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Nintendo Shares Up, But Do Devs 'Get' the Wii?
kukyfrope writes "Nintendo shares have jumped over six percent since the Wii's unveiling at E3 last week." Despite both Peter Moore and Phil Harrison recommending you should get a Wii, the future of Nintendo and the Wii aren't assured. Next Generation reports that third party developers may not really 'get' the ambitious console.
Nintendo will have a ton of great games (good for them, they usually have a few, things are looking great here) but while EA made out like a bandit on the 360 launch (Madden, Fight Night, Burnout, whatever) there is just Nintendo here.
Of course, if they could get Super Smash Brothers out at launch (instead of a few months later as I think they said) then they could really cream the competition.
A $200 system (just a guess) with a new Mario, Super Smash Brothers, Zelda, Metroid, Wario Ware, and a few other titles at launch. What gamer could possibly resist that?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Wasn't this the same issue with the DS when it first launched?
If I recall (I'm too lazy to look anything up and I'm about to leave work), the DS had limited (if any) 3rd party support at launch. Everyone claimed the device was gimicky and no one would use it. It took a while before we saw games that took real advantage of the hardware.
I believe this is the case with the Wii as well. The first year of the device will see a lot of 1st party support with interesting games, but the 3rd party developers will use that time to figure out what the hell to do with it. Don't get me wrong, I fully intend on picking one up on or near launch (which I've never done for anything). However, I fully expect to only have a few titles that really make use of the new control scheme.
Slashdot: where repeating an article in a post is "+5 Insightful"
Now I'm not a graphics guru and could be wrong, but to my understanding, this greatly eases the art pipeline-- for example textures and polygon counts could be the same size.
The problem with the Wii is that it is not in the same class as the Xbox360 and PS3.
Many people don't realize that for a given game, as much as 3/4 of the manpower goes into art and *not* code. Most developers leverage existing game engines. A friend of mine is on a project where they have ~ 40 artists and ~ 10 coders.
What are Nintendo doing to get the devs? Part of the reason they've historically had poor 3rd-party support is because they make it _hard_ for outsiders to get in.
The delay for Smash Bros. may be intentional. This was a 'must have' game for the Cube but as mentioned previously does not really take advantage of the Wii's unique features. Perhaps Nintendo thought it best to launch games that highlight the controller first before bringing in the tried and true favourites.
The Nintendo Wii's video card does support vertex and pixel shaders. It just doesn't support really really advanced vertex and pixel shaders. Did you see the preview for Super Smash Brothers Brawl?
-:sigma.SBWARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
I see it a lot nowadays mostly as an indicator someone doesn't agree with something. That doesn't mean it is FUD. Anymore then someone having a different opinion is a troll or someone having an argument is flaming.
Nintendo consistently builds better products? WHAAAAHAAA. Yeah right. That is why Sony took them for a ride with the PS1. Sorry but no. Nintendo screwed up badly in the past and had to pay the price. But then you mention apple. So I get my own word that lost all meaning to rebutt your fud.
FANBOY.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Considering that the Wii launch titles seem to include the new Zelda, the long-awaited new Mario and Metroid Prime 3. That's got to be 5 million sales right there.
"THQ president and CEO Brian Farrell spoke about developing for the Nintendo Wii, touching on a number of topics including THQ's first reactions to its Wii games..."
"...[The Wii] wasn't a whole new programming environment," Farrell said. "So we had a lot of tools and tech that work in that environment. So those costs--and again, I hate these broad generalizations--but they could be as little as a third of the high-end next-gen titles... Maybe the range is a quarter to a half."
Whenever I hear both Microsoft and Sony advising consumers to buy a Wii as a second console, I hardly see that as an endorsement. Instead, I can see fear in their eyes. Fear that consumers are going to buy a Wii first.
The huge splash Nintendo made at E3 has spin masters frantically running for cover. They're trying to downplay the Wii as good enough only as a secondary console. But even they feel the former Revolution is going to be a coup.
As for third-party developers, I'm planning to buy a Wii on launch day and at least 4 games (Metroid, Mario, Zelda and Red Steel, maybe Wii Sports). That's enough quality gaming right here to prevent me from actually seeing the light of day for the next few months, and I'm not even counting the countless classics on the Virtual Console.
The Wii is not suffering from a lack of titles. Actually, it already has too many strong launch titles to even let me try an unknown third-party game. Out of my 4/5 launch titles, only one is from a third party. The publishers that missed the boat have only themselves to blame.
Does the Wii have the potential to propel someone new, who "gets" the Wii remote control, to the forefront?
Only time will tell.
But, I like the bold, eveocative nature of the Wii controller. It speaks well of Nintendo to be thinking of things other than polygons and shaders.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.