Poll - Too many games?
Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 7:26am by David
With over 200 games coming out for Wii and DS by the end of 2007, Nintendo gamers will have plenty to choose from. But will they have too much to choose from?
Are there too many games coming out for Wii and DS this Fall?
Something else to think about (and comment on): Will this hurt the game market for Wii and DS?
October 8th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Well what I think is that there are a lot of games on the PS2 and that didn’t stop the sales on that system so why should it stop on the Wii and the DS.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:24 am
The problem for me is that they are releasing too many great games in such a short time instead of spreading them evenly over the year, and this is hurting my wallet during a time of the year where my wallet is already hurting. Plus I would like some more time between these games so I really have time to sit down and finish them before I pick up the next one.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:56 am
What is coming in 2008, aside from Wii Fit? This is what worries me. I guess BWii is coming, right? Anything else?
October 8th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Can I afford the time and money to play all of the games I want this year? No. Will I save a bundle next Spring buying used games and not have to worry about a drought? Yes.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Right now, I feel like the only real competition for Wii is the DS… Not too many great games for Wii, but way too many great games for the DS!
The problem a developer might find when releasing too many good games at the same time is that most of the games sold will be “recycled”: some people will buy a few copies of this title when it comes out, and some others will buy this other one, and so forth… then, when they are done with that one title, they will sell it and buy the next one they wanted used. This doesn’t help the manufacturer, but it is GREAT for the consumer!
However, unlike the Xbox games, Wii and DS games go down in value way too slowly… consumers might have to wait more than a year for the game to go down a measly $10 even as a used game.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:03 am
My $0.02:
Will deploying this many titles hurt me, the gamer? Nah, not directly at least. Will it hurt the industry? Maybe. I don’t think we’ll see it this round, or maybe even the next, but InvisibleMan has a point. If they blast the consumer with 200 new titles, there’s going to be a few gold nuggets that everyone grabs at right away, but there’s going to be even more diamonds in the rough that get passed over. These titles are what Invisible is speaking to: Titles that are worth owning but slightly less “known” than Metroid et al.
What does this imply? Great games will be overlooked, and publishers will get the idea that it wasn’t well received, when in reality it just wasn’t well publicized. As I mentioned, it won’t have a dramatic initial effect, but down the line if the trend continues, we might see fewer titles that have the style/feel/content of the diamonds, and more of the gold.
October 8th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I am sure plenty of people will be complaining about a drought in a few months. How about you guys just stop buying new games and just finish Twilight Princess already!
October 8th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
What the hell kind of question is this? It’s like saying “oh crap, I have too many wives, I don’t have time to sleep with them all!”
October 8th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I’ve just looked at my Wish List file, and there are thirteen(13) definite buys that I want for the Wii between now and the end of the year, with another 7 or so that I’d consider at some point later on in the future. There are some among those thirteen that take absolutely highest priority to be played as soon as they’re released, while there are others that could probably wait.
Still, I feel obligated to “vote with my dollars” (I preach it all the time) and buy the types of games I’d want to see more of. Given how long it takes to see a price drop on most Wii games, I’ll probably buy these titles ASAP. It won’t hurt me financially, and I’ll have a nice to-play list to last me well into 2008.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
People either complain there are no games or too many.
I guess I personally have no problem spacing out when I buy games myself so I don’t see it as an issue when a lot of games are released. I have been out of the gaming arena for a while so in the 1.5 years I’ve been playing catch up along with some new games. I’ve been playing Sunshine, Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Wind Waker, Mario Kart DD, Super Paper Mario, Zelda TP, Mario Strikers and what not. I’m waiting on Metroid Prime 3 and Mario Galaxy until the xmas season.
I just bought a DS as well so now I have an entire catalog of GBA and DS titles to choose from. If nothing else, having such a large catalog of games is a great thing, it’ll help sell more Wii and DS units.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
I agree with Andrew-MG, I am all up for more Wii games but all the major first party games, albeit Mario Kart Wii and WiiFit, which I have no intention of buying, there will most likely be another “Wii drought” and for a while there won’t be any good games being released. I strongly believe that maybe they should have chosen to release Brawl or Galaxy in early 2008 and then things wouldn’t be as tight in our pockets.
October 8th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
There really was a drought earlier this year, but I was too busy most of the time to notice. If I had grown up to be a teenager or Gamestop employee, I probably would have broken down and bought an Xbox 360 to keep me occupied in my mom’s basement between Wii releases and airings of professional wrestling.
On the other hand, this fall release situation kinda solves the drought problem for the next year, as many have noted above. Unless something cataclysmic happens like people’s Wiis spontaneously combusting like a Sony laptop battery, next fall will look a lot like this one but with even more third party releases. It looks very much like a PS2-like snowball effect is getting started here with Wii games, and of course the DS is already there.
So I can’t help but see this glut as an upside. No one’s going to actually buy all 200 games since 80 percent of them are going to either be licensed movie garbage or have titles ending with “Z”, but even 40 games would take me a couple years to buy and play through. I still own Gamecube games I haven’t even played, and some of them don’t even suck (BG&E comes to mind.)
October 8th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
@ Andrew-MG
Mario Kart Wii is next year. BWii is coming out at the end of this month. I would not worry about next year there is still plenty of time to hear about announcements and Nintendo has a press event coming up in the next couple of weeks.
October 9th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Hmm… Too many games? Why, do they go bad if we don’t play them in the first 4 weeks after release? (Nope. Metroid Prime 3 will still be fun when I get it sometime next year.)
There are plenty of good Wii games available right now, and more coming out before the end of the year. Isn’t that better than, say, a system that promises good games in the future but doesn’t have anything worth playing yet?
As for “future concerns”, there are bound to be many gems among the hundreds of games that will be released - but it’s up to the consumers to figure out which games are worth their hard-earned cash. Every console seems to have small release droughts after the holiday season… It’s just not possible to release triple-A titles non-stop, regardless of how popular a gaming platform is. So would people assume that Wii is any worse off than the other current-gen systems?
October 9th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
@Raindog
Yeah, your right, once these hopefully awesome first party titles are released the third party developers will get the hang of the Wii controls and just like what the DS is going through now, the Wii will get more than enough third party support.