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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. "
No, the two Wii owners who expected mature games on the wii (I am one of them) have already given up.
Next questions.
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The Wii has plenty of games for "mature audiences", like your grandmother.
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Firstly, why does the content have to be M rated to be for a mature audience?
.etc. makes great sense and is proving very successful.
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
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.
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...
.: Max Romantschuk
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.
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
Too little too late.
I bought a Wii a few months after release, hooked it up, played Wii sports and thought "this is cool".
A month later I sold the Wii because of the following.
1) Horrible Graphics compared to the XBOX 360 I had at the time (got a PS3 now).
2) Games were fun to play with others but for some reason I couldn't find that many people to play with at 1 AM.
3) No good singleplayer titles that I could play online.
To be honest, the XBOX 360 was better then the Wii in every aspect except social gaming, and although my girlfriend would play sometimes, in the month I had the Wii, after the first week, I hardly ever turned it on.
Finally, the majority of people I know who like console gaming who have a Wii, also have either the XBOX 360 or a PS3.
Nintendo did find a nice segment and are not competing with the other consoles as much as MSoft and Sony are competing with eachother, but I have to agree with TFA, that segment does not include many single-player online gamers.
Now back to COD 4 on the PS3, feel the wrath of my P90!
Resident Evil 4 was one of the best selling Wii games. Just because The Conduit and Mad World didn't sell well, does not mean that there's not a market for M rated games. Fact of the matter is that they just weren't very good games, regardless of what the media said.
http://kotaku.com/5395956/the-10-most-avidly+played-wii-games-in-america-as-of-nov-1
Honestly, look at that chart. I'm seeing a shitload of hardcore games there (no, I don't judge whether a game is for the hardcore or not by the rating, any more than I judge movies that way). What I'm not seeing a lot of is deca sports and catz, regardless of what the media tells you. The Wii market is starving for hardcore games, and the 3rd parties just simply have not delivered. Nintendo sat this one out and made casual games, because the 3rd parties have been bitching bitterly for years that they can't compete with Nintendo. And what do they do? They follow in Nintendo's footsteps again. Pathetic.
Nintendo just needs to come back and rule the roost again. Metroid: Other M is a good start. New Super Mario Bros Wii, Mario Galaxy 2, and the rumoured new Zelda should do the trick. Hardcore gamers still own their Wiis. They just aren't buying anything because there's fuck all to play.
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.
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.
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.
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The closer I get to 40, the more the "mature" games bore the shit out of me.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I'm sure it could easily run Quake. And there's nothing more mature than Quake. (Except perhaps nethack).
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.)
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