Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Nintendo Shares Up, But Do Devs 'Get' the Wii?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-one-recognizes-a-revolution dept.

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.

2 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. The problem is vastly different capabilities by DrDitto · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The big problem is that game developers like to develop a game for all the consoles in a given generation. The hardware capabilities between the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube were different, but in the same ballpark.

    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.

  2. Spinning a way out of E3 by killbill! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.