Ok, before we get lost in the details. I get what you're saying - Why didn't 3rd party devs didn't make more of an effort to pump out material as good as the 1st party games? They obviously could have, but didn't. If the Wii's graphical prowess was about as good as the original Xbox, why couldn't 3rd party games have been made that are as good as Knights of the Old Republic, Final Fantasy 10 or 12, Halo 1 or 2, GTA, Panzer Dragoon Orta, God of War, etc.? I think Xenoblade and Last Story are comparable in quality, and it was a boneheaded move to keep them out of the NA market until this year (when hardly anyone cared anymore).Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
Personally, I couldn't imagine a 3rd party attempting to make something as good Mario Galaxy or Skyward Sword. It's a ton of resources with questionable payoff. If they fail to make acceptable sales, it would cost even more to port them to almost an entirely different audience.
To say that they wouldn't have sold any better on another platform is most likely correct, but those games were designed from the ground up for the Wii (and it's audience). A game like "the Conduit" would have tanked on the PS360, but if the Wii was all you had (or wanted), then there's little reason why it couldn't have been more successful to FPS fans on the Wii. It was about as good as you were going to get given the unconventional controls. Maybe it would have made more sense to make it (as well as many other games) compatable with the classic controller, but 3rd party devs appear to have made great efforts towards working with the Wii's controller.
Games like Rayman Origins and A Boy and his Blob, IMO, were just as good (if not better) than NSMB, but sales will tell you a completely different story. Those are high quality games (regardless of budget) that 99% of the massive install base outright ignored. Da Blob was another game that had "Wii owners will love this!" written all over it, but alas...
Madworld was the first 3rd party game exclusive to the Wii that had PS360 owners jealous that they couldn't play it. I'm willing to bet that if it had been released as a multi-plat (back in 2007), it would have sold a ton better on the PS360. I similarly think that Banjo: Nuts and Bolts would have been a huge hit on the Wii - it had disappointing sales on the 360-, which I guess says something about my perception of what the different fan bases are willing to buy. I had no problem finding good games on the Wii, but a ton of Wii owners were crying "when are the good games coming", and you'd swear that Wii owners were going thru massive droughts of gameless months while they waited for the next 1st party game to come out. Why didn't they buy those well-reviewed 3rd party games in the meantime? To me, it's no wonder why 3rd parties thought cautiously with the Wii.
To say that those games weren't expected to sell well is kinda strange. I mean, why put in the effort to make (and publish) a good game if you don't expect it to sell well? I'm sure that, in most cases, expectations were not met, which is probably why 3rd parties started thinking twice after 2008. There's a reason why we never saw a sequel to great (high production) games like Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil - they unfortunately sold like shit-, which is practically what happened with the jrpg and shmup genres.
I don't view them any differently than Wii owners that only bought Mario Kart, NSMB, and WiiResort - Millions of "gamers" that bought a system, no more than 5 games for it, and called it a day. I do suspect that you'd find a lot more of these types amongst Wii owners.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
Yes, you're right. I did get the dates wrong, but they still sold very well with an install base of under 40 million. Would they have done just as well on the GC? I don't know. My instincts say no, but there has to be a reason why they didn't make it to the GC, and there has to be a reason why Chinatown Wars was released for the DS. Sure, it was a top/down game like the original games, but it was still a very good game that tons of people generally ignored. I really would have loved to have seen Liberty Stories released on the Wii. It definitely could have been possible, and would have provided a better idea of how these types of games could have sold on a nintendo console.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
Nintendo makes games for everyone in the same way that Pixar makes movies for viewers of all ages. I'm glad they exist - for me, they're wonderful alternatives - but I'm not a "Nintendo/Pixar only" kinda guy. I enjoy the Pulp Fiction(s) and Mass Effect(s) of the world just as much, which is something that I can't (reliably) expect from Nintendo or Pixar. Nintendo sets the perception of their systems with their first party games. I don't completely agree with it, just like you don't, but it doesn't surprise me that people would feel that way.
No, I wouldn't call it "casual", but it's far from difficult for an interested newcomer to pick it up and play. My wife, who has very little VGing experience, can pick up that game and have a ton of fun getting to the half-way mark before bumping into trouble getting any further. You know what she then does? She replays earlier levels again, and still has fun doing it. Throw an 8-button controller in front of her (and a game that requires you to use them all), and she's like "fuck that shit". I certainly specualte a legion of Wii owners that are very similar.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
I know it wasn't ONLY that, but it isn't difficult to notice why MOST people bought a Wii. It wasn't to play Resident Evil 4 or Monster Hunter Tri, just like most people didn't buy a 360 to play Banjo: Nuts and Bolts or Viva Pinata.
I bet it'll be somewhere between the two. The Dreamcast wasn't ignored, at first, but Nintendo seems to be making an effort to get strong 3rd party devs to back it, which can only help. Getting Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. on the same system with current high-quality 3rd party multi-plats seems like a "best of both worlds" kinda situation to me. Let's see how it turns out.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
