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[Vinci]

That's... perfectly reasonable. But very different from the uniformed blanket statement I was responding to.

In terms of help during development though there are plenty of stories about Nintendo being very hands on. If I was a developer I imagine advice from someone like Shigeru Miyamoto would be a lot more helpful than some no-name Microsoft brand manager.

True, but they'd probably prefer the money Microsoft might give them for advertising over Miyamoto's advice. Not everyone requires his opinion. And maybe if Nintendo had helped out Cing with Little King's Story, the game could have sold more and Cing wouldn't have died.

The point is, when your platform is being ignored by virtually everyone, why wouldn't you go above and beyond for those who actually give it a genuine amount of effort? Good relations with one developer, even a small one, can lead to an improved opinion from others.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Wow. Hindsight. Isn't it great?

You knew in mid-2006 that the Wii wasn't going to be able to run 360 launch games, but that the PS3 and modern PCs would, and you bought it anyway. Were you expecting miracles?

I know right now that no one's going to be able to reproduce Tekken 6 at 60FPS using a Kinect control scheme. I'm not going to hold my breath on the Soul Calibur 5/Tekken vs. SF/Tekken Tag 2 announcements for Kinect.

http://kokugamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Assassins_Creed_Bloodlines.jpg

On a platform less powerful and even worse at pushing Western third party games than the Wii.

The game is a terrible imitation of the source material, looks terrible, sold terribly, and would have been the typical "why do we get spinoffs with shitty graphics?" scenario we get for everything else.

 

[nckillthegrimace]

On a platform less powerful and even worse at pushing Western third party games than the Wii.

But that's an extremely scaled back spinoff. I thought the problem was that the Wii was getting weird spinoffs that not many people wanted, like Soul Calibur Legends, Umbrella Chronicles, and Castlevania Judgement. When people say they want Assassin's Creed on Wii, do they just want the IP or do they want its enormous scope and gameplay systems as well? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they want the latter, and that simply is not possible on the Wii barring an extraordinary amount of effort. An amount of effort that probably just is not worth it at this point when they can sell a large amount of units between the 360, PS3, and PC versions, none of which require any substantial extra effort.

 

[Furret]

True, but they'd probably prefer the money Microsoft might give them for advertising over Miyamoto's advice. Not everyone requires his opinion. And maybe if Nintendo had helped out Cing with Little King's Story, the game could have sold more and Cing wouldn't have died.

The point is, when your platform is being ignored by virtually everyone, why wouldn't you go above and beyond for those who actually give it a genuine amount of effort? Good relations with one developer, even a small one, can lead to an improved opinion from others.

The answer to the last question is clearly that they didn't need to. When the Wii was on fire Nintendo needed more accounts to count all the money, not developers to make games. The Wii's fall from grace has been accelerated by the lack of third party support but I don't believe it's been caused by it.

Cing is definitely a sore point though, it's hard to imagine any good reason why Nintendo didn't help them out.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe it snapped up the best staff for itself? Is there any suggestion that happened? Industry gossip always seems no-existent in Japan.

 

[NeonZ]

They are logistically a worse partner. They put tight restrictions on 3rd party titles' production since they control the storage medium: They either have to buy very little or very many. There is no balance, no option outside of those two extremes. Neither Sony nor Microsoft does this.

Is that point based on a Japanese third party report comparing Nintendo's practices with the DS? Or is it some other source? If you're saying that based just on that one, I don't think there's any proof it's relevant to the Wii situation considering the different physical storage mediums involved and the complete lack of mention of the Wii in that specific case.

 

[Vinci]

You knew in mid-2006 that the Wii wasn't going to be able to run 360 launch games, but that the PS3 and modern PCs would, and you bought it anyway. Were you expecting miracles?

I wasn't. I was expecting 3rd parties to adapt to fit a viable, extremely active platform into their production lines. They didn't. Tough luck for me and them. Also, I like how you're rewriting history, using the multiplatform-heavy state of the current industry as a way of belittling my earlier decision... when the industry didn't work that way. Again: Hindsight.

I know right now that no one's going to be able to reproduce Tekken 6 at 60FPS using a Kinect control scheme. I'm not going to hold my breath on the Soul Calibur 5/Tekken vs. SF/Tekken Tag 2 announcements for Kinect.

There's a difference between expecting content and expecting Tekken or Soul Caliber or Assassin's Creed. I never anticipated those games coming to the Wii, and neither have I made any mention that I wanted them. What I wanted was genuine effort, of some kind, on pretty much anything. What I - and the rest of us - got was test after test. "Buy this, or else" isn't a great motivator to purchase from 3rd parties, nor was their overwhelmingly sub-par content they defecated onto the system.

To sum up: I never asked for Assassin's Creed. I just expected something above larva-ridden feces.

 

[evangd007]

But that's an extremely scaled back spinoff. I thought the problem was that the Wii was getting weird spinoffs that not many people wanted, like Soul Calibur Legends, Umbrella Chronicles, and Castlevania Judgement. When people say they want Assassin's Creed on Wii, do they just want the IP or do they want its enormous scope and gameplay systems as well? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they want the latter, and that simply is not possible on the Wii barring an extraordinary amount of effort. An amount of effort that probably just is not worth it at this point when they can sell a large amount of units between the 360, PS3, and PC versions, none of which require any substantial extra effort.

The Wii would have been lucky to get a scaled back spinoff. Hell, judging by your examples, the Wii would be lucky to get a franchise in the same genre as its source. Instead of doing something ass-backwards like turn Resident Evil into a rails shooter and then trying to shoehorn Dead Rising onto the RE4 engine, they could have just made Umbrella Chronicles in the vein of RE4 and avoided such idiocy. The gist is that most of the "hardcore efforts" on the Wii were doomed from the moment the producer approved of the concept, because concepts like a Castlevania fighter and a Dead Space story-driven light gun game were completely and totally fucked.

 

[Jokeropia]

Any game with 3rd person camera controls?

Like Zelda? TP Wii camera control might not be as seamless as with a second analog, but it works.

Any game where button symmetry is ideal?

For example? We're not talking about what's ideal btw, but whether or not it works.

Any game that requires 8+ buttons for functionality?

Again I'd like an example. Wiimote + nunchuck has 10 buttons which are easily accessible, and there are actions that actually make sense being mapped to motions. (E.g. reload, melee attack.)

 

[Mariah Carey]

Everytime somebody asks third parties themselves what the deal is, it's almost always the same thing: "We can't compete with Nintendo." While they all have first parties, Nintendo is a software company first and a hardware company second. They're much more direct competition for third parties than Sony and Microsoft. Why emphatically support your own strongest competitor?

It's been like this since the 80s. Nintendo only got the support they did back then because they (and Sega) were the only game in town. And it wasn't for a lack of trying; EA sat out the NES for years.

I doubt third parties are ever going to be enthusiastic about supporting Nintendo. They would rather have a hardware company build machins specifically with them in mind.

 

[Amir0x]

What about, I dunno, actually developing a game for the Wii from the ground up? Didn't stop Capcom from cancelling Monster Hunter 3 Tri for PS3 and redoing it for Wii (with much success I might add

This goes both ways. Nintendo tried to leave a lot of their schedule open for 3rd parties to release their games without competition from Nintendo. Apparently 3rd parties don't have to put any effort toward these relations?

Bad business to develop a game for the ground up for Wii when you can't port to other platforms. Simple answer for dumb questions. PS360/PC is far more lucrative than Wii alone.

And yup, it's Nintendo's fault for not providing the incentives that other companies do to make sure they get games on the platform. They don't exist on a vacuum. When you have COMPETITORS you must COMPETE. If you don't compete, then you have no one to blame but yourself.

But, excuse my presumptuousness, how nice of Nintendo to leave a few months open for other developers. I mean, they only spent an infinity trillion dollars blanketing the market with advertisements for their garbage casualware titles. Surely developers should be begging Nintendo's thanks for those open months!

Of course, the idea that Nintendo made a real conscious effort to leave months open for other developers versus simply NOT having enough games to fill the void even if they wanted to is absurd. Not doing something because you can't != good relations.

So apparently putting Zelda: Twilight Princess on the system at launch and heavily promoting it at E3 2006 counts for nothing. Apparently the fact that it was bundled with Wii Sports means that's how they defined the platform forever and ever. Let's just completely forget all of the core games Nintendo has made for the system (which greatly outnumber the "casual, lite fair" I might add).

Yeah, putting a Gamecube port with comically awful wiimote controls really showed how serious they were with them hardcore titles on Wii. I mean, compared to actually developing a game ground up with the Wii-only in mind and PACKING IT IN THE SYSTEM, it's practically the same thing.

And then of course they followed it up with Fire Emblem and Super Paper Mario...


...oops, they too were quickly re-purposed Gamecube titles and not ground-up Wii titles. Well, surely they tried with Metroid Prime III...

...FUCK that too...

Summary: People aren't retards. They can tell when you're not trying. Nintendo wasn't trying.

If 3rd party developers are really that port-happy, then why during the PS2 era did several games on PS2 and Xbox not even receive Gamecube versions, when the GC was, power-wise, capable? That system wasn't defined as casual, lite fair that I recall, and was even more powerful than the PS2? 3rd parties just didn't want to put their stuff on their. It was too "kiddy" for them, despite the likes of Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil.

Another simple answer requiring literally only five seconds of thought. The reason the Gamecube did not receive EVERY port that Xbox did is because it had limited disc space versus the other platforms. 1.8GB versus, I forgot the exact number, but certainly at least double that amount for Xbox and PS2.

I mean, this is the general rule and there are a few exceptions. But the exceptions prove the rule.

Moving on.

No, you have to be attached to a major franchise AND be a good game. Soul Calibur Legends and Castlevania: Judgement wouldn't sell no matter what system they were put on. The game has to at LEAST be semi-decent like The Conduit. It's not a spectacular game, but it was good enough to sell enough for Sega to deem it sequel worthy.

LOL @ the idea of Castlevania being a "major franchise." Did you just see that fucking big budget Castlevania game that many even thought was good flop hard? And Soul Calibur hasn't been a pusher for years, so of course a non-fighting Soul Calibur game isn't going to make waves. Bad examples.

Side Note: lmfao @ Conduit being decent. *wipes tear from eye* More jokes like this to lighten up the mood RurouniZel

I agree to an extent, but I'd also argue they didn't exactly "try" to make it work either. Dual-analogue is not the end-all-be-all.

And they didn't say it was the end-all-be-all. Since virtually all honest devs said the wiimote is good for some genres, and bad for others (and usually listed several genres it is BEST at), this implies that there are reasons to make games on wiimote over other controllers.

Unfortunately, those reasons are not incentive enough to suffer the terrible platform environment on Wii versus having a game that came come out for three different platforms.

Again, I would argue it's less mature to not even try to make it work somehow, especially when it was selling like hotcakes.

And some did. They made crap like Just Dance and Carnival Games - two very successful Wii titles. Funny how that worked. When these developers made the very terrible casualware that you're SO AFRAID to admit was dominate on the platform, they occasionally hit success. When they brought their hardcore titles, on virtually every non-franchise related case, it was a failure or very very limited "only-good-because-Suda 51's-games-sell-like-2-copies-on-average' titles like NO MORE HEROES.

But I'll wait here while you go down the list of hardcore games the developers brought and bitch and moan about how, see, this wasn't REALLY trying or how see this was just a really niche genre so how can anyone possibly expect...

 

[Pathetic Basement Virgin]

It's not that difficult, if Nintendo makes a system on par with the other two they will get the same games as they do. Unless the customers don't buy the Nintendo version of their games.

It don't be rocket science.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Like Zelda? TP Wii camera control might not be as seamless as with a second analog, but it works.

It's an inferior compromise, which is all that I've ever argued about Nintendo's console hardware/controller decisions for the last 10 years. For a game like Splinter Cell or MGS that requires sensitive 360 camera control at nearly all times, it's a major obstacle.

Best case scenario, you take camera controls out of the players hands entirely. Worst case scenario, you get an absolutely broken camera.

For example? We're not talking about what's ideal btw, but whether or not it works.

You end up with stuff like Skate It.

Again I'd like an example. Wiimote + nunchuck has 10 buttons which are easily accessible, and there are actions that actually make sense being mapped to motions. (E.g. reload, melee attack.)

A, B, 1, 2, C, Z with a d-pad and one analog, correct? You need the classic controller just to play Tatsunoku vs. Capcom.

If 3rd party developers are really that port-happy, then why during the PS2 era did several games on PS2 and Xbox not even receive Gamecube versions, when the GC was, power-wise, capable? That system wasn't defined as casual, lite fair that I recall, and was even more powerful than the PS2? 3rd parties just didn't want to put their stuff on their. It was too "kiddy" for them, despite the likes of Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil?

1) Nintendo released the console in purple.
2) Nintendo gimped the game storage medium resulting in compression in FMV and textures when porting from PS2, a console that had been on the market for 18 months
3) Nintendo had three (!!!) less buttons than the competition, making cross platform controls limited or confusing on GCN
4) Nintendo opted for less, faster RAM - great for building games from the ground up, terrible for porting from Xbox or PC.
5) Nintendo produced the LAN adaptor in only limited runs
6) Nintendo never made any attempt at an online infrastructure even late in the generation
7) Nintendo launched with the laughable Memory Card 59 as the only gamesave option, which allowed you to save all of ONE season of Madden (for example) at launch and nothing else

These are things that Nintendo could have easily rectified with some foresight or some changes in company culture.

People speak of companies like Ubisoft "souring the well"... but why is Just Dance one of the best-selling Wii games of all time? Why is Mario & Sonic? Because the console was built to do those kinds of experiences, and do them well, and that's why people bought them in droves.

 

[From The Dust]

A, B, 1, 2, C, Z with a d-pad and one analog, correct? You need the classic controller just to play Tatsunoku vs. Capcom.

nope. (in before "you need sticks to properly play it")

 

[frontieruk]

long detailed rant

ITT Amir0x reminds us that not everyone enjoys party games

 

[AniHawk]

Well, surely they tried with Metroid Prime III...

...FUCK that too...

considering the power difference between the gamecube and wii, we don't really know how long mp3 was a gamecube title. however it has been said that retro helped come up with the idea for the nunchuk because the wii remote wasn't enough to control metroid prime 3. considering the nunchuk was revealed in late 2005, i think it's safe to assume they were working on it for the 'wii' for a long while. it shows in the level design too, and i don't just mean grapple doors and whatnot. everything moves at a quicker pace, the environment doesn't point you up and down or whatever direction you need to face (which is how they got around designing around the gamecube controller in the first game considering it lacked dual analog controls or something approximating them).

the other ones (and donkey kong paon racer of terrible) were definitely originally destined for the gamecube, probably as titles to fill out the rest of the year.

the wii itself came after statements of wanting to support the gamecube through peripherals and have the system last for ten years, and the release of stuff like the dk bongos and connectivity between the gba and gc. i wouldn't be surprised if wii sports started off as a gamecube game too before they realized it would be a better decision to just make their peripheral into the hook for their new system and revise the hardware and sell it as new.

 

[Mungular]

the developers are probably busy working on titles for the new console nintendo will be releasing

 

[Metal Gear?!]

On the PS2, for every 10 pieces of shit you got 5 great games. On the Wii, for every 10 pieces of shit you get 2 great games. Nintendo has put out more than they ever have, so I can't blame them. Publishers thinking they know the market when they truly never have is the problem.

I can't judge the quality of a game based on a list. Sorry. It was a rough view on the libraries of each system. Unless you can give me the exact percentage of good games compared to bad games, I don't know if you have much of an argument.

You gave an exact proportion (33%) of great games to pieces of shit. Now you claim it was a rough overview and refuse to back it up. You made the claim, it would be nice if you supported it.

I'm not even sure what you're trying to prove here. PS2 had lots of shitty shovelware, sure. Nobody would argue that. Maybe the worst PS2 games were worse than the worst Wii games. Maybe there were more shovelware games on the PS2. I'm not arguing with any of that.

I'm saying that the proportion of shovelware to non-shovelware is far greater on the Wii than on the PS2. The Wii got all of that horrible shovelware that the PS2 got, and then on top of that it got a whole new flood of terrible "casual" shovelware (and, just to clarify, I'm not saying casual games are inherently shovelware; just that for every good casual game with actual effort put into it like Wii Sports or EA Active or whatever, we got 20 more horrible mini-game collections, fitness games, dance games, or whatever else).

And yet, while the Wii got the PS2's shovelware and then some, it didn't have a fraction of the PS2's non-shovelware third-party support. The PS2 typically had a few games a month worth maybe paying attention to - not necessarily great games, but actual games nonetheless - whereas the Wii on a good year has maybe one a month, and ten of them are made by Nintendo.

However much shovelware the system had, when you stood at the store and looked at the PS2's shelf in its heyday, you could still clearly see plenty of good stuff. When you stand at the Wii's shelf today, it's tough to find much that's not shovelware, and when you do, it probably says Nintendo on it.




It didn't stop them completely, but it slowed them down.

1) You also claim that the Wii got a larger proportion of shovelware than the PS2 but you have not substantiated it

2) "[The Wii] didn't have a fraction of the PS2's non-shovelware third-party support" is a reasonable claim given the Wii hasn't gotten as much third party support the PS2 had overall

2) You claim that Nintendo's draconian NES policies at least "slowed them down" - again with no substantiation.

They were bad, but the amount of good software you would find on store shelves made it less of an issue. When browsing the Wii and (especially) DS sections of any store, you'll find that the vast majority of software on display is, in fact, shovelware or at least something no self respecting fan of gaming would dare touch. It's all about perception and browsing the DS aisle always leaves a negative one.

It's awfully convenient to say it is a store shelf perception issue when Wii/DS and PS1/PS2 store shelves can no longer be directly compared at all.

 

[theBishop]

Disagree. If the Cafe gets a large enough userbase, it will be primary SKU and the PS4 and NextBox will get port ups. Third parties can't afford to not have every game be on every platform possible nowadays. I don't think they are as worried about losing the graphics arms race to exclusives since exclusives are pretty much dead except for those from the first party, and the Cafe won't have a silly, hard-to-use architecture like the Wii.

Sony and microosoft are still selling consoles. I dont see how wii2 gets to be the "primary sku" launching next year at $350+ against 2 very established systems with huge libraries. If you already own gta4 and red dead on 360, why buy gta5 on wii2? Why buy wii2 at all in that case?

 

[Game Guru]

I think the biggest problem Nintendo has with third parties is that what third-parties generally want is not something Nintendo themselves can make a profit off of. Nearly every business decision of Nintendo's that screws someone else over is usually done because going with that someone would screw Nintendo over.

For example, the Wii owes its existence to the fact that Nintendo just could not make a behemoth on par with the Xbox 360, still be stuck in third place, and be successful in turning a profit, so Nintendo made a turn sideways and went down a new path where they have found success. However, third-parties were expecting the PS3 to be as much a success as the PS2 was and the Wii to be as much of a failure as the GameCube was, so they just skipped the Wii for their AAA games. By the time they were proven wrong, it was much too late for third-parties to change course.

 

[KevinCow]

1) You also claim that the Wii got a larger proportion of shovelware than the PS2 but you have not substantiated it

What, do you want me to go through every single Wii game ever made and decide on an individual level which is shovelware and which isn't, then make a graph or something? I'm just speaking from the experience of going to the store and looking at the Wii shelf.

2) You claim that Nintendo's draconian NES policies at least "slowed them down" - again with no substantiation.

How about, like, history? There was shovelware, but you didn't have companies pumping out ten shovelware games a month like on the Wii. The strategy of flooding the market with quick shit and hoping it sold wasn't viable because companies could only make a certain number of games a year, so for the most part, they tried to rely on the strategy of making good games people actually wanted to play. And yeah, you did wind up with companies like ljn doing their shit thing, but then you also had companies like Capcom and Konami putting out pretty much nothing but classics.

 

[RurouniZel]

Bad business to develop a game for the ground up for Wii when you can't port to other platforms. Simple answer for dumb questions. PS360/PC is far more lucrative than Wii alone.

Only because of necessity due to the costs of HD development. Many studios like Factor 5 that virtually disappeared after one bomb could have instead developed for the SD super popular Wii, kept their development costs down and wouldn't have needed 3 platforms worth of sales to have a shot at breaking even.

And yup, it's Nintendo's fault for not providing the incentives that other companies do to make sure they get games on the platform. They don't exist on a vacuum. When you have COMPETITORS you must COMPETE. If you don't compete, then you have no one to blame but yourself.

Nintendo figured that simply by virtue of having the leading platform using older architecture that meant less R&D costs would be more than enough incentive for 3rd parties to come aboard. Frankly, I'm not sure how that logic isn't sound.

But, excuse my presumptuousness, how nice of Nintendo to leave a few months open for other developers. I mean, they only spent an infinity trillion dollars blanketing the market with advertisements for their garbage casualware titles. Surely developers should be begging Nintendo's thanks for those open months!

Just because you think they're garbage doesn't mean others do. And just because I play Wii Sports Resort with the family in NO WAY indicates that I couldn't possibly be interested in hardcore games like Call of Duty or Valkyria Chronicles on the same system. Not everyone sticks to one and only one genre of game.

Of course, the idea that Nintendo made a real conscious effort to leave months open for other developers versus simply NOT having enough games to fill the void even if they wanted to is absurd. Not doing something because you can't != good relations.

Or it could ALSO be that Iwata was trying to combat the persistent excuse of not wanting to compete with Nintendo games, so leaving several large windows open for them to exploit, in their mind, was their effort to give 3rd parties what they want. You know, like a concession of sorts. It's also likely that this was the major reason why Nintendo was constantly releasing all of their games in the same 5-6 month span and then nothing for several months on end. The idea was to bring in people buying Wii games, than leave the floor to 3rd parties after Nintendo got them warmed up. At least, that's my impression.

Yeah, putting a Gamecube port with comically awful wiimote controls really showed how serious they were with them hardcore titles on Wii. I mean, compared to actually developing a game ground up with the Wii-only in mind and PACKING IT IN THE SYSTEM, it's practically the same thing.

Well, Galaxy wasn't ready yet, and they didn't want to give people the impression there were no titles for hardcore gamers.

And IIRC, the only reason the West packed in Wii Sports (and raised the price compared to Japan that didn't) was because retailers in the west knew demand for the Wii was high, and felt they wouldn't be making enough money if it was just $199.99, so they raised the price and packed Wii Sports in to make up the difference. Sadly, the news story from gamesarefun.com that talked about that no longer works. Figures. :/

...oops, they too were quickly re-purposed Gamecube titles and not ground-up Wii titles. Well, surely they tried with Metroid Prime III...

...FUCK that too...

Summary: People aren't retards. They can tell when you're not trying. Nintendo wasn't trying.

Only if one knew beforehand (i.e. gaffers) would it appear lazy. And I'm pretty sure MP3 was developed for Wii from the ground up.

Another simple answer requiring literally only five seconds of thought. The reason the Gamecube did not receive EVERY port that Xbox did is because it had limited disc space versus the other platforms. 1.8GB versus, I forgot the exact number, but certainly at least double that amount for Xbox and PS2.

I mean, this is the general rule and there are a few exceptions. But the exceptions prove the rule.

Point taken, I stand corrected.

LOL @ the idea of Castlevania being a "major franchise." Did you just see that fucking big budget Castlevania game that many even thought was good flop hard? And Soul Calibur hasn't been a pusher for years, so of course a non-fighting Soul Calibur game isn't going to make waves. Bad examples.

Side Note: lmfao @ Conduit being decent. *wipes tear from eye* More jokes like this to lighten up the mood RurouniZel

Wait... what? Castlevania isn't a big name now? I suppose Megaman's just a joke character now too? And yes, the Conduit was decent. I rather enjoyed it and bought the sequel because I'm glad it did well enough for a sequel.

And they didn't say it was the end-all-be-all. Since virtually all honest devs said the wiimote is good for some genres, and bad for others (and usually listed several genres it is BEST at), this implies that there are reasons to make games on wiimote over other controllers.

Unfortunately, those reasons are not incentive enough to suffer the terrible platform environment on Wii versus having a game that came come out for three different platforms.

Considering FPS games are what most Western developers like making, and since the pointer makes for godly FPS controls, I don't think that works for Western devs. The tech idea I understand and concede that.

And some did. They made crap like Just Dance and Carnival Games - two very successful Wii titles. Funny how that worked. When these developers made the very terrible casualware that you're SO AFRAID to admit was dominate on the platform, they occasionally hit success. When they brought their hardcore titles, on virtually every non-franchise related case, it was a failure or very very limited "only-good-because-Suda 51's-games-sell-like-2-copies-on-average' titles like NO MORE HEROES.

Just Dance and Carnival games are only bad in your opinion, and probably most of GAF I'd wager. But when I watch people playing the game and having tons of fun at parties, I have to think that maybe it's only bad to gamers who have very rigid definitions of what constitutes a good game or not. Or even what's a game at all (remember when GAF was calling "casuals" by the term "non-gamers"?)

But I'll wait here while you go down the list of hardcore games the developers brought and bitch and moan about how, see, this wasn't REALLY trying or how see this was just a really niche genre so how can anyone possibly expect...

Giving Wii owners Soul Calibur Legends when giving the HD twins the actual Soul Calibur 4 is a good start. But you're right, I can't list them all, because there wasn't much to list.

I do want to make something clear, I don't completely disagree with you, and to some extent I'm playing devil's advocate. I just get irritated when your arguments about the Wii always come to "it's Nintendo's fault", as if they're the only hardware maker that does dumbass things to 3rd parties. I really hated Sony of America for a while because they wouldn't let Working Designs release Advance Goemon in America, despite it being perfectly okay with Sony of Japan, simply because it wasn't up to their magical standards. Oh, and they couldn't release Growlanser 2 when it was ready to go, they had to wait a year and a half when Growlanser 3 was finish so they could release them together as a collection per Sony of America's orders. Working Designs ended up going out of business.

I guess I just get tired of always hearing how awful Nintendo is when Sony and Microsoft aren't perfect little angels either. It just seems Nintendo is the easy target or something, and it makes for not very objective discussion. And before anyone goes "Wah wah, the Ntard can't let Nintendo take heat," I'm a die-hard Sega fan, always was, always will be. It's kind of annoying that I find myself defending Nintendo so much considering my history, but when Sega went out the hardware door I completely stopped caring about who "wins" or "loses", and I find that in places like here, Nintendo is constantly being stomped on for things Sony, Microsoft, and other 3rd parties don't (like how Epic recently said the exact same thing Iwata did about the danger of the .99 business model if that's what everyone goes for. Iwata (Nintendo) took MASSIVE flack, the Epic guy, not so much).

 

[Metal Gear?!]

What, do you want me to go through every single Wii game ever made and decide on an individual level which is shovelware and which isn't, then make a graph or something? I'm just speaking from the experience of going to the store and looking at the Wii shelf.



How about, like, history? There was shovelware, but you didn't have companies pumping out ten shovelware games a month like on the Wii. The strategy of flooding the market with quick shit and hoping it sold wasn't viable because companies could only make a certain number of games a year, so for the most part, they tried to rely on the strategy of making good games people actually wanted to play. And yeah, you did wind up with companies like ljn doing their shit thing, but then you also had companies like Capcom and Konami putting out pretty much nothing but classics.

1) If you can't do that or something similar then why make an assertion you can't back up? Your experience of shelves clogged with shovelware is not sufficient to prove that the Wii has a higher proportion of shovelware than the PS2.

2) That doesn't show Nintendo's draconian NES policy to be the cause. Cartridge systems had less software as a whole, and the expense of the cartridge system could be sufficient to explain any diifferences in proportions of shovelware (which have not even been established to begin with).

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

1) If you can't do that or something similar then why make an assertion you can't back up? Your experience of shelves clogged with shovelware is not sufficient to prove that the Wii has a higher proportion of shovelware than the PS2.

That is a very fair statement he's making right there. I don't really see any reason to refute it; the PS2 had a wealth of third party support as well as Sony's first party support and a lot of niche stuff as well. The Wii has Nintendo's support, a handful of third party titles and some niche stuff as well. They both had crockloads of crap games too. The PS2 really did have more quality games than the Wii, and probably around the same amount total. Makes sense.

 

[RurouniZel]

That is a very fair statement he's making right there. I don't really see any reason to refute it; the PS2 had a wealth of third party support as well as Sony's first party support and a lot of niche stuff as well. The Wii has Nintendo's support, a handful of third party titles and some niche stuff as well. They both had crockloads of crap games too. The PS2 really did have more quality 3rd party games than the Wii, and probably around the same amount total. Makes sense.

Fixed a bit.

 

[KevinCow]

1) If you can't do that or something similar then why make an assertion you can't back up? Your experience of shelves clogged with shovelware is not sufficient to prove that the Wii has a higher proportion of shovelware than the PS2.

You're asserting that the PS2 had a greater proportion of shovelware. Where's your thorough analysis of the entire PS2 library to support this? Why would you make that counter-assertion if you can't back it up?

2) That doesn't show Nintendo's draconian NES policy to be the cause. Cartridge systems had less software as a whole, and the expense of the cartridge system could be sufficient to explain any diifferences in proportions of shovelware (which have not even been established to begin with).

Well, look at the pre-NES consoles. Filled to the brim with shovelware, not quite as bad as the disc-based consoles, but still pretty awful. Not to mention games so bad they didn't even work on the system they were advertised for. Nintendo implemented their policies because of this, and looking at the NES library, it clearly worked at least a little.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

Fixed a bit.

Well, I guess that depends on how you define quality. If you define it as SMG then I agree.

I honestly have never owned a PS2. I need to grab one one of these days....I still just have a bunch of games that I haven't played on systems I currently own. No backlogging for me

 

[Serenity]

Fixed a bit.

So sony games aren't quality now? Statement didn't need to be "fixed". Ps2 had more quality games then wii no debate unless your idea of quality begins and ends with only nintendo games.

 

[RurouniZel]

So sony games aren't quality now? Statement didn't need to be "fixed". Ps2 had more quality games then wii no debate unless your idea of quality begins and ends with only nintendo games.

Not true, the PS2 library is one of the best. I would argue however that there are quite a few great games on the Wii as well, but less people gave those games a chance. Again, that's just my opinion. I never said Sony didn't make quality games. I said there were more quality 3rd parties games on PS2 than Wii. Not hard to dispute.

 

[theBishop]

I think the biggest problem Nintendo has with third parties is that what third-parties generally want is not something Nintendo themselves can make a profit off of. Nearly every business decision of Nintendo's that screws someone else over is usually done because going with that someone would screw Nintendo over.

For example, the Wii owes its existence to the fact that Nintendo just could not make a behemoth on par with the Xbox 360, still be stuck in third place, and be successful in turning a profit, so Nintendo made a turn sideways and went down a new path where they have found success. However, third-parties were expecting the PS3 to be as much a success as the PS2 was and the Wii to be as much of a failure as the GameCube was, so they just skipped the Wii for their AAA games. By the time they were proven wrong, it was much too late for third-parties to change course.

Let's not forget the reality of the Wii here. It's a little below Xbox1 in terms of hardware capability, which cost $149 in 2004. Wii launched in 2006 for $250. I'll go conservative here and say Nintendo only made $50 per unit. Nintendo could've launched an HD-capable system breaking even for $300. It would've been noticeably less powerful than Xbox360, but capable of running Unreal Engine 3 on low-medium settings.

Nintendo chose to go for short term profit, and any fair person would have to admit it worked wonders. But now they're feeling the pain. Wii shut out them of big budget 3rd party support, their online infrastructure is a nonfactor, and worst of all their internal teams have no experience making current games.

Everyone wants to see Nintendo get back to the glory days of NES/SNES, but they're going to be playing catchup for a while if that's the goal.

 

[theBishop]

For what it's worth, I don't buy this "Shovelware" narrative. Do people really go to the store and buy games at random? I realize I'm an "enthusiast" or whatever, but I can't imagine this.

Wii has good games and shit games. PS3 has good games and shit games. Shit PS3 games don't block me from picking up Uncharted 2.

Wii's bigger problem (for "core" gamers) is lack of good-but-not-great games. Nintendo always has at least one must-own Wii game every holiday. But there's no B-level to get you through the rest of the year. I could easily pick out a stellar top-10 of Wii games to recommend to anybody. But I don't think i could name 50 Wii games I'd want to play. That's where 3rd party support makes a big difference.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

Let's not forget the reality of the Wii here. It's a little below Xbox1 in terms of hardware capability, which cost $149 in 2004. Wii launched in 2006 for $250. I'll go conservative here and say Nintendo only made $50 per unit. Nintendo could've launched an HD-capable system breaking even for $300. It would've been noticeably less powerful than Xbox360, but capable of running Unreal Engine 3 on low-medium settings.

Nintendo chose to go for short term profit, and any fair person would have to admit it worked wonders. But now they're feeling the pain. Wii shut out them of big budget 3rd party support, their online infrastructure is a nonfactor, and worst of all their internal teams have no experience making current games.

Everyone wants to see Nintendo get back to the glory days of NES/SNES, but they're going to be playing catchup for a while if that's the goal.

Yeah, they're sure hurting right now.

And cmon man, you don't think Nintendo will be able to take advantage of more powerful hardware?

 

[Game Guru]

Let's not forget the reality of the Wii here. It's a little below Xbox1 in terms of hardware capability, which cost $149 in 2004. Wii launched in 2006 for $250. I'll go conservative here and say Nintendo only made $50 per unit. Nintendo could've launched an HD-capable system breaking even for $300. It would've been noticeably less powerful than Xbox360, but capable of running Unreal Engine 3 on low-medium settings.

Nintendo chose to go for short term profit, and any fair person would have to admit it worked wonders. But now they're feeling the pain. Wii shut out them of big budget 3rd party support, their online infrastructure is a nonfactor, and worst of all their internal teams have no experience making current games.

Everyone wants to see Nintendo get back to the glory days of NES/SNES, but they're going to be playing catchup for a while if that's the goal.

Alright, benefit of the doubt time here, but if the Wii was as powerful as the 360 and did cost as much as the 360 Core, what would make Nintendo think third-parties would support it at the time? Hindsight is 20/20, but Nintendo was coming off of the GameCube, which as people had said before, felt more like an afterthought for third-parties.

You also assume that graphics was the only reason for the lack of support, but the success of the Wii as a system is tied to its controller, which was fundamentally different than the dual analog controls that PS360 have. I think that is a definite point of contention if you look at the rumors for the Wii's successor system. Nintendo is trying to actively appeal to third-parties with the Wii's successor and what do we know about the controller for said system? It is essentially a dual analog controller with a touchscreen. Why would Nintendo do that when the Wii's controller had been doing so well for them?

As for the Wii, it will have lasted 5-6 years, assuming the successor is released in 2011-2012. That, my friends, is the typical console life cycle for Nintendo. Since the Nintendo 64, they've always released their new consoles five or six years after their previous console. It's actually the PS3 and 360 being atypical in this case as rumors have stated that their new consoles won't release until 2014, which is eight years after the PS3's release.

 

[Jokeropia]

It's an inferior compromise, which is all that I've ever argued about Nintendo's console hardware/controller decisions for the last 10 years.

For some genres the Wiimote is an inferior compromise, but for other genres it's an objective improvement. It's not like control compromises are something new to console gaming, dual analog control is often an inferior compromise compared to kb/m.

I'll absolutely give you that the Wii's limitations in power was a significant obstacle for third party development, but I can't say the same about the controller itself. I absolutely love the IR pointer and the two-part design and would be very disappointed if Nintendo scraps it for the Cafe.

A, B, 1, 2, C, Z with a d-pad and one analog, correct?

I was thinking + and - rather than 1 and 2. Easier to reach. 1 and 2 works for non-essential functions that aren't required in the heat of battle.

Nintendo chose to go for short term profit, and any fair person would have to admit it worked wonders. But now they're feeling the pain.

"Short term profit". Here's a fact for you: Nintendo's profits in FY/E 2009 alone was bigger than SCE's profits during the entire PS1 and PS2 generations. That is, even if you removed the +4$ billion loss from the PS3 gen, they still wouldn't have made as much profit since FY/E 1996 that Nintendo made in FY/E 2009.