Wii After a Year

[AlphaWolf]

As you can see, despite having a library of only around 30 titles by Nov 1 after launch, the N64 had approximately the same number of 80+ and 85+ titles as the Wii! What other mainstream console has such a poorly rated 1st-year library? My guess is that the Saturn's library rates very poorly, but it's not on Metacritic. But as you can see here, the Wii has the worst-rated year 1 library of any console in recent memory.

That raises a couple of questions.

1) Why is the wii library received poorly by critics?
2) Will that change?

Personally I think there's a few factors resulting in the low reviews.

a)Waggle is still an experiment for developers.
b)Nintendo was really harping on low development costs so they are getting games with low development costs.
c)Expectations have risen due to competition. The Wii is a relatively small jump in performance compared to the last gen.
d)Developers weren't really expecting to support the wii but decided to throw out a half assed effort because of its reception by the public.

I don't doubt there will be 'more' effort put on wii titles, but I think they will probably always lag behind a bit in reviews because of expectations and competition. I'm not sure you'll ever see the effort of an Assassin's Creed for the wii.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I don't doubt there will be 'more' effort put on wii titles, but I think they will probably always lag behind a bit in reviews because of expectations and competition. I'm not sure you'll ever see the effort of an Assassin's Creed for the wii.

Well, that's hard to say. They might not put the effort into that kind of title, but Mario Galaxy most likely took a huge amount of work. We'll see what the 3rd parties do. I'm hoping the Wii follows the DS, and comes to life as the developers have their 2nd go at the system.

 

[Nesh]

That raises a couple of questions.

1) Why is the wii library received poorly by critics?
2) Will that change?

Personally I think there's a few factors resulting in the low reviews.

a)Waggle is still an experiment for developers.
b)Nintendo was really harping on low development costs so they are getting games with low development costs.
c)Expectations have risen due to competition. The Wii is a relatively small jump in performance compared to the last gen.
d)Developers weren't really expecting to support the wii but decided to throw out a half assed effort because of its reception by the public.

I don't doubt there will be 'more' effort put on wii titles, but I think they will probably always lag behind a bit in reviews because of expectations and competition. I'm not sure you'll ever see the effort of an Assassin's Creed for the wii.

personally I would add that the controller may not work well for just about any type of game or choice of gameplay.

On the old controller it's easy to assign complex gameplay executions on simple presses of a button. You can not assign everything to motion sensing for natural movement. Gameplay mechanics of some games would either change too much or reduce the usage of motion to the simplest tasks. How can motion of a human hand execute extremely fast and complicated movements of a game character?

Motion sensors add accuracy to certain types of movement, such as aiming or directing something towards somewhere.

Buttons on the other hand offer more accuracy towards timing and command execution.

For example the motion controller fits perfectly for behind the shoulder games like Resi4. On the other hand I find it impossible to implement it on games such as Ninja Gaiden.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The article Paranoia linked is definitely worth reading. The Wii has a number of titles that are meant to just be played around with rather than "beaten." Wii Sports, Mario Party 8, and Carnival Games all have gotten rather bad ratings, yet they're big hits with the public. The lack of intricate button combos or complex gameplay structures hurts these titles in a major way in reviews, yet this is precisely what makes the games so successful with the public. The game that sold 10 million consoles is apparently "worse" than some forgotten sequel to NFL Street.

But overall, I think most of the Wii games with bad reviews really do deserve the bad reviews. Motion control is still in its infancy, but improving--look at Metroid 3 vs Red Steel, for example. And 3rd parties I think were expecting the Wii to be a huge failure, thus threw table scraps at it. I agree with most of what AlphaWolf said on that.

The big question, then, is why after a year and Wii taking number 1 world wide haven't there been more announcements of major titles? Does the myth of "third parties can't sell on a console with a Nintendo label" have dominating currency with publishers? Have they invested so much money into 360/PS3 development that changing tracks would be a financial disaster? Are publishers simply not able to wrap their minds around the Wii itself? Or is it, as I've suggested before, that most developers are horrified at the idea of being stuck producing games for a machine that measures its RAM in the double digits for another 5-7 years?

 

[Nesh]

Well I think that Wii limits developers both technically and on the type of gameplay they want to offer. And since it looks like "party" games fit best Wii's controls as well as the preferencdes of the owners, I see no reason why a developer would risk making their high profile games on Wii.

Besides support may be there for Wii, just not for big high quality titles that we in here care about.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well I think that Wii limits developers both technically and on the type of gameplay they want to offer. And since it looks like "party" games fit best Wii's controls as well as the preferencdes of the owners, I see no reason why a developer would risk making their high profile games on Wii.

Besides support may be there for Wii, just not for big high quality titles that we in here care about.

I hope it's not an issue of Nintendo being tight-lipped with regards to supporting 3rd parties. Looking at Metroid and even more so at Super Mario Galaxy, I wonder why some of the Wii games look as bad as they do.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Here's another question:

Is developing for the Wii as simple as they say it is? There are a lot of new issues in terms of input that developers have never had to deal with before. And if you really want to get the most out of Hollywood, is it a somewhat exotic design that developers who hadn't used the GC would find difficult? I have no answer, and no real opinion. Just throwing those out there for people who might know better.

 

[fearsomepirate]

ERP would be the guy to ask about that. From what I've gathered, getting the most out of Gamecube's GPU wasn't entirely straightforward, but it also wasn't as arcane as programming for the N64 or PS2. And since Hollywood is just an overclocked Flipper, it shouldn't be too bad.

 

[Zaphod]

That raises a couple of questions.

1) Why is the wii library received poorly by critics?
2) Will that change?

There's an interesting attempt at an answer in the Newsweek Level Up "guest blog" entry linked by PARANOiA above.

 

[TheMightyPuck]

Nintendo is a company that is convservative and looks for long tail high margin hits. They don't play the same game as Sony and MicroSoft. N64 was probably the biggest risk they ever took. Nintendo has never seen their goal as conquering some space and getting royalties (kinda like Roman Empire tribute). The tribute model is MS bread and butter and Sony's dream (betamax et al.). Nintendo are more like investment bankers. They roll the dice on a lot of projects. Some hit, some miss (virtual boy). This is why Wii is having trouble keeping up with demand. Nintendo builds capacity to meet demand (as opposed to Sony who build capacity to meet forecast demand). Nintendo had 2 recent hits that were unpredicted by pretty much everyone (DS, Wii). The masses are fickle but they clot around certain things for reasons that are easy to talk about after the fact but hard to predict before the fact. The PS2 didn't win last generation because it had all the games. It had all the games because it won.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nintendo had 2 recent hits that were unpredicted by pretty much everyone (DS, Wii).

I disagree with that. On the success of GameBoy, the only decent selling handheld system, Nintendo were up for another great success. The touch screen was questioned as possibly gimmicky if developers didn't use it, but Nintendo did use it and it paid of. There wasn't much reason to doubt DS. The only contender was (and still is!) PSP, and given the price and different software library couple with diverse features, it was pretty much a given it'd be selling to a different market. Nintendo chose the DS because they believed it'd do well, and it did. They chose Wii because they believed it'd do well, and it did. Nintendo knew their market (just as MS know their core-gamer market, but Sony seem to stretch themselves too thin), but couldn't gauge quantity of success because you never can with successes.

The masses are fickle but they clot around certain things for reasons that are easy to talk about after the fact but hard to predict before the fact. The PS2 didn't win last generation because it had all the games. It had all the games because it won.

I'll give a nod of agreement to this sentiment

 

[dubyateeeff]

I'd like to know what they are doing with all the money they are making, i don't see them using it all on next gen R

They will be buying PS4 from Sony with cash

j/k

no one would buy that crap *eg*

j/k

Well, overclocking a Wii doesn't need much research

j/k

But seriously, I bet they are researching inputs and social aspects of gaming and DS2/GB4 And if they are smart about it IMO they will stick with a solution that is very close to the PC-hardware and have minimal research costs.

 

[Zaphod]

They will be buying PS4 from Sony with cash

If the Wii goes on as it has been, it won't be much longer until Nintendo can afford to by Sony with cash. No joke.

Their market cap is approaching two times the one of Sony.

 

[Natoma]

I disagree with that. On the success of GameBoy, the only decent selling handheld system, Nintendo were up for another great success. The touch screen was questioned as possibly gimmicky if developers didn't use it, but Nintendo did use it and it paid of. There wasn't much reason to doubt DS. The only contender was (and still is!) PSP, and given the price and different software library couple with diverse features, it was pretty much a given it'd be selling to a different market. Nintendo chose the DS because they believed it'd do well, and it did. They chose Wii because they believed it'd do well, and it did. Nintendo knew their market (just as MS know their core-gamer market, but Sony seem to stretch themselves too thin), but couldn't gauge quantity of success because you never can with successes.

Not true at all. In interviews with nearly every Nintendo exec, designer, and developer from Iwata to Miyamoto, everyone was very wary of the DS's market reception. They had no idea that it'd become the juggernaut it has become.

In fact, Miyamoto stated bluntly in an interview with Newsweek that if DS had failed, Wii would've never seen the light of day.

Nintendo wasn't as cocksure about either as you think they were. I think it's a little too easy to revise history based on the overwhelming success the two systems have had.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

In some respects the DS was a marketing test run for the Wii that worked out much better than expected.

 

[Readykilowatt]

I'd like to know what they are doing with all the money they are making, i don't see them using it all on next gen R

Maybe they are investing in R&D with respect to Haptic Illusion force feedback technology. Things like that are far more interesting than merely boosting resolution.

 

[archangelmorph]

or maybe they are flooding the bank accounts of all nintendo employees & lavishing in celebrity-like lifestyles..

... ... ... ... it could happen?

 

[_xxx_]

If the Wii goes on as it has been, it won't be much longer until Nintendo can afford to by Sony with cash. No joke.

Their market cap is approaching two times the one of Sony.

You do realize that the gaming part is only a small fraction of Sony corporation? Hell, just the records publishing part of Sony could buy 10 Nintendos without really noticing that in their financials.

 

[Zaphod]

You do realize that the gaming part is only a small fraction of Sony corporation? Hell, just the records publishing part of Sony could buy 10 Nintendos without really noticing that in their financials.

I'm not talking about the gaming division, I'm talking about Sony Corp. Nintendo is worth almost twice as much (roughly a 5x increase over the past three years with Sony pretty much stagnant).

People who have followed tech for a long time tend not to realize how well 'little' Nintendo is actually doing and how much trouble Sony has been (and still are) in with many of their traditional markets. Which is probably why Stringer is selling off stuff and giving comments about how much he envies Nintendo their focus and narrow product lineup.

The same goes for Apple, who is now a financial juggernaut worth almost three times as much as Sony. Granted, Sony is significantly bigger than both of them combined as far as revenue goes, but they're not making much money, and that matters more when it comes to financial performance.

 

[_xxx_]

Hmm, something's fishy there. Could it be that the publishing part of Sony is valued separately or some such?