Even today, after so many years have passed since Nintendo and SEGA battled for the living room, it still strikes me as a little odd to hear SEGA execs heaping praise on their once bitter rival. It’s almost as weird as when I think about Mario and Sonic competing in the Olympic Games later this winter. *shudder*
Today, SEGA’s North American president — who is not actually Dr. Robotnik, I was surprised to learn — Simon Jeffrey told MCV that “Wii’s low development costs will mean that third-party output on the system will be noticeably more original than that on Xbox 360 and PS3 for the next two years.”
“There is no doubt that we will see more risks, and therefore more creativity on both the Wii and the DS in the next couple of years. Just look at what EA is already doing on the Wii ”“ EA doesn’t usually do that kind of game.
“We will probably see a fair bit of standardisation for a while from third party publishers in the games that they develop for 360 and PS3, as the huge development costs are ”˜rationalised’.”
Jeffry also praised XBOX Live Arcade and the PS3’s online marketplace services, saying they “offered Sega a route to get novel content onto the systems (read: new ways to sell content and microtransactions).”