jan 9, 2010

Y2Kev said:
Oh, definitely. I think the past year and a half has absolutely drove the stake through the heart of the EMH. I had a professor last year who would go on rants about how much he enjoyed the death of the EMH and the crow being served at Chicago.

I don't know anything about this, and this is a derail, but doesn't that have some pretty serious philosophical consequences? What are markets for if they aren't the most efficient way to price stuff? I always thought EMH was a direct and obvious consequence, restricted to a narrower range (financial markets) of the basic rationale behind markets (efficient distribution of resources) and even if EMH doesn't hold naturally, markets (especially financial markets) should only exist by ensuring that it does in some way? I'm probably completely off base though.

I'm not sure what you mean. The EMH is awfully controversial and has been disputed since the beginning. What do you mean by, "It cannot fall out of favor?" The rise of behavioral finance has given the EMH a kick in the nads in terms of credibility and predictive validity.

Yeah I know, this is something I don't really understand. It just always seemed to me that the EMH was the basic distilled form of what markets are for.

Support NeoGAF

Gamasutra: Another Wii Third party debate, what to do?

Member

Member

Member

Member

Danish

Member

Banned

Banned

Banned

Member

Member

Member

Danish

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Danish

paid requisite penance

Member

Banned

Non-Canon Member

Member

Member

card-carrying scientician

Member

Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to

Member

Member

Member

card-carrying scientician

Member

á½ Î¼ÎµÎ¼Î²ÎµÏÎ¿Ï -Î¿Ï

Wastes hours checking old Famitsu software data, but that's why we love him.

Wastes hours checking old Famitsu software data, but that's why we love him.

Banned

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister

Member

Banned

Member

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.

Member

Member

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009

Banned

Banned

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009

Member

Member

Similar threads

á½ Î¼ÎµÎ¼Î²ÎµÏÎ¿Ï -Î¿Ï