Friday, April 24, 2009

Do publishers realize Wii Sports was just a Tech Demo???


Wiisports, as impressive as it was and still is... is just a tech demo. A template to show developers what is possible with Wii control and at the same time, introduce the motion control scheme to players. For some reason though, most publishers haven't bothered to expand upon what Nintendo has presented as an example.

Wii sports is made up of minigames because it's just a demo.

Wii sports was never meant to be a full fledged game. That's the reason it's free. It was never meant to spark some minigame renasance. Nintendo already had that on lock with Warioware and Mario Party. It's pretty silly to assume that the majority of Wii owners prefer mini games when...

1. Wiisports came free with the system. You had no choice in the matter.
2. Wii play sold well because it came with a "free" Wii controller thus only costing $10 realistically.
3. Wiisports clones are usually budget priced around $19.99-$29.99.

How can free and budget games dictate the sales trends of the Wii customer? Especially when a AAA big budget mainstream title has yet to be published on the Wii outside of Nintendo?

There are quite a few excellent 3rd party titles on the Wii such as Zack and Wiki, No More Heroes, and Madworld but let's be honest with ourselves here...

All of the above titles were destined to NOT sell millions of copies. A puzzle game with kiddy graphics that's too hard for kids, with no commercials? A cel shaded, bizarre game from an awesome developer who's best selling game previously was only around 100,000-200,000 sold combine on two systems... one with a 100 million + install base and again with no commercials? ( Thanks Ubisoft) A black and white extremely violent again.... cel shaded ( cel shaded games don't tend to sell millions unless they are Zelda apparently) that's a little too short? You see what I'm getting at here?

There has yet to be a 3rd party Wii game released that had all of the following:

- System pushing graphics
- non niche
-mainstream appeal
-Big budget developement funds
-big marketing budget
-online

If 3rd parties release games like this they will sell. Period. The upcoming The Conduit has ALL of these factors and will sell at least 1.8 million copies by the end of 2009. You can quote me on that too. Call of Duty World at War sold over a million copies on Wii despite misssing over half the features of the PS3/360 versions. That should say alot right there. Wii gamers are salavating at the mouth for these kind of games. Publishers really need to pull their heads out of their rears and realize this. I mean how many minigames do we really need? There were like 70 alone in Rayman Raving Rabbids.

Wiisports looks simplistic because of the use of Mii's.

No it's not because "OMG the Wii is not powerful enough to do good graffix!". Ninetdno picked a visual style that fit the simplistic looks of Mii's. Just because Wiisports was successful does not mean Wii gamers prefer simplistic looking graphics. We don't prefer characters will big heads and small legs. Unless your game is focusing around the use of Mii's (which is very doubtful because Nintendo is very picky about Mii intergration) and/or is aimed at a budget price point or wiiware... No thank you.

Wii can't produce the same visual fidelity as the 36o or PS3. WE GET IT. But don't give us this "Wii isn't as powerful so we had to make characters with big heads and cel shading" Umm... No you didn't. The gamecube is less powerful than the Wii yet had the majority of it's games went for the "realistic style" so what's the problem here? Realistic looking art worked for the gamecube but not for the Wii? That doesn't make any sense. What's sad is that if there were no such thing as a ps3/360/Wii and we were still using our trusty ps2's, gamecube's, and xbox's, games like Madden 2010 would probably look much better on the gamecube than the current version of Madden 2010 on Wii... and that's freakin pathetic. Every year last gen Madden games looked better and better every year and all of a sudden Wii can't improve upon that and must go with a "genre defining artstyle"??? Quiet EA.

Wiisports is a tech demo. It's time to move on and make real games...like the ones you used to make for the less powerful gamecube remember?

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Top Ten Things Wii thought Wii would Bii















If you followed Wii news during the Revolution days you no doubt knew of and/or believed (some for better reasons than others) many of the following would have been true.

1. Stereoscopic 3d- Nintendo patents galore. The message boards were spilt. Those who believed the next system would use some sort of virtual reality and those who did not. The debates on this subject were pretty ridiculous to say the least. But very entertaining :)

2. Nintendo On- Chances are if you didn't believe it was real you wished it was. Pretty much a Nintendo fanboys' dream. The awkward looking mario character model was kind of a dead give away though.

3. More powerful than the 360- All rumored specs pre-IGN featured a more powerful system than the 360. It was also being developed by the same people behind the CPU and GPU for the 360 and release a year later. Surely it'd be more powerful...right? Right!??

4. 1:1 motion control- While this is being remedied with the release of Wii motion plus... pretty much everyone pre-launch was under the impression that the wiimote could already do that... Oops.

5. 2x RE4 graphics- The Wii is at minimum twice as powerful as the gamecube so nobody was expecting Wii games to actually look worse than RE4 let alone barely better. Imagine our suprise...

6. 512MB is more than enough- According to several super genius message boards posters back in 2005 the Wii's 512MB should have been enough to and I quote " hold every single nes game ever created" and " hundreds of snes titles". Guess VC titles aren't "byte size" after all.

7.Virtual Console games will be free!- When the VC was first annnounced many thought these games would be absolutely free! (lol). Later Nintendo hinted that VC games may be given away free as a bonus with newer titles. Didn't happen.

8. Sub $200 price point- Surely a system this low spec would super cheap right? Wrong. Wii was pegged by journalist and analyst as launching at a $99 price point...then $149....then $179...then $199...then $229. When Newsweek broke the store that it would be $249.99 fanboys didin't believe because surely Newsweek would not get that kind of news before a dedicated videogame site. Surely.

9. Infomation from Fake Revolution "insiders"- Remember Seriousgamer007? I sure do. Pulled so much crap out of his rear that he was invisable. Made fake game announcements as well. Broken Saints blog also claimed to have super top secret revolution info that confirmed stereoscopic 3d. Thanks guys.

10. Make your own games- When wiiware was first rumored many believed that the average joe could simply pony up the $1,700 and get started on Wii games!