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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.
Remember, when the DS first came out not that many third parties "got" the DS either, but now they do, and we're seeing tons of titles coming out for it. Developers will figure Wii out, and since it's such an innovative platform, developers will WANT to develop for it. I can see Wii having much better third party support than the GameCube did, even though it was generally easy for a quick "port" to the cube. We won't see those cheap ports on the Wii, but we'll see some actual games developed specifically with the Wii in mind. Sure, we'll see some gimmicky crap too, but "90% of everything is crap".
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
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 games could possibly resist that?
The ones who are too mature, and need violence/sex all the time, that's who...
Say what?
There are lots of games coming out for the Wii.
And just because big third parties aren't frothing at the mouth doesn't mean anything. I'm FAR more interested in titles like Sadness. These less-known developers are going to take risks that you won't see any big third party developer take.
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Regardless of how great the Wii turns out to be, Nintendo is going to need some time to overcome the less then impressive image they have gained from the N64 and Gamecube. Part of it is that not many companies are going to be eager to bet on the guy who came in 3rd place in a 3 way race. Gamecube did better in Japan then the X-Box though, and that is why your seeing alot more Japanese publishers giving it a shot.
Aside from that issue, another more insidious problem is that people tend to hold grudges, and Nintendo has alienated many developers over the years. It took most of 2 console cycles for Square to do anything with Nintendo after Yamauchi said that Squares RPG games suck. And Nintendo also managed to drive away Silicon Knights shortly after the Metal gear port was done. There are many more companies that just dont much care for having to work for Nintendo.
The last issue is that even once the console starts to take off, most 3rd party games (except probably for those done by Sega) are just not going to feel as good to play as most of the Nintendo titles will. While the SDK is cheap, its going to take a while for the designers to get their head around the sort of things that are possible. WarioWare: Smooth Moves will be the best demo title for the sort of things someone can try with this console, and Metroid will point the way for FPS games. But beyond that, its going to take a while before 3rd parties come up with the sort of Original titles that will truly sell the system.
Its like playing a Texas Hold-em poker game, and your starting hand is 7 Jack, when your opponents have pocket aces and pocket kings. You will win once the flop comes down as 7, Jack, Jack, but its going to be a while before everyone else at the table watching the game realizes it.
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