Hole in Nintendo's Plan

[fearsomepirate]

So in the discussions, I realized there's something Nintendo really wasn't counting on. I realized it after I checked out some news for some upcomming games that will be released across all platforms. So what didn't Nintendo count on?

The PS2.

Now Gamecube was already a substantial piece of kit, and Wii is supposed to be a substantial upgrade. Even checking out some early stuff like Pangya and Mario Galaxy reveals that Wii is capable of outputting graphics far beyond the typical current-gen experience. I've defended this before; I think Wii is plenty powerful to make things look pretty and shiny and all that jazz...it's just not in the same league as X360/PS3.

The problem is that PS2 isn't dead yet. The people buying PS2s now and in the next year or two aren't the people who are looking to spend $500 on a PS3. Those people bought their PS2s years ago, so don't expect PS2 sales to dry up immediately upon the launch of PS3. This means the same thing for Wii that it meant for Xbox and Gamecube--developers aren't going to utilize what's there. Though being substantially more powerful, like Xbox and Cube before it, Wii still is not a sufficient leap over the PS2 to justify creating all-new graphics engines and content, not when the PS2 is still market leader a year after X360's launch. It would be fine if PS2 was dead. Then there would be no reason to merely port Yet Another Renderware Engine over from the PS2, because there wouldn't be a PS2 to port from.

At this point, no one's expecting a massive leap out of Wii, but we're all expecting an upgrade over Gamecube, which was in practice no graphically different than a PS2. But if the software doesn't match up to what the hardware can do, a lot of gamers may be postively turned off to Wii, even if the new control scheme is that awesome. People expect better graphics. There's a reason DS isn't just a GBA with a touch screen, even if it's not as powerful as PSP.

Nintendo's chance to get out of the hole here is not only that the Wii is a sales success, but also that the Wii controller is compelling enough to developers to bag a good number of exclusives. Look at Xbox. It was basically a sales failure like Gamecube, but unlike the Cube, developers were intrigued enough by what they could do with the machine to develop compelling exclusives, and these exclusives in turn tended to sell pretty well. The hard drive, pixel shaders, and Live paid off in games that took advantage of all 3. So if the Wii controller really is as cool as Nintendo's hyping to be, they'll likely net more exclusives with graphics engines that actually utilize the hardware available. Otherwise, we're looking at "PS2 ports with pointer crap," much like many early DS titles were "GBA ports with touchscreen crap."

And 2 years of predominantly PS2 ports would be enough to kill the Wii, I think. So Nintendo and early adopters had better hope that developers are really, really excited about what they can do with the machine.

 

[digitalwanderer]

PS2 looks like butt compared to a Gamecube though, I don't think it'll be in the same league as the Wii.

 

[Powderkeg]

Look at Xbox. It was basically a sales failure like Gamecube, but unlike the Cube, developers were intrigued enough by what they could do with the machine to develop compelling exclusives, and these exclusives in turn tended to sell pretty well.

I think you have that backwards.

Xbox exclusives tended to sell very well, so developers were compelled to make more exclusives for it.

It had nothing to do with the hardware.



And that, more than anything else is the biggest hurdle Nintendo is facing. 3rd party games, even exclusives don't sell very well on Nintendo consoles. No matter what hardware you have, if you can't sell the games then developers won't be interested in making games for it, especially exclusives. That is why RE4, Super Monkey Ball, Viewtiful Joe, and other GCN exclusives ended up ported to other systems, they didn't sell enough on the Gamecube.

 

[pc999]

That will (and is with eg EA/Activision) hapening the question are: 1)how much of them (%wise) will take advantage or not of the superior HW, 2)which games are taking advantage(ie the good or the bad ones), 3)will that real matter (serius question)?

1) For now I will make a rough stimation that 1/3 (meybe even close to 1/2) of the games are exclussive so those will take advantage (and it better than XB360 launch).

On the cross platform some are for next gen (eg RE5/MoH) and not for current gen so I guess they will not look tha close to PS3 (specially in features), so I think that it is a relatevely smal number of games that will end up looking PS2 like.

If tthey got sucess dev will also need to push gfx to proper levels.

2) For now exclussives seems to be good games on the other side the bad looking cross platform games are those how will appear equal in 360/PS3 (some exptions like CoD3) so I guess it isnt a big problem too.

3) No matter the look current PS2 players will buy or not the wii based on gameplay and/or exclussives, if they will not care with the controler why would they buy a wii isntead of save to a PS3/360?

 

[Guden Oden]

PS2 looks like butt compared to a Gamecube though, I don't think it'll be in the same league as the Wii.

Most PS2 titles has 'looked like butt' for four-ish years now compared to most xbox games, and that hasn't stopped Sony from totally wiping the floor with its redmond rival and shame billy goat in the worst way possible. The thing is, graphics just isn't big enough of a deal to most people, they want "a playstation" (and "a playstation" might actually in fact be a GC or xbox), and if another console has better graphics, well... Not a real factor.

A new console has the NEW factor going for it though; PS2 is ancient these days, and even ignorant Joe Sixpacks know it. I don't think a half-decade old (and then some) console is going to screw much at all with Nintendo's Wii launch plans. Most of those who want a PS2 have already bought one.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Xbox exclusives tended to sell very well, so developers were compelled to make more exclusives for it.

It had nothing to do with the hardware.

Quite to the contrary, I think Chronicles of Riddick and Splinter Cell wouldn't have existed if it weren't for Xbox's pixel shader power. Morrowind would never have come to PS2, period. Itagaki also cited Xbox power as the chief motivation for developing for the machine. Doom 3 was slated early on for Xbox simply because of the system's power, not because it was reputed to have multi-million selling 3rd-party blockbusters, because at that time, it didn't. In fact

3rd party games, even exclusives don't sell very well on Nintendo consoles...That is why RE4, Super Monkey Ball, Viewtiful Joe, and other GCN exclusives ended up ported to other systems.

Wrong. Super Monkeyball on Gamecube was a million-selling franchise. Viewtiful Joe likewise performed far better than Capcom's expectations, selling IIRC around 300,000 units in the USA alone, which is quite good for such a simple, obviously low-budget 2D sidescroller. Capcom and Sega simply assumed that if the games did that well on the Gamecube, they'd sell like hotcakes on the PS2. They were wrong, of course (VJ2 didn't even break 20K units on the PS2, and VJ1 was at around 66K). RE4 wasn't ported because it sold badly, as the port was announced prior to launch. So it's quite the opposite; they were ported because they sold pretty well, and their producers hoped to capitalize on PS2's much larger install base.

Anyway, my original point, stated bluntly, is that too much cross-platform PS2-Wii development early on, which is only possible because Wii is so underpowered compared to the competition, will result in far too many people perceiving it as not really a new system and thus not taking interest in it. PS3 and Xbox 360 will be the "new" systems, and Wii will be looked at as an old system with a weird controller.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But with a weird controller none-the-less, and if that appeals to people and they think it worth the money, they'll buy it. If the see the games on Wii are the same as on PS2 and the console costs twice as much, they probably won't. I don't see that being likely though. Wii will play differently, even ports, because the controller is different, and it's that aspect which will decide whether people like the machine or not.

 

[MasaC]

Fearsomepirate:

Good points!

And there's always the possibility we will see the new motion sensor device from PS3's controller being utilised in game perhiperals for the PS2. On its own or in conjunction with the EyeToy there's certainly a possiblity to counter the Wii games on the PS2.

 

[Powderkeg]

Quite to the contrary, I think Chronicles of Riddick and Splinter Cell wouldn't have existed if it weren't for Xbox's pixel shader power.

Itagaki also cited Xbox power as the chief motivation for developing for the machine. Doom 3 was slated early on for Xbox simply because of the system's power, not because it was reputed to have multi-million selling 3rd-party blockbusters, because at that time, it didn't. In fact

In fact every game you listed was a PC port or multiplatform game, with the exception of Itagaki's games. They weren't making great Xbox exclusives because of the Xbox hardware, they were porting games to the Xbox because it was easy money. Some of the multiplatform games did release on the Xbox first, but they were still mutliplatform, such as Splinter Cell and Riddick. (For this statement I am including the PC when talking about platforms)

Wrong. Super Monkeyball on Gamecube was a million-selling franchise.

2 games combined sold about 1.5 million. Compared to some lowly ports on the Xbox selling over a million.

Viewtiful Joe likewise performed far better than Capcom's expectations, selling IIRC around 300,000 units in the USA alone, which is quite good for such a simple, obviously low-budget 2D sidescroller.

Viewtiful Joe didn’t sell terribly poorly, all things considered, but it didn’t do as well here in North America as it did in Japan, in which sales still could have been much better.

http://www.nintendojo.com/fullfocus/view_item.php?1079985604

RE4 wasn't ported because it sold badly, as the port was announced prior to launch. So it's quite the opposite; they were ported because they sold pretty well, and their producers hoped to capitalize on PS2's much larger install base.

RE4 was ported to the PS2 because the previous RE games sold below expectations on the Gamecube. Only the RE remake sold well prior to RE4.

Capcom explained that its major titles sold below expectations. Biohazard 0 (Resident Evil 0) for the Nintendo GameCube was expected to sell 1.42 million copies but sold only 1.12 million.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2003/04/18/news_6025321.html

In fact Capcom had announced 5 GCN exclusives, and all 5 ended up being ported to other systems with low sales being the primary reason given by Capcom.

Anyway, my original point, stated bluntly, is that too much cross-platform PS2-Wii development early on, which is only possible because Wii is so underpowered compared to the competition, will result in far too many people perceiving it as not really a new system and thus not taking interest in it. PS3 and Xbox 360 will be the "new" systems, and Wii will be looked at as an old system with a weird controller.

I agree with you on that point, which is why I didn't dispute it earlier. I only dispute the idea that developers care more about the hardware capabilities than sales when determining what systems they are going to make games for, especially exclusives.

 

[darkblu]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2003/04/18/news_6025321.html

In fact Capcom had announced 5 GCN exclusives, and all 5 ended up being ported to other systems with low sales being the primary reason given by Capcom.

do you have other sources aside from that article? - because what is says is that all major capcom titles sold less than the original esitmates regardless of the platforms they were originally released on. apparently capcom decided to augment that with transfering some of their GC exclusives to the ps2. but those were not 5 (they were 4), and of those exactly 3 (the bigger ones) ended up with a ps2 version. IOW, there were never '5 GCN exclusives all ending up ported to the ps2'.

 

[pc999]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2003/04/18/news_6025321.html

In fact Capcom had announced 5 GCN exclusives, and all 5 ended up being ported to other systems with low sales being the primary reason given by Capcom.

This time Nintendo will have a bigger problem, if games dont sell they will not lost exclussivity (which would mean the games is made for Wii), they will lost the game, meybe even more games from the same company.


Anyway I am thinking if there will be any crossplatform gamesthat will not be tailored for wii (gfx) besides those that also sell on 360/PS3, I mean a GC game that really uses its HW already put PS2 to shame and Wii (as litle as we know I know that it) is more powerfull than XB that mean better looking games than RL/D3/SC3/HL2/H2/Forza/MA2/UC2/..., while it isnt a diference near the next gen it is already quite big it will be hard to have sell a game with PS2 gfx after games like RS/MP3/SM:G/RE5/... make a standard so I wouldnt be suprissed if after at the start and not in the cases mentioned above that is usally to happen, uneless Wii does not have sucess.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I don't know if anyone noticed, but overall, Capcom ate it this generation across all platforms. Most of their titles bombed on PS2 as well. They only released one exclusive that was later ported to PS2, Viewtiful Joe, which ironically was the only game of which they publicly stated performed well above expectations. They didn't port PN03, RE0, or REMake (the latter 2 being 2 of their top 3 highest-selling GC games). PS2 versions of Killer7, VJ2, and RE4 were all announced prior to the Cube versions shipping (and the former 2 tanked). Phoenix Down never materialized. Mega Man games frequently performed better on Cube than PS2, yet PS2 versions tended to get all the goodies.

Capcom's shovelware just didn't sell well, and they made a lot of it. Someone upstairs was wetting himself over PS2's rapidly expanding userbase, killed at least one golden goose, and ignored about 14 million people (at the time) that were starving for a good exclusive. Capcom's a horrible example of market savvy. If they don't get their act together, they could end up a subsidiary of Konami or something.

And Sega....Cube fans ate up Sonic games no matter how crap they were. Can you imagine what they would have done if they'd put time into a Sonic exclusive with ultra-flashy Flipper-powered graphics? And why did they persist on releasing Xbox exclusives when it was clear the userbase had zero interest? There were Japanese companies who knew what they were doing. Their names were not "Capcom" or "Sega." And the ones who had their act together were already making a killing on Sony platforms since the original Playstation and had no interest in developing on Gamecube.

 

[Magnum PI]

the low-tech aspect of wii could be well appreciated from developpers.

low tech = far lower budget, = easier to recoup the investment

if wii sales are not too bad and the 6 million projected figure is attained

for a 3rd party it could be a lesser financial risk to create a game only for wii than to create a game for PS3 and xbox 360. that would mean projects developped only with wii in mind = exclusives..

games are more driven by financial choices then by the technical excellence of the plateforms..

again it could all depends of the policy of nintendo toward 3rd party, as they could prefer to sell their games rather than someone else games. didn't they say that their console was primarily a vehicle for their game ? (regarding gamecube or n64)

 

[Guden Oden]

This time Nintendo will have a bigger problem < Long incoherent post>

Sorry man, I can't make heads nor tails of anything of what you're trying to say. Wait a day or so with posting again until you sober up, alright?


The purpose and main strategy of Wii - I think - is not just to attract developers by the hardware being cheap, development system being cheap and development costs being cheap, no. That's not it, or at least only half the picture at most.

More importantly I think, is Nintendo wants to have more exclusive games this time 'round than they got last time. But how go about attracting such games from 3rd parties? The Cube was pretty cheap to develop for already, and it was the cheapest system to buy too.

What they chose was obviously to differentiate themselves nearly as much as possible to make porting difficult. Cube was easy to program, easy to port to (except for not having all that much RAM), so end result was it got relatively few original games, save for those Nintendo and associates made.

Wii however is quite low-powered, with small internal memory. It has that weird-ass controller. Porting won't be easy, even though the hardware is reportedly very easy to program for. So in order to not completely bomb, they've made sure that the hardware and development costs are cheap, and they've brought innovative features with the weird controller, features that are sure to attract devs' imagination.

So, Nintendo is acting like an anglerfish here. It's waving its little bait around, the Wii being cheap and all that, but beyond the bait, there's A LOT MORE, literally.

 

[Magnum PI]

The Cube was pretty cheap to develop for already, and it was the cheapest system to buy too.

i don't think the budget for a gamecube game was a lot inferior to a xbox or PS2 game.

there should be a much bigger difference between wii games budgets and xbox/PS3 games ones.

 

[pc999]

Sorry man, I can't make heads nor tails of anything of what you're trying to say. Wait a day or so with posting again until you sober up, alright?

I will try again.

Point 1: last gen if a exclusive game didn't sell as much as expected or at some point the expectations of selling as much as previous expected get lower, the worst thing (usually) that can happen is making the game cross platform, so this way they lost one exclusive game. This time with games dev specifically to Wii controller (eg RS, a game that cant be ported) if the game have lower sales or is expected to have lower sales they will just cancel the game and Nintendo will lost the game, maybe (probably) even more games from the same company.

Point 2: If we compare GC and PS2 gfx there is a big difference already, now we now that Wii is 2-3x more powerfull than GC and more powerfull than XB so the difference between PS2 and Wii gfx should be very big and very easy to be noticed, so I would guess that would be hard to sell a game with PS2 like gfx on the Wii, of curse there is exceptions namely those games that live on brand like EA ones.


Now you make a good point, but I still keep wonder if it will be that hard to port games from next gen to wii as we already heard quite a few things on the subject like games that are for next gen but that will have a wii version (eg MoH:A), the Ubisoft leaked list even list AssassinsC as a Wii game, BIA3 too and now it is official their suport (it is a small team I doubt they could be working in 2 completely different games, also they "especulated" before on possible uses for the remote in BIA) among other things.

Probably even if this is the case I think that maybe the difference in gfx and in the controller will be enough to differentiate both versions.

Anyway I would really like the opinion of someone who knows this better than me.

 

[darkblu]

I don't know if anyone noticed, but overall, Capcom ate it this generation across all platforms.

given that capcom are not just anybody, but a major japanese devhouse with numerous multi-generation franchises, i don't think their performance this round remained unnoticed. not really ; )

the funny thing is that they actually had quite some good titles, but those did not, or not enough of them, perform up to the expections. some purely becasue they were yet another of a way-too-dragged-along franchise - RE0 & REmake being a perfect example. and i'd speculate that RE4 suffered a bit due to that legacy it implicitly carried in the public's perception. i mean, that title had to persuade its audience that it was not yet another of the classic REs. which i think it ultimately did, but at a price.

 

[elementOfpower]

Capcom's a horrible example of market savvy. If they don't get their act together, they could end up a subsidiary of Konami or something.

Capcom's doing a good job with the 360 hardware so far. Dead Rising is a really impressive title that will be out on 8/8, and Lost Planet looks like another AAA title even though it's scheduled for late 2007.

Graphically, they seem able to push the system better than just about anyone else so far, as well.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Dead Rising is a really impressive title that will be out on 8/8, and Lost Planet looks like another AAA title even though it's scheduled for late 2007.

Graphically, they seem able to push the system better than just about anyone else so far, as well.

Yes, because your creditors and shareholders totally care how good the graphics were in your last game. I was talking about Capcom's financial dire straits, which are due to bad marketing decisions. It doesn't matter how good your game is or how talented your engine programmers are if people are buying DDR and Metal Gear instead of Mega Man and Devil May Cry.

 

[ZiFF]

is more powerfull than XB that mean better looking games than RL/D3/SC3/HL2/H2/Forza/MA2/UC2/

Doubt it. Wii/GC GPU just does not have the shader power to do those games.