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[gerg]

I can give you a reason why it's bad.

People bought the Wii because they wanted to play games that used the Wii strengths. But the third parties decided that if someone wanted to play their best games, he would have to play them focusing in the HD twins strengths. And we know that those strengths are very different.

I'm not sure what your point is.

No company should have to do everything to attract every consumer, outside of that move being the most profitable venture.

What you suggest seems to be similar to saying that it's "bad" that I don't get sent $500 by Sony every day. Sure, it sucks to be me, but that's life.

 

[farnham]

Isn't coming into a thread without reading the OP a bannable offense?

Cause it is explained there.

The Nintendo first party games in the top 21 are the usual suspects, with Mario and Sonic counted as a Nintendo title because it has the name "Mario" in the title.

yeah i was saying that a title is not first party title because it has mario in it but it is a first party title because its developed/published by a first party (nintendo, sony and microsoft..).. i said that it is wrong to count mario and sonic at the winter olympics or mario and sonic at the olympics as a first party title.. at least in North america and in Europe (because its published by Nintendo in japan)

 

[Stumpokapow]

I know the concrete question is about third parties, but I think it's quite obvious that HD is not doing very well for the industry, and that can be very easily seen by how much MS and Sony have lost this gen, it's about $5bn so far in this gen. I think it'd be really difficult to argue that the HD stuff wasn't an overall failure for the industry.

I absolutely agree that the R&D and razor-razorblade model for console design have proven itself to be very dangerous. Hell, with MS their losses are padded by the fact that Xbox Live is phenomenally profitable and helps make up for hardware losses. I think everyone agrees that next generation you need less R&D, lower initial pricepoints, lower or no loss upfront, and more ways to make money off customers (charging for online, charging for accessories, etc) so that if your hardware strategy loses money you have a buffer.

I also feel that some of your ideas about where to go from here are good and your post was a good read IMO.

 

[Lonely1]

I'm not sure what your point is.

No company should have to do everything to attract every consumer, outside of that move being the most profitable venture.

He's disputing (as i am) the statement: "I don't see as though it's bad for us". I gave some of the reasons why I don't like the current situation.

 

[LSauchelli]

So people here are suggesting...

Little King's Story
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Super Mario Galaxy
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
A Boy and His Blob
Zack & Wiki
Disaster: Day of Crisis
Resident Evil 4: Wii edition
House of the Dead: OVERKILL
Sin & Punishment 2
No More Heroes
No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle
MadWorld
Murasama: The Demon Blade
Klonoa
Tales of Graces
Monster Hunter Tri
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
Punch-Out!!
Wii Sports Resort

Are all sub-standard, B-rate games? :lol This has to be a joke.

You know that more than a few of those games are first party, right?

 

[gerg]

He's disputing (as i am) the statement that "I don't see as though it's bad for us". I gave some of the seasons why I don't like the current situation.

I guess I just don't see the significance of that. Lots of things are bad for us; it doesn't mean that what would be good for us should happen, though.

I know the concrete question is about third parties, but I think it's quite obvious that HD is not doing very well for the industry, and that can be very easily seen by how much MS and Sony have lost this gen, it's about $5bn so far in this gen. I think it'd be really difficult to argue that the HD stuff wasn't an overall failure for the industry.

It's all about timing. The gaming industry can cope with technological advances as long as those advances are slow enough.

 

[Sadist]

What third parties could do is stop shoveling out very poor budget releases at $ 20/$30. The best example would be Ubisoft’s Petz series. At a certain point, it doesn’t work anymore. Even the “casual” audience can see that Petz Monkiez isn’t that different from Petz Dogz. In other words, lower your casual releases and make them more unique. In other words, invest a few bucks more. So Ubisoft, don’t release three Just Dance sequals this year or you can kiss those booming sales goodbye. Wait till 2011.

As for “more hardcore releases”... I think the industry really should stop with these buzzwords because I think a lot of executives, marketing teams and even analysts ( ) don’t have the foggiest of what makes a “casual game” or “core game”. I blame Nintendo for bringing these words to the industry though. Although, you could argue that third parties were very eager to copy Nintendo. In the end, nobody know what they actually mean and which games fits the terminology.

Looking at software... Nintendo and third parties blew it. Nintendo just concentrated on making the Wii as popular as possible and developing software for it and didn’t do that much (except for a few franchises like DQ and MH Tri) for third parties. Third parties on the other hand, well let’s just say they weren’t convinced with Wii. I can understand why they didn’t support the platform at the beginning, but we’re in the console’s fourth year and it still gets games that aren’t that interesting for a number of reasons. Some games are a bad mix of trying to please two groups (casual/core) or bad versions compared to their counterparts on the HD consoles. Only a small amount are decent games which have redeeming qualities.

Another problem would be the horrible job of publishers letting the public know when certain releases are available. Nintendo is one of them because of their smaller titles and downloadable titles. All in all, I think that the market is sort of destroyed. I still think the market is receptive of certain titles but personally I think we have to wait till next generation before third parties start with a clean sheet again. Until that time, they should experiment with certain formulas. Maybe they could ask Nintendo about creating a title akin to New! Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Titles that come to mind: New! Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, New! Sonic the Hedgehog or something like that.

 

[selig]

i don't think anyone reading your post thinks you deserved an oh snap for that particular insight

dear stumpokapow, I know from this and previous topic how your argument always goes in favor of third parties, so....stop it, please?
This whole topic has been beaten to death, and it´s always the same points being made by the same people. In the end, nothing will change...and the only ones losing here are third parties themselves...losing millions of money and millions of future consumers, that are totally turned off by their bad experience with their games.

Take the Wii-audience serious, dont think of it as some kind of retarded, second class audience that will not notice when you give them crap to play. I dont know how often it has been said, but: The Wii-audience wants great games. Its that easy. (and ffs, dont give me the "good games dont equal good sales"-reply. Good games with good advertising DO sell well. And the fact that third parties have basically flooded the Wii with crap doesnt help).

 

[Baki]

Running through the NPD results for 2009 (U.S. only in retail dollars), it looks like Nintendo first party Wii titles sold 27.5 million units for a total of $1.53 billion at retail. In contrast, overall Wii software sales were 72.4 million units and $3.23 billion.

I think that this illustrates an obvious point: Nintendo first party titles dominate on the Wii.

Nintendo captured 38% of unit sales and 47% of dollar sales, leaving the rest for third parties. The average Nintendo first party Wii title sold for $55.63, while the average third party title sold for $37.85. Nintendo first party titles captured the top 6 positions, 9 of the top 10, and 15 of the top 21.

The games I mentioned in Bonus Round (Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space Extraction ) finished at positions 151 and 261, respectively.

Interestingly (at least to me), the six third party titles in the top 20 were EA Sports Active, Lego Star Wars, Madden 10, Tiger Woods 10, Deca Sports (?), Game Partyand Rock Band 2.

The Nintendo first party games in the top 21 are the usual suspects, with Mario and Sonic counted as a Nintendo title because it has the name "Mario" in the title.

Recently, we've seen comments from third parties (Capcom, EA and Ubisoft) expressing frustration over an inability to generate big sales on the Wii. Similarly, we've seen comments from Nintendo about how quality and marketing is the key to success on the Wii.

I found it fascinating that the highest ranked Guitar Hero title on the Wii in 2009 was GH World Tour at #30. I also found it fascinating that games like Just Dance, Cabela's Big Game Hunter, Deal or No Deal, The Biggest Loser and Jillian Michaels 2009 all finished ahead of the highest ranked GH game.

The conclusion I draw from this is that the Wii audience is far more casual and harder to reach than the PS3 or 360 audiences (pretty obvious), and they buy brand name software (with "Wii" or "Mario" in the title, or with a TV/product tie-in). The only titles that don't fit this are Deca Sports and Game Party. The average selling price of third party titles says a lot, coming in almost $7 below the average for all Wii titles, and almost $18 below first party titles. There were a lot of units sold with the word "party" in the title at $20 or less.

I made a comment on Bonus Round that half the Wii audience is hard core and half is purely casual. That split sounds pretty agressive, and the data above suggests it's more like 25/75.

Given that NeoGAF is a hard core site, I'm curious to hear your spin. What should publishers do?

You are sooo awesome.

Back to the topic at hand, I think it is fairly obvious what kind of titles sell in droves on the wii. It is titles designed for the expanded audience, in particular, those that encourage "social" gaming (I.e. have a strong local multiplayer element). If you look at the best selling Wii 3rd party titles. Just Dance, Guitar Hero, Deca Sports etc... they are all very accesible titles with a strong local multiplayer component.

Now for publishers that are specialised in delivering blockbuster titles. The problem that these publisher face in North America is that it is that a significant number of core consumers that traditionally buy blockbuster titles most likely own a X360 or a PS3 as well.

So they can either attempt to appeal to a new audience (people that buy Wii Fit) by making the game more accessible or develop for the PS3/360.

 

[Big One]

They are suggesting that these, minus RE4 (which was a port) and MHT (which isn't out in most places yet), are not close to AAA big budget games. Which is true.

How so? What makes them different from those "AAA" titles?

What exactly is an AAA big budget game? Big budget games do not equate to quality in any way. Quality is of the game itself, not the amount of time and money spent on it's creation. There's a dozen of AAA quality games for the PS3 and 360 but at the same time the ones I listed for the Wii are pretty much AAA quality that is predominately exclusive on the Wii. There's plenty of AAA quality PS3 games like Demon's Souls, Valkyria Chronicles, Uncharted 1 & 2; and there's plenty of AAA quality 360 games like Crackdown, Dead Rising, Bayonetta, and Tales of Vesperia. I just don't see how the majority of the games I listed would be of less quality than these titles.

 

[Stumpokapow]

dear stumpokapow, I know from this and previous topic how your argument always goes in favor of third parties, so....stop it, please?

I think my argument generally tends to fall in favour of what the evidence points out and what the real world on the ground situation is. I don't care who is "right" or "wrong"; I'm buying all the games I want on all the platforms I want regardless.

The evidence points out that third parties are concerned, not because they B-tier games aren't selling millions of units, but because their B-tier games aren't selling what they expect their B-tier games to sell. They're not selling what they sold last generation. They're not selling what they're apparently selling on other platforms this generation. And they're openly saying that the consequence of this is that they're not likely to focus further efforts on the Wii.

And the real world situation is as follows: Whether third parties are right or wrong, whether Pachter is right or wrong, whether I'm right or wrong, whether you're right or wrong, it's highly unlikely the kind of support you're asking for on the Wii is going to come. Maybe that's unfair. Maybe that makes you angry. But that's the lay of the land.

If anyone reading the thread believes there's likely to be a big movement in terms of software towards the Wii, or that third parties are likely to change direction, they can make their case. So no matter who is right and who is wrong and who is going to have the last laugh, in terms of actual games being released, the issue is moot at this point, right?

This whole topic has been beaten to death, and it´s always the same points being made by the same people.

Which is why you felt it was prudent to add the insight of "If the Wii had multi-million dollar AAA games, games would sell better on the Wii" and "Third parties suck because they don't try hard enough on the Wii"?

Either we ought to re-hash the same old arguments or we ought not re-hash them. It's up to you.

 

[Pancakes R Us]

I just think that there is a very small audience on Wii for these 'core' games. Yes, a lot of Nintendo product sells, but despite being core games, they are also games that attract everyone - that's the beauty of them.

The 25/75 ratio mentioned...I'd have to agree. I'd maybe go as far as saying 20/80 core to 'casual'. This is the Wii's audience...we just have to deal with it. I very much doubt something like Assassin's Creed 2 (or insert other supposedly core, AAA third party title here) would have done gang busters on Wii - or even remotely close enough to justify paying as much attention to it as the PS360 versions.

I see the Wii as having the following owner types:

- Core (tiny amount - will buy everything including Nintendo stuff, good 'casual' games and the 'core' stuff )
- Nintendo faithful (only really buy a console for the first party output)
- Casual PS2 audience (the 'party' game buyer, buys some Nintendo games)
- The great unwashed (every Tom, Dick and Harry who bought it for Wii Sports / their neighbour had it and now buys the odd party game here and there). This type of person is also fooled into buying really awful third party shovelware.

Can Nintendo do something to fight against this image next time? Sure, they can try - maybe try to entice these 'core' gamers from the beginning with a couple of great triple A core titles that aren't for the usual Mario and co audience who'll get the console anyway.

Before anyone calls me a hater, I only own a Wii and am actually very happy with the games on it. This probably has more to do with the fact that I game much less these days and therefore don't need as many releases as others may do (in which case I recommend you get a PS3 or 360 to satisfy any 'core' third party hunger you may have).

 

[Stumpokapow]

Before anyone calls me a hater, I only own a Wii and am actually very happy with the games on it. This probably has more to do with the fact that I game much less these days and therefore don't need as many releases as others may do (in which case I recommend you get a PS3 or 360 to satisfy any 'core' third party hunger you may have).

I absolutely believe satisfaction with any single console is going to depend pretty heavily on the number of games you play to begin with. On 5 games a year, there's not a single console that'd disappoint. On 30 games a year, I'd say it's pretty hard to find a single console that wouldn't.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

What could third parties do?

Just as a thought experiment, could they voluntarily go back to the rules that Nintendo enforced back in the NES days? 6 games per publisher per year? 6 games each year that they thought were top notch and well positioned? Stop this shit with flooding the market with brand-diluting crap?

 

[Little Green Yoda]

With regards to "hardcore" games: Third parties have had this wrong from the beginning, and continue to get it wrong. When the Castlevania fighting game and Soul Calibur action game failed, that should have been the clue that sticking a known property into a different genre from usual was a bad idea. But instead, Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space Extraction.

Speaking of Dead Space Extraction, after the obvious consumer dissatisfaction from the reveal that it was a rails-shoo... "guided first-person experience" they should have went back to the drawing board with the game. This commonly happens with HD games (see Splinter Cell Conviction and I Am Alive), so why not with a Wii game? Let's continue talking about DSE, since it is an interesting case study. It got good reviews and was a quality game, so why didn't it sell? Well, let's not kid ourselves, it got decent reviews; it's not like it's getting the kind of universal acclaim Mass Effect 2 is. And you know what; quality is only one of three factors that is needed for a successful game. The other two are concept and marketing. With regards to Wii games, I think Tatsunoko vs. Capcom has been the first third party Wii game to get TV advertisement since the Sega trio, so DSE clearly fails that metric.

Concept is in my opinion the metric that is most important, and at the same time is the metric that most third party Wii games fail spectacularly. The fan backlash against DSE and RE Darkside Chronicles was immense, showing that the consumers clearly didn't care for their core concepts. And if they don't care for the core concept, no amount of advertising or quality will be able to win them over.

For example, I give you a conversation I had with one of my friends (paraphrased):
Friend: "Man, I can't wait for Dead Space Wii to come out."
Me: "It's out already; I have it." (marketing fail)
Friend: "Really? Is it good?"
Me: "Yeah, I enjoyed it."
Friend: "Sweet I'm going to go get it."
Me: "... You know it's a rails shooter right?"
Friend: "It is? Screw that." (concept fail)

I believe this is the reason why the Call of Duty ports, and even the Conduit which is mediocre in quality, have sold better than DSE and RE Darkside Chronicles, because the core concepts were appealing. Coincidentally, Call of Duty was an HD game first, and the Conduit was designed in an attempt to ape pretty much everything from modern HD FPS games.

Conclusion 1: If the core concept of your "hardcore" game wouldn't fly on PS3 and 360, don't bother making it for the Wii.
Conclusion 2: A well-done HD port to the Wii is safer than a ground-up game. (emphasis on well-done)

With regards to "casual" games: On Pach-Attack you had said that the casual bubble had burst. I disagree. It has only burst for third party casual games. Nintendo's more casual games (Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort, etc) are still performing very well. Two things here:
1) Annualized sequels for casual games don't work. Someone on this board and I can't find the original post and don't remember who said it so I apologize for not properly attributing this said that the "casual" audience goes for concept sequels rather than content sequels. This is why Guitar Hero World Tour outsold Guitar Hero 5; World Tour added significantly to the core concept (the full band) while GH5 just added some modes and new songs.
2) The "casual" audience has wised up. In a way I feel worse for the "casual" Wii owners than the "core" ones; if the "core" Wii owners are second class citizens then "casual" Wii owners may as well be homeless beggars. Third parties assumed that "casuals" were both naive and stupid, and as such gave them terrible games and, when they sold well, terrible sequels to said games. Unfortunately for them the "casuals" were not stupid, so they learned after playing said terrible games that the games were, indeed, terrible, and that the sequel should be avoided. A good example of this would be the Japanese release (I know we are talking US NPD but bear with me) of Deca Sports 2, which had an astounding 3% opening sell-through. Ouch.

Conclusion 1: Do not release a sequel to a casual game until the core concept is improved upon, like Wii Sports to Wii Sports Resort (more precise controls)
Conclusion 2: Treat the "casuals" as serious consumers, and you shall be rewarded. Examples: EA Active (excluding more workouts, see Conclusion 1) and Tiger Woods 10.

edit: minor grammar

Great post.

Quality product + Good marketing + Appealing concept = sales

 

[Tiktaalik]

Going back to Pachter's original question, that is, what should 3rd parties do? I say scale the amount of Wii projects way, way back (or drop altogether if you don't have anything currently selling) and invest elsewhere.

It's pretty clear that the 3rd parties screwed up the launch by not having any interesting IP ready, but I think at this point it's going to pretty damn difficult to launch a brand new IP. I think it's worth jumping back into the market at Wii 2 with a fresh set of IP and a ready team, but at this point endlessly retooling and just throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks is just doesn't seem to be paying off.

I don't think putting out game of the moment titles based on this year's favourite reality tv show is going to win any long term fans and repeat business.

It's best to take this money elsewhere and invest in something that's just starting up where they can grab a big portion of the market. Facebook and mobile look good to me.

 

[farnham]

Judging from the total software estimates posted on Gamasutra a little while ago, the 360's third-party software sales should be around five million units higher; the PS3's (total) software sales were ten million units lower than the Wii's third-party software sales, so third-party sales on the PS3 are bound to be at least that much less.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26856/Analysis_Wii_Overtakes_Xbox_360_LTD_Software_Sales.php

do you mean this article

because this article suggests that total 360 software sales (first and thirdparty) were 53 million units.. while nintendo thirdparty software sales (excluding sonic and mario at the olympics and winter olympics) account to 44.9 million units..

 

[jay]

How so? What makes them different from those "AAA" titles?

What exactly is an AAA big budget game? Big budget games do not equate to quality in any way. Quality is of the game itself, not the amount of time and money spent on it's creation. There's a dozen of AAA quality games for the PS3 and 360 but at the same time the ones I listed for the Wii are pretty much AAA quality that is predominately exclusive on the Wii. There's plenty of AAA quality PS3 games like Demon's Souls, Valkyria Chronicles, Uncharted 1 & 2; and there's plenty of AAA quality 360 games like Crackdown, Dead Rising, Bayonetta, and Tales of Vesperia. I just don't see how the majority of the games I listed would be of less quality than these titles.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make and was simply clearing up your impression that people think the games you listed suck. People like those games.

The difference between them and AAA games on the HD consoles is something like 20 to 50 million dollars, which matters in many ways to a lot of consumers. It buys a longer single player experience, better graphics, more polish overall, better advertising, etc. AAA games also tend to be in popular genres, not 2.5d platformers, 2d action games, adventure games and whatnot.

A AAA game is hard to define, but a good litmus test is: does it have a giant budget and is it in a popular genre?

 

[Flachmatuch]

It's all about timing. The gaming industry can cope with technological advances as long as those advances are slow enough.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. HD came way too early. It worked for Microsoft though, as they gained a better market position and will sadly be able to make good profits next gen, but it's still just a way of buying up a market, which will, in the long term (which is, errr, immediately) decrease its competitiveness.

I absolutely agree that the R&D and razor-razorblade model for console design have proven itself to be very dangerous. Hell, with MS their losses are padded by the fact that Xbox Live is phenomenally profitable and helps make up for hardware losses. I think everyone agrees that next generation you need less R&D, lower initial pricepoints, lower or no loss upfront, and more ways to make money off customers (charging for online, charging for accessories, etc) so that if your hardware strategy loses money you have a buffer.

My problem is that most of the ways aren't very consumer friendly, or rather, that the whole industry (or rather, the way third parties approach it) isn't "consumer driven". It seems to be about what these large companies want to do and what's best for them (and now it goes as far as looking down on customers they don't understand) - they're not searching for new ways to satisfy customers and reacting to changing market conditions, but rather expecting them to spend more and more money on the same stuff. That's going nowhere. And imo it's not even realistic to expect - there aren't many companies like Nintendo that can do this kind of stuff so effectively; this usually happens through new companies emerging and old ones dying off (or more realistically, old ones buying up the new ones and leeching off them...capitalism my ass :-/).

As for "more ways of making money off customers" - the basic question is whether consumers are willing to spend enough money to support your particular type of product. Just restructuring stuff won't do (although you have to identify where your real costs are and from these costs, what's that customers are actually paying for), it won't increase the money people are willing to spend on gaming, it'll just redistribute it...and how could that work if there's not enough money going around? You have to increase the size of the market, that seems to be the only way these traditional companies can work. Unless, of course, product development costs will decrease next gen.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Just as a thought experiment, could they voluntarily go back to the rules that Nintendo enforced back in the NES days? 6 games per publisher per year? 6 games each year that they thought were top notch and well positioned? Stop this shit with flooding the market with brand-diluting crap?

The problem is that the publishers flooding the market with crap are largely disparate from the publishers flooding the market with B-tier titles.

EA has released a few junkers (Celebrity Nelly Furtado Ice Dancing Dart Olympics, for example), but ultimately they're not the publisher putting out 3+ titles a week; Majesco has a role to play, as does THQ, as do "City Games", Destineer, DSi/Bold, Conspiracy, etc.

So there's not likely to be a voluntary change because the people who'd want to volunteer weren't the problem to begin with. Presumably eventually the situation gets so bad that the crapware publishers go under or adjust or retailers stop buying crapware altogether and free up some shelf space, but there's obviously a point long before then where you'd want intervention but none would be practical.

 

[Version 3.0]

Either way, I don't think there's been any time in the last ten years where I haven't had more games to play than time to play them

That goes for me, too--as I already said.

Fretting too much about the decline or rise of a given genre or a given style of play to me is just pedantic, and that includes IR/motion controls.

The difference between being unhappy about the number of top-scrolling shooters and the number of unique Wii-controlled games is simply that one of these was something that nearly every console game publisher expressed excitement about creating just a couple of years ago, and the other isn't.

Being fulfilled as a gamer strikes me as a pretty easy objective to achieve

The two aren't mutually exclusive. I can have games bursting the seams of my game room and have a great gaming life, and still be dissatisfied by the lack of good Wii games, or decline in certain genres, or anything else. Just like I can eat well and still think it's a pity that Taco Joe's went out of business.

 

[Nirolak]

I absolutely agree that the R&D and razor-razorblade model for console design have proven itself to be very dangerous. Hell, with MS their losses are padded by the fact that Xbox Live is phenomenally profitable and helps make up for hardware losses. I think everyone agrees that next generation you need less R&D, lower initial pricepoints, lower or no loss upfront, and more ways to make money off customers (charging for online, charging for accessories, etc) so that if your hardware strategy loses money you have a buffer.

I also feel that some of your ideas about where to go from here are good and your post was a good read IMO.

Interestingly enough, EA seems to want to apply this concept to individual games as well instead of just consoles.

We've all gotten used to games costing $60 these days, but is there any going back? EA Canada senior producer Jason DeLong ruminates on video game pricing in 2010.

We talked to DeLong about what he thinks might happen to the video game industry in 2010 and beyond, and he told us that he thinks reduced software pricing is in the cards. "I think that we’re going to start to see – maybe not in the next year, but in the near future – games go down the route of smaller up-front experiences and lower prices at the beginning," he told us, "and then the ability to extend the game through episodic material or future feature material. I think that’s a direction we’re probably heading in."

DeLong also said that apart from being a good thing for consumers, cheaper software pricing is a shrewd move for companies as well. "Games are getting more expensive, and times are tough, and it’s getting harder to purchase every game you want. So, how can we keep people playing and offer them more but not have to make them break the bank to do it? It’s going to be an interesting creative problem for us to solve."

For more on what Jason DeLong and others in the industry think may happen in 2010, be sure to check out our Connect feature in the February issue (#202) entitled, "The Road Ahead: Experts & Insiders Look Ahead at 2010".

Source: http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/01/01/news-Software-Price-Drop-for-2010_3F00_.aspx

 

[Indyana]

Again, as I explained in the last few posts, getting too attached to the magical possibilities of hardware rather than the actual games that get made is a recipe for disappointment. I'd love it if 99.9999% of PS3 games actually made use of Blu-Ray in some meaningful way. They don't. Oh well. I'd love it if the 360 supported a USB keyboard and got a few PC ports. Oh well. I'd love it if retail copies of PC games had better Steam integration. Oh well. I'd love it if Wii gems like Little King's Story actually used any kind of functionality that'd make them better on the Wii than on the PS360. Oh well.

Things are the way they are and whatever expectations people had for the Wii's unique strengths, there's not likely going to be radical upsets in the kind, quantity, and calibre of software being made for the Wii, so it's best to look to the games that are actually being made.

Sorry, I saw you have already answered this when posted my last message, not before. And I know we don't live in a perfect world, but I believe that it isn't an excuse for what it's happening. People should accept that this situation is not going to change. Crying about it is useless. But telling them to buy another console is not a solution, because it may not fit their tastes.

I'm not sure what your point is.

No company should have to do everything to attract every consumer, outside of that move being the most profitable venture.

What you suggest seems to be similar to saying that it's "bad" that I don't get sent $500 by Sony every day. Sure, it sucks to be me, but that's life.

I might have explained poorly because I wasn't asking third parties to do that. I hope the above answer helps to understand my point.

I agree with your statement, but I don't think that giving some support to the Wii audience is "everything". Capcom could have announced a Resident Evil game for the Wii if Resident Evil 5 has bombed. And all they needed was a port of RE4 and a spin-off. I'm pretty sure it was very profitable for Capcom, but it illustrates that there are reasons outside of being the most profitable venture.


P.S: I'm very slow for GAF...

 

[selig]

I'm buying all the games I want on all the platforms I want regardless.

Dito. Wanna know why I love sales-age? Because it´s (ideally) free of fanboyism, because it´s hard facts.

Either we ought to re-hash the same old arguments or we ought not re-hash them. It's up to you.

I wouldnt have posted here if it wasnt for your posting
And its just sooo tiring and depressing to see some people defend third parties. Somewhere out there, Nintendo is at fault, too. Yeah. But at the same time, third parties are at fault times 1000 or more. That´s why its imo stretching reality to blame Nintendo in topics like these.

Also, stop that sarcastic talk, it´s not about third parties putting high budget games onto the Wii. It´s about taking the Wii´s audience serious. That´s why their games arent selling. When I look at the Wii, and the biggest non-party-game from third parties is Lego StarWars, while the HD-systems have AC2, MW2 and other titles of that scale, it´s just obvious as to why their Wii-games arent selling.

Someone already said it in this thread, but its worth repeating: Theres no "magic" involved that makes the mainstream buy only Nintendo-games. It´s the quality, combined with advertising and confidence in the product from the publisher itself.

 

[Baki]

Great post.

Quality product + Good marketing + Appealing concept = sales

Spoiler

its not that easy. It is very easy to say. Make a quality product and market it.

 

[gerg]

My problem is that most of the ways aren't very consumer friendly, or rather, that the whole industry (or rather, the way third parties approach it) isn't "consumer driven". It seems to be about what these large companies want to do and what's best for them (and now it goes as far as looking down on customers they don't understand) - they're not searching for new ways to satisfy customers and reacting to changing market conditions, but rather expecting them to spend more and more money on the same stuff.

It seems that you're much more troubled over this than I would think necessary. It's clear that I have a much more narrow definition of "anti-consumer" than some on this board (perhaps because I am not affected as much by certain decisions companies make, for better or for worse), but I'm unphased by what companies do (as long as isn't anti-competitive in the long run). Why does it matter if these companies aren't "searching for new ways to satisfy customers and reacting to changing market conditions"? If companies are running themselves stupidly, I say let them do so. (I'm reminded of the scene in "Airplane", where they cut to a news-commentator saying "The passengers knew what they were getting themselves into; I say, let 'em crash!" :lol )

Why should a company be "consumer driven"?

Sorry, I saw you have already answered this when posted my last message, not before. And I know we don't live in a perfect world, but I believe that it isn't an excuse for what it's happening. People should accept that this situation is not going to change. Crying about it is useless. But telling them to buy another console is not a solution, because it may not fit their tastes.

As I said, as much is life. The solution might simply be to find another hobby; it's unfortunate, but many things are.

And I can sympathise with people who feel the need to take such measures, but sometimes there is no easy solution in these types of situations.

 

[Stumpokapow]

The two aren't mutually exclusive. I can have games bursting the seams of my game room and have a great gaming life, and still be dissatisfied by the lack of good Wii games, or decline in certain genres, or anything else. Just like I can eat well and still think it's a pity that Taco Joe's went out of business.

Yeah, I think part of the issue here might be that the validity of the complaint varies a good deal based on the tone you read into it. If you read your complaint as "*sigh* oh well", then it's absolutely valid. There are plenty of disappointments out there and it's worth expressing them.

If, on other hand you read it as "DEAR JOHN 'IDIOT' RICKITILLOTI: THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO YOUR COMPANY EA IS GARBEG FAIl! SIGNED, INTERNET" then it gets into the kind of futile complaining I think I was more replying to.

Seems like you're more in the former camp.

 

[schuelma]

The problem is that the publishers flooding the market with crap are largely disparate from the publishers flooding the market with B-tier titles.

EA has released a few junkers (Celebrity Nelly Furtado Ice Dancing Dart Olympics, for example), but ultimately they're not the publisher putting out 3+ titles a week; Majesco has a role to play, as does THQ, as do "City Games", Destineer, DSi/Bold, Conspiracy, etc.

Ubisoft would like to have a word with you. I think they are a great example of a publisher flooding the market with crap AND solid B titles that get lost in the shuffle.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Ubisoft would like to have a word with you. I think they are a great example of a publisher flooding the market with crap AND solid B titles that get lost in the shuffle.

Yes, Ubisoft would absolutely be one of the crapware category; their SKU count is just obscene and does no one favours. That they released a half-dozen actual games (of varying quality from A-grade to B-grade on down to is-a-real-game-but-boy-does-it-suck-grade) seems incident to their primary output of rote crapware!

I just wanted to absolve EA here because I really feel like on balance while their output hasn't been excellent, it's at least been actual titles produced with reasonable development schedules and resources

 

[Nirolak]

Ubisoft would like to have a word with you. I think they are a great example of a publisher flooding the market with crap AND solid B titles that get lost in the shuffle.

I think one of the issues Ubisoft highlights well though is that it does seem to be a lot harder to sell a solid B title than a giant piece of crap shovelware game.

Just Dance is doing amazingly well, but Ubisoft decided to cut Red Steel 2's sales predictions from 1 million to 500,000. That's even despite marketing help from Nintendo as well as being bundled with Wii Motion Plus.

 

[Flachmatuch]

It seems that you're much more troubled over this than I would think necessary. It's clear that I have a much more narrow definition of "anti-consumer" than some on this board (perhaps because I am not affected as much by certain decisions companies make, for better or for worse), but I'm unphased by what companies do (as long as isn't anti-competitive in the long run). Why does it matter if these companies aren't "searching for new ways to satisfy customers and reacting to changing market conditions"? If companies are running themselves stupidly, I say let them do so.

Why should a company be "consumer driven"?

Mainly because consumers have the money that the companies want. Companies tried to sell something that consumers didn't want (what I call "HD" but I include a lot more in that) and it didn't work - Nintendo offered something that people wanted, and that worked. Not being consumer driven might work for stuff you're forced to buy (healthcare hehe), but it won't work for luxuries.

 

[Version 3.0]

Going back to Pachter's original question, that is, what should 3rd parties do? I say scale the amount of Wii projects way, way back (or drop altogether if you don't have anything currently selling) and invest elsewhere.

It's pretty clear that the 3rd parties screwed up the launch by not having any interesting IP ready, but I think at this point it's going to pretty damn difficult to launch a brand new IP. I think it's worth jumping back into the market at Wii 2 with a fresh set of IP and a ready team, but at this point endlessly retooling and just throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks is just doesn't seem to be paying off.

I don't think putting out game of the moment titles based on this year's favourite reality tv show is going to win any long term fans and repeat business.

It's best to take this money elsewhere and invest in something that's just starting up where they can grab a big portion of the market. Facebook and mobile look good to me.

Good post. I'll give a few suggestions:

First, the ones bitching about their troubles with the Wii market should shut up already, and stop blaming anyone other than themselves.

Second, make up their minds: either support the Wii with efforts on par with those on other systems (relatively speaking), or don't support it at all. As you said, stop throwing crap at the wall.

Third, to the publishers that have made good Wii games: take it the rest of the way to the goal line by giving worthy games the marketing they deserve.

Fourth: go to Nintendo with legitimate requests for them to provide a better environment. This might include requests for Nintendo to stop the flood of shovelware, downloadable demos of retail games, a better online infrastructure or tools, or other things that are being provided on other consoles.

But those are all questionable in one way or another. For example, number 3 requires publishers to be able to determine what games are "worthy". Given their confusion over the failure of some sub-par efforts to date, that might be asking too much.

 

[schuelma]

I think one of the issues Ubisoft highlights well though is that it does seem to be a lot harder to sell a solid B title than a giant piece of crap shovelware game.

Just Dance is doing amazingly well, but Ubisoft decided to cut Red Steel 2's sales predictions from 1 million to 500,000. That's even despite marketing help from Nintendo as well as being bundled with Wii Motion Plus.

Ok, but Just Dance is one of literally dozens of crapware Ubisoft released, so its not like the hit rate was that high. Also Just Dance have a pretty huge marketing push from what I could tell, much bigger than any Wii game has gotten recently.

 

[Sadist]

Ok, but Just Dance is one of literally dozens of crapware Ubisoft released, so its not like the hit rate was that high. Also Just Dance have a pretty huge marketing push from what I could tell, much bigger than any Wii game has gotten recently.

Didn't Just Dance generate some sort of positive buzz on Youtube? Saw several video's of people making an ass of themselves while playing it

 

[Version 3.0]

Yeah, I think part of the issue here might be that the validity of the complaint varies a good deal based on the tone you read into it. If you read your complaint as "*sigh* oh well", then it's absolutely valid. There are plenty of disappointments out there and it's worth expressing them.

If, on other hand you read it as "DEAR JOHN 'IDIOT' RICKITILLOTI: THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO YOUR COMPANY EA IS GARBEG FAIl! SIGNED, INTERNET" then it gets into the kind of futile complaining I think I was more replying to.

Seems like you're more in the former camp.

Fair enough. I'm really resigned to the situation with the Wii, despite how willing I am to endlessly argue about who screwed up and how or even (as in my last post) speculate on how it could improve. But I am looking forward to it still taking off someday, whether that's with Sony's strange add-on or some next-gen iteration (the horrible Natal can go die quietly, I hope).

 

[evangd007]

Spoiler

its not that easy. It is very easy to say. Make a quality product and market it.

Did you read my post? If you did then you missed the entire point of it. Concept is the most important metric. If you don't have an appealing concept, then the game won't sell regardless of quality and marketing. See Dead Space: Extraction, Zack & Wiki, hell see 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand or Psychonauts for non-Wii examples. None of these games had core concepts that consumers found appealing, so it did not matter if the actual game exceeded quality expectations, because the consumer wasn't interested in the first place. They essentially failed at sales the moment the producers said, "Approved."
On the other hand you have the Conduit, whose quality was decidedly mediocre but had an appealing concept, and therefore was able to bag 300k of sales despite being bad. Or for an HD example, see Army of Two, another mediocre game that outperformed the better received Dead Space and Mirror's Edge.

edit I don't mean to hate on Pyschonauts and Zack & Wiki. I know they are much loved here, I'm just explaining why they failed at retail.

 

[Y2Kev]

If, on other hand you read it as "DEAR JOHN 'IDIOT' RICKITILLOTI: THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO YOUR COMPANY EA IS GARBEG FAIl! SIGNED, INTERNET" then it gets into the kind of futile complaining I think I was more replying to.

I'll get teh stamp!!!

 

[mugurumakensei]

Didn't Just Dance generate some sort of positive buzz on Youtube? Saw several video's of people making an ass of themselves while playing it

Even the guys at GiantBomb were having fun with it despite them knowing and saying that the detection of movement's was off. If GiantBomb can still have fun with it despite its quite obvious faults, I say the average person probably has fun with it.

 

[Linkup]

I think one of the issues Ubisoft highlights well though is that it does seem to be a lot harder to sell a solid B title than a giant piece of crap shovelware game.

Just Dance is doing amazingly well, but Ubisoft decided to cut Red Steel 2's sales predictions from 1 million to 500,000. That's even despite marketing help from Nintendo as well as being bundled with Wii Motion Plus.

Where did you hear that?

 

[Kilrogg]

"DEAR JOHN 'IDIOT' RICKITILLOTI: THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO YOUR COMPANY EA IS GARBEG FAIl! SIGNED, INTERNET"

Damn, I love it when you do that :lol. Always makes me laugh. Bravo, Stump.

Spoiler

RICKITILLOTI

 

[yoopoo]

Hey what about the PS3 3rd party games? Don't 99% of them bomb? I'd like to see people obsess over that.

 

[Haunted]

Get some umbrella, some flagship titles on the consoles you want to support early on, then watch the dough roll in as your smaller B-tier titles find success on the userbase you helped to build.

Well, that's what they did (on the PS360). And knowing what everyone did before this generation, it should've worked! It's just that the blockbuster model got extremely punishing this generation, with development budgets (and times) rising almost exponentially and being able to bury entire studios with a single bomb.

Also, the Wii's unprecedented success threw a wrench into what everyone thought were "the rules" of the industry and Nintendo dwarfing the competition with an underpowered system and a userbase that (apparently?) had different needs than the usual 18-35 male gamer confused the hell out of the publisher execs.

As usual, hindsight is 20/20, but I can hardly fault people for thinking that the Playstation brand would continue to decimate its competitors, just like it had for the last 10 years. And that's how pretty much all high-profile first and second generation flagship titles/sequels ended up on the HD consoles, that's how they helped build a certain userbase on these consoles, but not on the one that ended up winning the war and rising to the top - without their help.

They got caught in a bad place because of the projects they greenlighted in 2005 and 2006.

 

[Nirolak]

Where did you hear that?

I can only assume that's what he meant by these comments: http://kotaku.com/5406767/nintendo-...-of-some-games-dates-vitality-sensor-showcase

Curious about other things Nintendo has been quiet about, I asked for an update on the MotionPlus add-on which launched in June, enjoyed some third-party support then but has only had one Nintendo-made game, July's Wii Sports Resort, released for it since then. I asked: Is this the roll-out you guys planned?

"Our hope was that Red Steel 2 would have launched in this holiday season," Fils-Aime said, referring to Ubisoft's now-2010 first-person shooter/swordplay game. "That's a title that we had always looked at to be a key part of the strategy to drive the installed base of Wii MotionPlus. Having said that, even without the benefit of that launch, we've sold over four million at this point in time. That's a very strong start."

I guess it's possible that Nintendo let them bundle the game with Motion Plus and expected it to be a major driving factor for Wii Motion Plus with no support from Nintendo itself, but that just strikes me as a bit odd.

 

[Haunted]

I actually think third parties are correct now, generally speaking, but I'd point out that they're correct now because they made such significant mistakes earlier.

They should have pushed the Wii. Not only with bigger games, but with more reliable talent, with more money, and they should have done this all much earlier than they did. PS3/360 had a slew major franchises (Metal Gear, GTA, Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy) lined up well before launch. That's pretty much the sort of support I'm suggesting the Wii should have had.

But they didn't do that. They disproportionately supported the PS3 and 360 from the start, and now people are surprised that their games do disproportionately well on those systems. There is very much a snowball effect within a generation, and those snowballs are too big to stop now.

At this point, it's far beyond saving. It wouldn't just require convincing people to buy the Wii: it would require convincing people to abandon the PS3 and 360 for it, because virtually everyone who wants to play the next big shooter already owns an HD system.

Oh yes, well done Haunted. Only reading the OP and the first couple replies before basically reposting what Opiate has already said a page before.


goddamn. :lol

 

[Sipowicz]

i will say one thing though, regardless of how well they sell the wii still gets awesome third party games

just this month it got tatsunoko vs capcom, more more heroes 2 and sky crawlers

 

[Flachmatuch]

Going back to Pachter's original question, that is, what should 3rd parties do? I say scale the amount of Wii projects way, way back (or drop altogether if you don't have anything currently selling) and invest elsewhere.

It's pretty clear that the 3rd parties screwed up the launch by not having any interesting IP ready, but I think at this point it's going to pretty damn difficult to launch a brand new IP. I think it's worth jumping back into the market at Wii 2 with a fresh set of IP and a ready team, but at this point endlessly retooling and just throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks is just doesn't seem to be paying off.

Yeah, I hear this argument a lot, but what do you think will be better with the next Wii? Why couldn't they invest smaller amounts of money to try what works and what doesn't? Less money shouldn't mean shovelware though - a lot of the crapware that's released couldn't be better even if a hundred times as much money was spent on it.

Anyway, I still think that the best solution for third parties (meaning the large publishers) is to go bankrupt. They should not be saved, because they're bad for the industry. The only way they can be (and will be) saved is through mergers and buying up successful stuff, nothing to do with the actual market. The mishandling of the Wii (even if people who're saying it could only work for Nintendo aren't right, and they might be fwiw) is just a symptom - the industry collapsed by itself, without basically anyone noticing.

I don't think putting out game of the moment titles based on this year's favourite reality tv show is going to win any long term fans and repeat business.

It's best to take this money elsewhere and invest in something that's just starting up where they can grab a big portion of the market. Facebook and mobile look good to me.

This is imo exactly the kind of thinking that got them into trouble, and why no forum thread will be able to solve these problems :-/ Seeing that "mobile" and "facebook gaming" are doing well now and growing isn't really insightful, it's stating the obvious, and you can't make money off of this (or base a strategy on it). I don't think there's an easy solution for the large publishers (other than buying up the other large ones and control more of the market and hope it'll work out).

Ideally, it'd be time for new, smaller companies to step in. They'd grow game by game though, and probably through a few individual people's creativity. It'll take some years for people to understand what works in this new market - you can't have this knowledge right now, even Nintendo doesn't have it. For someone to come up with a strategy that a company like, say, EA, could just implement...I think that's basically impossible for a lot of reasons.

 

[Nirolak]

Ok, but Just Dance is one of literally dozens of crapware Ubisoft released, so its not like the hit rate was that high. Also Just Dance have a pretty huge marketing push from what I could tell, much bigger than any Wii game has gotten recently.

While this is true, I have to wonder that with development costs as low as Ubisoft's shovelware must have, especially since they probably have massive art asset and engine reuse on things like Petz and Imagine, if just one of these things being a giant hit can pay the boat for all of them and still turn a solid profit.

I know Ubisoft was talking about issues with casual sector profits, but I think that was before Just Dance came out and really got going, as their profits from casual sector shovelware seemed to be fine before they were literally getting no hits.

I imagine it's harder for one B-Tier core game to cover the costs of 5-6 B-Tier core games with $3-6+ million budgets. I imagine something like Red Steel 2 must be getting well over 10 million in budget though considering it's had over 100 developers for over two or so years now, which probably compacts the issue even more.

 

[phisheep]

Michael, I’m very wary of boring people who have been round this argument six or seven times in the last couple of months – so here is a condensed version of my particular hobby horses. It is still long.

Everyone else - we've been round this already way too often, so I think I'll duck out of the rest of the thread this time round!

1) The ship hasn’t sailed – not sailed too far anyway

The expanded audience isn’t going away any time soon. Doing nothing won’t be an option. Don’t ignore the market next time and at least start some research now

2) Target your games properly

Most of the high profile third party ‘failures’ on Wii were targeted at the vanishingly small audience of people who (a) have a wii (b) don’t think it is cool to hate it (c) play the Wii in a private space and on their own (d) don’t have a PS360 to compare the graphics/play of the rubbish spinoff to (e) don’t read the gaming sites and mags that dismiss the Wii (f) do read the gaming sites and mags so they know the game exists.

(b) and the contradictory (d) and (e) knock out nearly all the potential audience. It was bonkers to expect them to sell more.

3) Do some market research

Nobody knows (or nobody is saying)
- how many people play the Wii (way more than the number of consoles, for sure)
- how many Wii’s are in family homes (40%+, 70%+?)
- how many of those are in a family space, how many in a private space (hugely important, probably most of them)
- who in those families plays Wii, and what for
- who in those families doesn’t play and why (captive audience right there)
- who does the purchasing
- what else all these people do – how many golfers, home crafts people, football fans, aeronauts, physicists, army vets etc etc etc

It’ll take all of a couple of days in a few shopping malls to get some numbers. Until then, there’s no point saying you don’t understand the audience, because you didn’t try.

4) Make the right games …

If (as I suspect) the vast majority of Wii gamers (not consoles, gamers) are playing in family rooms, that influences what gets played.

What tops the ‘hardcore’ market – blood, violence, horror, swearing, sex and ‘maturity’ won’t sell to people too embarrassed to play it in front of their mother/sister/wife/husband/brother/boyfriend. It’s the Lady Chatterley argument. These are private pleasures to the extent they are pleasures at all.

But there’s no law that says AAA big sellers have to have these things. You are kidding yourself if you think that is what hardcore means.

So make one without – use your imagination.

5) … or play to swing the market your way.

This would mean playing to sell Wiis to the people who buy your sort of games. That means AAA, it means exclusives and perfect controls, and it means more than one of them and the promise of more to come without all this wimping about ‘testing the market’ with games doomed to failure.

That’s way too big a call for one dev though. But a hell of an opportunity for the one that moves first and grabs it. Might be a hell of a risk too, but actually we don't really know that yet because all the 'tests' have been so awful. Go work it out properly.

6) Understand there is no such thing as the casual market

OK, there is sort of a hardcore market, but ‘casual’ is only defined by being ‘not hardcore’. So if you try to make games for the casual market, all you end up doing – because it is your only criterion - is make games that the hardcore don’t like. That’s no guarantee that anyone else will like them either. They will probably be crap.

Only two ways around that:
(a) make games for ‘everyone’ – that’s the bit Nintendo has stitched up, and if you want a piece of it you’d better be really really good – how good do you think you are, huh?
(b) Target some section of the market

I’m not talking demographics here. I’m talking interests, experiences, hobbies, family relationships, schooling … pretty well any way you can slice the population as a whole, you can slice the Wii market. And on the whole, people aren’t ashamed of buying and playing the Wii, which means you can expand that market any direction you want to:

Make a golf game for golfers rather than for gamers (hint, it will look a lot different to TW10) – go look up how many golfers there are first, that’s your target market. It’s big.

Make a travel game for tourists (go count ‘em – there’s lots).

Make a game that explores American history properly.

Make a game that lovingly recreates an ancient city or two or three without you having to kill people in it for goodness’ sake.

Look at what sells in books, on TV, in shops instead of what sells to hardcore gamers.

And treat all these people seriously.

It's working like crazy in the fitness market - go work it like crazy in another one.

7) Walk the street

Do your research yourself. Go talk to the 25-35% of households IN YOUR STREET that have a Wii.

Then go back to the office and fire your marketing department.

That’s way more value than asking GAF.

8) Do it before your next shareholder meeting

Remember, 25-35% of your shareholders play Wii too. And more every year. Are you going to stand there and tell them that they are fickle and incomprehensible? Sure you are!

 

[The Technomancer]

What should third parties do? Follow THQs lead.
Look at de Blob. Polished game. Appealing presentation. Marketed towards something of a wider audience. Actually advertised. The result? Sales. Plenty of them.
Sure, it never hit a million, but 800k is nothing to scoff at, especially for a new IP. Which this is, because their president has confirmed that there's more de Blob on the way. Because he gets it, he's not in it for the short term sales. THQ just got their foot in the door of the Nintendo audience, and over the coming years, I'm betting we'll see a lot more from them.

(And hell, that 800k figure is from like over a year ago. It may very well have hit a million by now; Wii games are notorious for their slow burn. A few thousand this month, a few thousand that month, it adds up.)

 

[hellclerk]

Moving this post to the next page.