Reggie: Third-party developers aren’t trying hard enough
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I’m paraphrasing slightly, of course. But that’s about the gist of it, and to be honest, it’s about time someone told the (slightly uncomfortable) truth.
Speaking to Forbes - that bastion of important videogames news - NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime mentioned that Wii would unlikely to be getting a price-cut any time soon. “At some point, it will be time to adjust the [price], but we’re nowhere near that point now.”
Fair enough, I suppose - no point in reducing the price while your console is still selling like hot cakes. But Fils-Aime was clearly unsatisfied when the topic of third-party titles on Wii came up. He suggested that in general games from developers other than Nintendo were failing to connect to Wii’s audience because third-parties just didn’t ‘get it’.
“”I will be able to say our licensees ‘get it’ when their very best content is on our platform,” he says. “And with very few exceptions today, that’s not the case.”
That’s fightin’ talk where I come from. Hopefully Reggie’s bullish stance will encourage developers to bring their very best games to Wii instead of concentrating on the HD consoles. Though Wii needs all the third-party support it can get at the moment, and this comment will undoubtedly rub a few people up the wrong way - particularly companies like EA, who clearly DO ‘get it’, but whose titles aren’t really performing as they deserve to. There’s certainly an issue with the reluctance to market certain titles effectively on Wii, publishers preferring to throw money at their bigger-budget HD productions. But is that all it is? Perhaps Nintendo’s expanded audience really is only interested in first-party offerings and uber-casual titles.
One to ponder, for certain. With more hardcore-friendly titles like Mad World set to hit Wii next year, we’ll soon get a clearer picture on whether less casual titles can truly succeed on Nintendo’s console.
Check out the full Forbes piece here. Worth a read, I reckon.
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November 21st, 2008 at 9:51 pm
He’s right, while the Xbox 360 ad PS3 get a game, the wii usually gets a rubbish gimmicky version of it. The only game I can think of that is equal to its 360 and PS3 counterparts is Alone In The Dark.