http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4237/thirdparty_publishers_react_to_.php
Some quotes:
it's a good read. I kind of laughed about the Zack & Wiki comment though.
Some quotes:
Take the case of third-party publisher Capcom, whose stock rose to a five-year high in September, 2007 due to increased support for the Wii, according to the company.
At the time, its CFO spoke enthusiastically about Capcom's Wii portfolio -- which had doubled from three to six games -- and was poised to publish Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure the next month.
But Chris Kramer, Capcom senior director of communications and community, said even though "it was one of the highest-rated Wii games and was beloved by the media, it sold abysmally -- about 120,000 units in 26 months -- for no apparent reason.
According to Kramer, "If you're not Nintendo, it does seem harder to make money on the Wii today compared to the PS3 and the Xbox 360. It's a very tough market to crack and is ever-shifting."
He recalls that when the Wii first launched in North America in November, 2006, simple casual or party games did so well that they soon saturated the market. "Now, I don't even know what the market is," he says. "
"Third-party publishers are having a hard time determining who the Wii audience is," Kramer adds. "You can no longer say it is solely casual gamers or that only E-rated games own the space. For any sort of solid statement you want to make about the platform or the audience, there are enough opposite proofs to show that it is extremely scattered and chaotic."
One thing's for sure -- the focus has changed. Stores like Target and Best Buy have reportedly told game publishers not to even bother approaching them with collections of mini games, which they will no longer pick up.
Michael Pachter is more optimistic, viewing the current situation as "a resetting of expectations about the Wii consumer" more so than a "Wii bubble deflation." Pachter, an industry analyst, is managing director of equity research for Wedbush Securities.
"The Wii console sold so many more units than anybody expected in 2007 and 2008 because it was cheap and because of its novel gameplay," he explains, "which set expectations much, much greater than perhaps were warranted. Since then, the Wii has come back down to earth and is now merely outselling the other two consoles by 30 or 40 percent, not 300 percent. I hardly see that as a bubble deflation."
It's the other half of the Wii console owners who third-party developers need to address, Pachter says, and Capcom is doing it just right by coming out with a title like Resident Evil whose brand everyone recognizes through movies and simple brand history. Unfortunately, it seems that even that approach may not be working.
"Wii publishers need to concentrate on fewer games but games of higher quality," he says. "There is just too much shovelware around -- like the $15 games in the end-cap bargain bins at Target. Companies like Majesco just spin them out non-stop and there are tons of them. They aren't helping anybody keep their lights on."
Capcom's Kramer agrees with the "fewer but better" philosophy: "In 2010, you won't see as many Wii games from Capcom, but the ones we release will be much larger, event-size games. I also expect to see the market dominated more and more by Nintendo releases with fewer games from the major third parties, like EA, Activision, and Ubisoft."
But, says Pachter, "the real question is what is Nintendo going to do about the fact that their third-party software isn't moving since theirs is a royalty model and less content isn't good for them. They need to do something to encourage the third parties to create more, not less, content. Otherwise, Nintendo is going to lose all its third-party royalties and, well, they can't afford that."
it's a good read. I kind of laughed about the Zack & Wiki comment though.