Is There a Future For Mature Games On Wii?

digitalfever writes "There are more than 50 million Wii systems worldwide. Logically, the audience for a wide range of games and interactive experiences should be rather big, but based on the evidence so far, either that's not true — or publishers have been hedging the wrong bets. No one has conclusively proved the case for (or against) the viability of mature games on Wii, but 2009 was a litmus test on a number of fronts, including the DS. The results aren't encouraging. "

Comments

No

[xtracto]

No, the two Wii owners who expected mature games on the wii (I am one of them) have already given up.

Next questions.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

So any game with a PC port, however badly hacked together must automatically be better than the console since the PC provides higher resolution and that's all that matters?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

The definitive version for people who put fun ahead of eye candy, rather.

Re:No

[Toonol]

Did he not want cutsy looking, or did he not want childish? They're two very different things. Besides, Monster Hunter 3 is NOT 'cutsy' by any definition, and Crystal Chronicles is taking the series in a much more realistic style than previous entries.

RE4 is a port, but is far better than other versions. House of the Dead:OVerkill isn't a port. Silent Hill isn't a port, it's a complete rewrite only vaguely based on the first.

You are right about Left for Dead; I meant Dead Rising:Extraction. Which isn't a port.

Re:No

[Toonol]

I'm not sure how that's possible when the Wii is 480p and any other modern game console is capabale of offering 720P or higher.

That's just resolution. Yeah, that's just an opinion, but I'm not the only one that feels that way. RE4 was on a number of consoles, and the Wii combines the best parts of all of them, and adds an ideal control scheme. RE4 plays better and is more fun on the Wii than RE5 is on the PS3 or 360; RE5 on teh 360/PS3 LOOKS like a step forward in graphics, but FEELS like a step backward.

Why and why

[Jeeeb]

Firstly, why does the content have to be M rated to be for a mature audience?

Secondly, why would they want to target that market? PS3 and xbox 360 are in tight competition for that market. It seems the cost and risk of competing in that market is high, while the potential pay off is low (How much money is MS making from the 360 again?). For Nintendo targeting children, families, casual gamers .etc. makes great sense and is proving very successful.

Re:Why and why

[RogueyWon]

This is exactly what I predicted at the start of this console cycle. The Wii has amazing initial sales, due to the novelty factor of the controller and a media which is generally feeling disillusioned with Sony and MS and therefore happy to unquestioningly do most of Nintendo's hype for them. Then the same old Nintendo factor of "no decent games outside of a few first-party titles (which are themselves only popular with a certain niche)" kicks in, the limitations of the controller become more widely known, the system's hardware starts to seem more and more pathetic compared to its competitors and sales (particularly of non-bundled games) fall off a cliff.

The sad thing is that the few mature games for the Wii that are actually any good are being hit by the fallout from this. Dead Space: Extraction is an excellent game - a thinking man's rail shooter (which I would previously have believed to be a contradiction in terms) and it deserved to do well. Instead, if wikipedia is to be believed, it sold less than 9,300 copies at launch, despite a positive critical reception. I'm sure EA looked at that, compared it with the sales of the original Dead Space on PC, PS3 and Xbox360, and thought "remind me why we even bother with this Wii rubbish?". Had they published the game on the other platforms, with standard controller or mouse controls, it's entirely plausible that they might have managed sales figures 20 times higher (using the original Dead Space as a comparison).

Things will only get worse now that development for the 360 and PS3 is in a fairly mature state, with newer games taking full advantage of the system's capabilities. By contrast, I think the Wii is being harmed by the unexpected longevity of the PS2. With big cross-platform titles (eg. Force Unleashed, but there are plenty of other examples), developers already have to develop entirely separate versions of the game (with the differences often going far beyond just graphics). Often, there will be one broad version for the "proper" gaming platforms; the PC, PS3 and Xbox360. Meanwhile, a cutdown version is developed, for the "lesser" consoles. It makes sense to release for the PS2 and the Wii, due to their huge installed bases, but it doesn't make sense to develop a separate version of the game for each. So the Wii ends up getting a lot of titles which are just direct PS2 ports with a bit of lazy motion sensing tacked on, even though its (admittedly poor) hardware is capable of significantly better. So while PS3 and 360 titles released today generally look better than those from the system's launch, a lot of Wii titles actually look worse. This really won't be helping.

Re:Why and why

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, gotta stop you right there:

sales (particularly of non-bundled games) fall off a cliff.

There is no evidence that this is happening, overall. There are more Wii software sales than for the other two consoles. What there isn't, however, is 1) any correlation between marketing and sales, 2) any correlation between ratings and sales, and 3) any correlation between "being (by any metric) a good game" and sales. This actually only applies to third parties, which tends to suggest that maybe the problem is theirs, and it's not something that Nintendo can fix for them.

Had they published the game on the other platforms, with standard controller or mouse controls, it's entirely plausible that they might have managed sales figures 20 times higher (using the original Dead Space as a comparison).

I'd love to see if their budget (including marketing, etc.) for the development of Dead Space: Extraction was even one twentieth of Dead Space itself. No-one ever promised that the Wii would make something out of nothing.

By contrast, I think the Wii is being harmed by the unexpected longevity of the PS2.

Well, we'll see, now that the PS2 has passed the tipping point and begun a massive decline (in terms of new purchases, software sales, and actual use). I wouldn't call the longevity of the PS2 unexpected, however, given that this is exactly what we saw with the PSX. Anyone could have predicted what we've seen.

It makes sense to release for the PS2 and the Wii, due to their huge installed bases, but it doesn't make sense to develop a separate version of the game for each. So the Wii ends up getting a lot of titles which are just direct PS2 ports with a bit of lazy motion sensing tacked on, even though its (admittedly poor) hardware is capable of significantly better.

And don't you think that this attitude is what makes the difference between Nintendo's success on the Wii by comparison to third parties?

Mature?

[papabob]

So, if we have to believe TFA, "mature games" are those with dark ambient light, based on killing everything that moves and splashing blood in the walls... yeah, very mature. Maybe they haven't realized yet that Wii is a console for real "mature" people, you know, those who bring their mates to home after work and play simple games with beers and snacks, only looking for some laughs.

Re:Mature?

[OrangeTide]

Mature games == games for teenagers. Rather than games that an adult might enjoy.

Sure... if they are good enough.

[Max Romantschuk]

Our Wii sees the most action with games that entertain the largest possible number of people. I think a lot of people have bought the Wii due to a lot of great games to play in groups. The same people are unlikely to buy games that focus on a single- or two player experience.

I'm probably going to get House of the Dead: Maximum Overkill at some time. But I have a lot less time to game for myself compare to the time I can put into trying to beat my brother-in-law in (pick your favorite) in Wii Sports Resort, playing Mario Kart with the kids, or rediscovering social adventure gaming (everyone on the couch tries to solve the puzzles) with Monkey Island.

The Wii has a huge adult audience, but for a game to be successful it has to be more than just rated for adults. Most adult rated games forget that the key thing that made the Wii a success was not motion controlled stuff, it was social gaming. Factor in that a lot of Wiis get much of their use by women as well as men, and you have to design for a whole new target group.

I'm sure there is a future for mature games on the Wii, but traditional mature games aimed at the solo-gaming male? Much more limited...

Re:wii go postal

[daid303]

Madworld wasn't that great IMHO. But I found "House of the Dead, Overkill" great fun. And I think it qualifies for the Wii game which uses the word "Fuck" the most. Not everyone is fan of these rail shooters, but the wii is perfect for it (with a gun attachment). It allows for a quick 10 minutes of zombie blasting.

If you are a bit more serious, then there is Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles. Or if you are very serious, there is Ghost Squad.

Re:wii go postal

[TheLink]

I've always found it a bit funny that "mature" seems to be associated with violence, gore and sex.

I guess "mature games" are a way for "mature" people to safely release their immature urges ;).

BTW it's not only adults who think about sex. Some (many?) children go about humping stuff. It's the adults who are supposed to know what's inappropriate behaviour (and brainwash the children accordingly ;) ).

Endless ocean

[alexandre_ganso]

I can't think of any game more mature than Endless Ocean. You go there, sit down and relax a little bit after a hard day of work with some fine wine. Not always I want to get into some teenage carnage.

Don't believe TFA, read it

[DingerX]

You know, the penultimate paragraph where the author states exactly that: "mature" is being used equivocally: on the one hand, in the ratings sense, where it refers to a requirement on the player, and on the other hand, in the content sense, where it refers to the presentation and experiences given. Paradoxically, when we say "mature content", we mean mature in the first sense: "We deem this (puerile) content suitable only for those above a certain age", and not "We deem this content interesting to those past their teenage years."

Not that I don't enjoy some quality violence myself.

Re:mature != hyper-violent

[cgenman]

I believe they mean "mature" in the ESRB rating sense, rather than "non-purile" sense.

You'll notice most of the mature games on the wii aren't just crappy games, they're crappy versions of games that are better on other consoles. Dead Space suddenly became an on-rails shooter, while House of the Dead took a graphical hit. Mad World was "Exxxxxtreme!" but probably would have been written off as a boring brawler on any other system. Dead Rising was a near launch title on the 360 years ago, yet it was *much* better then. No More Heroes was a quirky game that deserved more success than it got, but it probably would have been a quirky game that deserved more success than it got on any system out there. GTA: Chinatown was also a shame, and I'm also shocked it sold as poorly as it did.

Resident Evil was also singled out for doing well, but Resident Evil was also a good game. Strangely, Resident Evil did remarkably well on the Game Cube last system generation as well.

Re:wii go postal

[snuf23]

The closer I get to 40, the more the "mature" games bore the shit out of me.

Re:wrong definition of mature

[snuf23]

Why shouldn't they? They can't lift the real balls anymore without putting their backs out.

Re:wrong definition of mature

[tsotha]

I know this has been modded "funny", but it's absolutely true. My 70 year old parents went out and bought a Wii because they had so much fun playing it at a family gathering.

Calling a game "mature" because it's loaded with violence is just stupid. The main audience for that kind of game is adolescent boys not, in general, considered the most mature segment of society.

Lots of bad statistics

[seebs]

Sales are not the measure of a game's financial success.

Profits are.

Game development costs on the Wii are between 1/4 and 1/2 those of development costs on the HD consoles. Prices, by contrast, are about 20% lower. What that means is that you don't need to sell NEARLY as many copies of a game to make money -- and that means more successful games that target "niche" audiences.

People talk about how "badly" No More Heroes sold -- but it sold several times more copies than Killer 7 did on the Gamecube and PS2 put together, even though it came out in a much smaller market (the number of Wii systems out when NMH was released was a fraction of the number of PS2 systems out when K7 was released). By most accounts, it was profitable enough that they plan to do a sequel.

This is exactly the stuff we saw people saying about the DS, and here we are, with DS games being hugely profitable for people who put real time and effort into them. There have certainly been profitable third-party Wii games; RE4 was one, Mario & Sonic Olympics (Sega) was one... And there have probably been others. The big problem is still the casual fallacy; the notion that people who want an approachable game don't care about quality. I care a ton about quality, just not very much about graphics resolution. People who make fun games are selling them to me quite effectively. People who make more flavor-of-the-month shooters aren't. (That said, I did get The Conduit, because it looked really polished.)