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Game Devs Warming Up To More Mature-Rated Games On the Wii
With the success of the Grand Theft Auto franchise responsible for the majority of publisher Take Two Interactive's earnings in the past year, the company's executives are looking more and more at expanding their M-rated products onto the typically family-friendly Wii. Take Two's CEO said, "Even though we think M-rated content is much more appropriate for the PS3 or 360, we have to look at the Wii as a viable platform across all our labels. We have to, because we can't ignore the installed base. You just can't." They're already planning to release GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS to test the waters on a Nintendo platform, hoping for a better result than the controversy over Manhunt 2 last year.
Well, I could think of some interesting use cases for the Wiimote in an adult game...
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Who says they have to make the same game cover 3 consoles?
Wii's are currently outselling both the 360 and PS3 by a massive margin, and although that is undoubtedly down to casual gamers the quantity of mature gamers with Wiis is still going to be sizeable. As a developer, ignoring an oppurtunity to put a title on a high selling console which has lower developement costs (peoples expectations regarding graphics are much lower) and with less competition (most Wii games are crap, especially none Nintendo ones) than on other consoles is an opportunity they shouldn't miss.
Hell considering Sony are still selling 200,000 PS2s a month I'd probably have teams working on titles for 360/PS3, and other teams working on Wii/PS2.
Oh bullshit.
I bought a Wii because of the innovative controls and Wii sports being fun to play with friends. I *know* I'm not the only one that has left the damn thing mostly idle since then because most of the games are very child oriented and have rather shallow gameplay.
Get the big, grown-up names on Wii, please.
I wonder what the rate of game-buying for Wii is once bought?
Yes, I do own a 360 and a PS3 as well. I use both more than the Wii, which suffers even more than the PS3 in a lack of engaging games. That doesn't seem to be changing either, more "Big Brain Academy" and similar nonsense. I do complex algebra all day for money, my brain's fine, besides which those things look like someone wrote them in Flash.
Bah /ok, rant over now
It's funny how most "mature-rated games" actually sound *immature* to me. I mean, stealing fancy cars and shooting big guns ? Wow, count me in, NOT.
I actually think a game like Animal Crossing is way more mature. YES, Animal friggin' Crossing, people! Just look at the plot : you move in a new city, all by yourself, you have to pay your mortgage with money that you earn by _working_, you learn to participate in the cultural life of the town by donating to the museum, you have to take care of public space, plant trees and flowers to make a great place for everybody. You meet a lot of people, some are okay, some are unbearable but you have to learn to live with them, and some will become your friends. Sometimes you'll have to help them out by buying their stuff, or finding the keys they lost. Some of them will eventually move out to other towns and you'll never see them AGAIN.
Now THOSE are some major life lessons, folks.
If developers really try to fine tune their wii games well so the game-play rocks and the reviews come back awesome I imagine that could sway quite a few people. Heck, all I'd need to read is, "this plays like a game made by Nintendo" and I'd perk up my ears. Where are the third party Metroid style games? If a game review came out that said, "Wow, this is along the lines of Metroid (or Zelda)" it would sell like hotcakes even if it weren't ported to the PS3 or 360 (perhaps especially if it weren't). A third party developer could pull it off. Obviously it would take a bit of a marketing as Nintendo has developed a reputation for solid games on its platform and people go wild for their big titles while a third party would have a bit of an uphill battle getting that sort of a frenzy but if the game is well-made and the genre is one the install base is known to love (similar to zelda, metroid?) then it's hard for me to see the game being a flop. Putting it solely on the wii could actually be a smart marketing move to get quite a bit of attention (and perhaps comparison to Nintendo made games).
The problem has been that developers have too often felt the ONLY safe game on the wii was the party game (are they really that scared of Nintendo?). When other games are put on the wii, it seems their weakest programmers are put on the job and the controls are weak and not fine tuned properly. Well, the weak controls come out in reviews and of course that ends up reflecting in sales.
Don't get me wrong. I recognize that people who have all systems are going to TEND to buy the game for the system it looks the prettiest on. However, I think a lot of games could potentially be more fun to play on finely tuned wii controls. I recognize that Nintendo has had the advantage in creating games with great control on their own system...I just think that third parties ought to be able to catch up by now (or soon).
I don't think it's smart to assume that the subset of the wii's demographics that likes Metroid and Zelda type games is small.
The point is when the 360 was limited to hardcore games the attach rate was much higher than that of the Wii and you're right- this is because hardcore gamers are the ones that spend money on games, whilst Nintendo has captured a larger audience it's not an audience that for the most part will buy more than one or two games a year at christmas time and nothing else.
Look, its a great theory, I'd give you a +5 insightful for the hypothesis, but the reality just doesn't line up.
According to NPD, The current attach rate for Xbox360 is 7.0; Nintendo's is 4.64. Putting the Wii attach rate around around 2/3rds what the 360 is at. [Note I beleive NPD reports on american sales so Wii sports would not be counted towards the attach.]
However the Wii has sold ~42M units worldwide while the Xbox360 has moved ~25M units. That means 195M (42 * 4.64) games have sold for the Wii vs 175M (25 * 7) games for xbox 360.
The Wii has outstripped the xbox 360 by enough that its overcome the attach rate. If the libraries for both games was the same, and the titles sold in the same proportion, a given title would have sold more copies on the Wii than on the 360. Now, of course the libraries are different, and on the Wii you have to compete with Nintendo's own first party blockbusters.
but the point is that back when those last stats were released, even though Nintendo had double the installed user base, it still had sold less games than Microsoft had with the 360.
This as you can see is no longer true. Your hypothesis is wrong. The Xbox had a 1 year head start and a higher attach rate, but the Wii has still surpassed its software sales. Further, the Wii attach rate is actually steadily -increasing-. While not there yet, the Wii is becoming the new PS2, where the massive install base ensures any title released on it outsells the other platforms.
I'd say Nintendo's biggest threat now is the next generation, if Microsoft and Sony take their idea and couple it with their usual state of the art systems and a plethora of games with deep and interesting story lines whilst Nintendo continues...
No offense, but take your blinders off. Nintendo is selling in droves to gamers who don't want that. My 4 year old son plays BoomBlox, MarioKart, WiiSports, MarioParty8, Zack&Wiki with his grandmother on the Wii. They have so much fun my parents bought a Wii for their place. Sony / Microsoft will NEVER EVER capture them with 'deep and interesting story lines'. Neither my 4 year old nor my mother would EVER play them.
If the Sony and MS do what you suggest, they'll be EXACTLY where they are today next generation: fighting over the 'male tween' crowd, that wants to play 100+ hour 'deep' games and cares about texture resolution.
The Wii uses the same disc format as the 360 and doesn't require development of ultra-high detail models and textures so why aren't we seeing a plethora of games with deep and impressive, ultra-interactive worlds to explore?
2 reasons:
1) Because people like you, who want deep impressive ultra-interactive worlds to explore, already have a 360, and would bitch about the lack of ultra-high detail models and textures on the Wii version. Developers know this. That's why the Wii has a dearth of that kind of title. They know everyone who is interested in that kind of title already ALSO has a 360 and wouldn't buy the wii version if both were available.
2) Because developers didnt think the Wii had a shot in hell of dominating sales the way it did. So they've mostly only had time to scramble quick and dirty titles to try and cash in. Only in the last year have they begun ramping up to release the 'big' titles on the Wii.
Because the Wii, with its continued growth, will soon reach the point where the developer can sell YOU the game on the Xbox, and still release it profitably on the Wii, even though all the review sites will jerk off about the xbox's superior graphics and and rate the Wii version the worst of the 3 due to its lack of HD, lack of dolby dts, and lack of xbox live "achievements".