Nintendo does have a strangle hold on development and publishing, they tend to keep 3rd party’s out of the loop so that they aren’t able to maximize the potential of the system until Nintendo establishes it’s own titles.

They should ease up on the 3rd party developers and do something side-by-side every now and then. Let’s face it, Nintendo has a bad rep with 3rd parties for being “stingy”.

But 3rd Party developers are also at fault for looking at the Wii in a single dimension. They need to look at it in a different perspective.

Nintendo has never been popular for it’s M games or even T games, Nintendo made a name for itself becasue of it’s family-friendliness. It’s about pure fun and not about “how real the guns and blood look”.

Honestly, these new “hardcore” games are a little overrated, if you ask me. With all the hype of instrinsicate plotlines, complex gameplay, realism in graphics and engine, etc.

Sure a good story and cinematics enhance gameplay every now and then, but after a awhile I lose interest and get bored with those cliche’s (even with Nintendo games like Zelda). Yet I never get bored of picking up my granpa NES system and play Space Invaders, Milk & Nuts, Bomberman, Duck Hunt, Lode Runner, Elevator Action – heck even the first edition Tetris is lots of fun!

There are hardcore gamers, and there are tohse who just wanna have fun. Wii was designed for the latter.

if third party developers put all there effort into making good 4player gamers mature or teen rating, they can make a profit!

im a proud wii owners, but thats the reason i dont buy games

and established franchises should take more advantage of the wii

for example: no wii onwer wanted soulcaliber legends, they should of gave us a soul calibur 3 port with online play

capcom wii need re5,

sieera made a wackass crash bandicoot game, should of just gave us another crash racing game
and so on and so on

And all this “casual” crap is just bitter tears. Nintendo did a fine job advertising MP3. It’s on pace to outsell MP2 within the year. Not everything has to have uber-mega blockbuster sales to be a success.

I think an important point to keep in mind is that the Wii has yet to have the old franchises that sold so well on PS2. The developers keep coming at the argument from last-gen-winner (PS2) to current-gen-winner (Wii). But if we compare it more accurately from GCN to Wii, the picture is completely different. It’s not that all of a sudden 3rd-party games aren’t selling on the Wii; They didn’t sell very well on the GameCube either, which is what led to Nintendo breaking into other markets. Those people who had their fresh core game experiences on the PS2 still look to Sony for their fresh core game experiences.

So many of the games being put on the Wii are ports, because the developers just have no clue how to make an A+ game for it (at least, not yet). And those that do (Zack & Wiki!) just aren’t advertising them. And that’s the thing. Those new gamers who bought a Wii, they wouldn’t have bought those games on the PS2 to begin with. So to reach those new people, you’ve got to push Push PUSH the hard sell of those properties.

of course, to put it in perspective, how many copies did Killer 7 sell?

I’m concerned on how things are now. Wii is the machine for casual games, and I’m sure it isn’t what Nintendo wanted at the beginning. I bought my Wii with the idea it would have the biggest variety of games (much more than the other consoles) and I wouldn’t need to buy a complementing console. Now I’m reconsidering that.

Nintendo itself does alot of things half assed, especially when they have hype and success to ride on. If you look at what was promised in E3 back in what, 05, and what we got from Nintendo, there’s alot Nintendo decided not to bother with. Not because they were bad ideas or wouldn’t sell, but I believe simply because they realized with enough hype they could shift systems regardless of going the extra mile.

So where does this fit in with third parties? Well, to an extent a first party must develop a viable platform that alerts the consumer and indeed the developer that their system has it all. The PS3 and 360 both have a strong first party lineup for the core gamer, and also have great marketing and SDK’s for the third party developer. Everyone wins.

Nintendo, obviously, don’t have nearly as much credibility there. They spend far more time pushing casual games than gamer titles, and from the horrible state of online Wii, including Nintendos own efforts, their SDKs probably leave much to be desired as well.

So, a third party developer may WANT to bring an A class title to Wii that doesn’t involve some stupid wiggle crap or yet more party games, but without Nintendo themselves willing to gamble in the core gamer space I can certainly see why developers decide not to bother and stick with Xbox/PS3.

I think both sides are at fault, developers need to start taking a gamble (which it is, a big one, judging the poor third party sales, including some great titles), and Nintendo must start doing more to support them.

I’ve read a lot of articles from the 50 or so video game blogs in my feed reader over the last few months but this is the best article I’ve read in a long time.