Lack of “Mature” Wii games is disturbing
Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 3:21pm by Blake
Matt C. from IGN tells why: “I’m on the phone with the president of a big development studio yesterday. His teams have created an original IP for Wii. It’s dark and scary. And while every publisher they’ve met up with has loved the premise and execution of the game, few of them want to touch it. Why? Nobody believes it will sell on Wii. Let me just drive that home. Publishers think it’s an amazing effort. But not for Wii.”
January 17th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
that’s too bad- i like dark and scary things. it’s always a shame to see the market (or perceptions thereof) interfere with a great idea or product.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
You see? YOU SEE? They’re all CRAZY!
January 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Glurg!
Well, there are only four rated M games on DS, and seven on Wii. Comparing to Nintendo’s previous generation of systems, the GBA had 2 and GameCube had 35. This isn’t really new, conceptually.
In a way, it makes sense though. I’m drawn to Nintendo consoles for the games they have, majority of which are not rated M.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
“I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!”
Even games like Red Steel (mediocre) and Resident Evil 4 (no actual work done) sold well.
AAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHH!
I challenge all third parties right now to name ANY Wii game with a modicum of quality and marketing that HASN’T sold well, regardless of genre.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Resident Evil 4 proves that statement is wrong.
Just make a good game, give it some marketing push and there you go. I really hope No More Heroes sell well in Europe and America, it looks like Japan is no longer console territory, so it´s up to us
January 17th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Nothing new here just the repetition of the old tired “kiddie” aguement. It’s sad to see this keep popping up even after a year of domination by Nintendo. Some things never seem to change though.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Ironically I own and enjoy Resident Evil 4 and Scarface, and I want Mortal Kombat, Godfather, RE:UC, and No More Heroes.
Bring on the mature titles!
January 17th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Yeah, it’s really not that surprising that development houses who took a bath on mature titles for the Gamecube might look at the Wii, say “Gee, their primary audience is everyone outside the 17-25 age range who actually prefer M-rated games” and hold back. There will have to be some kind of out of the blue success by some renegade publisher (I’m looking at you, Gamecock) before the big guys start seeing a market here.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
“I challenge all third parties right now to name ANY Wii game with a modicum of quality and marketing that HASN’T sold well, regardless of genre.”
Zack and Wiki?
January 17th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I actually totally agree with Matt C. The general perception with the Wii is casual gaming, not hardcore gaming. Publishers see Carnival Games and Mario Party selling like hot cakes, and paint the Wii in that sort of light. Some of you said RE4 disproves this, but Matt C even says a Resident Evil game will have a better chance of getting high sales because it’s a proven franchise. Would a game like BioShock be as big as it was if it was made for the Wii? No, I don’t think so. No More Heroes, which looks amazing, will sell like shit. It’s inevitable. People can say it deserves to be played and preach about it all day long, but when push comes to shove, the majority of Wii owners will pass this game over. Which is sad, because it would probably sell a lot more on 360. Sorry, but Matt C hit the nail on the head, and I don’t see this changing at all this generation. I don’t even think the WiiWare titles will be any different, with Nintendo suggesting to everyone to make their games more “casual”.
Sad, but true, I’m sorry.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
They are underestimating the amount of mainstream gamers that want mature content on wii. These people need to think it through and realize that the demand in gamers is high for this type of game dark and mature.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Two words:
Eternal Darkness
January 17th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I don’t play wii for this and other reasons
January 17th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
WTF!!!?
Industry = Crazy.
Resident Evil 4 sold great on Wii and I can’t wait to pick up the Godfather. And I have $50 set aside for No More Heroes already.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
^^
Congrats.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
^^
Sorry, my last comment was aimed to sir jorge
January 17th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Joe!!! Thank you!!!
Sequel to Eternal Darkness PREEEEEEEZ!!!!!!!
People want the Wii to be more of an adult system. There is an audience for this stuff.
I could be wrong, but isn’t the best selling third party game for Wii Resident Evil 4?
And this is a huge loss for that developer if they decide to listen to those meatheads. With Res Evil 4, Res Evil Umb Chr, and Manhunt already out and selling well, House of the Dead coming soon, and Fatal Frame, Obscure II, Alone In theDark, and (supposedly) Sadness in development, the Wii is looking to be a terrific system for the horror enthusiast. A Silent Hill game and/or Eternal Darkness sequel would seal the deal.
And come on already, Nintendo. Where’s my Luigi’s Mansion sequel? I want I want I want.
BTW: For any horror lovers out there, show your support by picking up No More Heroes this month. Right now Suda 51’s Grasshopper Studios is in line to develop the new Fatal Frame for Wii. But He’s discouraged by the Wii because No More Heroes is NOT selling in Japan. I wanted it anyway, and now I really really want to buy it. Fatal Frame on Wii would be the hottest thing ever.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Actually it’s not that disturbing. Wouldn’t lack of good games matter more. I’m not saying that their aren’t good games. I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be mature to be good.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Zack & Wiki is a cruel exception in this case i think jt, that game wasn´t even announced. I looked at many retailers for a cuople of weeks after release until i managed to find a copy at a Best Buy.
I blame Capcom entirely for that one.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
@ jt
Zak + Wiki = Zero Advertising = self sabbotage for a new IP.
Fine everybody, exclude RE from the list: clearly it’s better than most 3rd parties can hope to achieve.
Look at Red Steel instead.
(Not very good + guns on Wii + marketing)/(new IP) = Huge sales.
@cronotrigger913
Your argument is shit. Killer7, which was exactly as wacky as No More Heroes sold piss poor on gamecube, which everyone expected. What they didn’t expect was that it bombed on PS2 as well. If your game speaks to the audience, the audience will come. Killer 7 didn’t speak to any (sane) market.
The high sales of casual games does not imply the poor sales of hardcore games. The only argument for this is that few hardcore Wii games sell. The blatent counter argument is it’s because there are almost NO hardcore games.
It’s like saying that not performing an experiment proves that the experiment can’t work. - Insanity.
I agree that having watched 3rd parties ignore the DS for 3 years and the Wii for 1, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’ll NEVER try, but to say that it would never work is supremely stupid.
I predict this will lead to a second video games pseduo-crash. All 3rd parties will continue to fight for the overcrowded hardcore 360/PS3 market, with a reduced install base and mounting losses, while Nintendo alone holds the majority share of EVERYthing and is the sole financial survivor. And everyone of us here who bought a Wii will be dissapointed by the industry’s ignorance ’till death.
January 17th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
It’s all marketing. Publishers don’t want to advertise. I don’t know how they expect the games to sell if they won’t tell people they’re out there. Red Steel had a very good marketing campaign and it sold very well, and the game was mediocre.
January 17th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
@elmer:
Nice prediction, i´ll bet on you.
January 17th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
@Elmer:
Very nice argument. I think you’re onto something. Lately I’ve been hearing several developers (e.g. Suda 51, Sqeenix, etc.) complaining that with Nintendo, Nintendo wins and no one else. There is some truth to that but it is their own damn fault, not Nintendo’s. They keep building up the Playstation and Xbox brands as the “adult” systems with the biggest selection of games, and then they wonder why their one big Wii title won’t sell?
Just one thing…
“…having watched 3rd parties ignore the DS for 3 years…”
You’re joking, right?
January 17th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
What a surprise.
Publishers afraid that M games, on the Wii, will not sell as well as M games on say the 360?
It is sad because I would love to see some original mature games on the Wii. Not remakes of PS2 and Gamecube games with waggle added on, but REAL efforts from 3rd party’s built from the ground up.
I would be in love with the idea of an action game like Gears Of War or Call of Duty 4 or GTA with system pushing graphics and motion control.
Darn you publishers!
January 17th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
IF publishers want to make money and quit complaining that 3rd parties can’t make it on Nintendo consoles they’ll HAVE TO TAKE CHANCES that’s how business works.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
My problem is that a game doesn’t have to rated M to appeal to the older gamers, it’s that the majority of 3rd parties seem to think all we want are Wii Sports/mini-game knock offs or cartoony kiddie looking games. That’s not to say cartoony = bad, but it is getting annoying that EVERYTHING is like that. If you get Game Informer, they have a feature this month on Wii games that aren’t Mario/Zelda/Metroid, and I have to say if that’s the best they could find, my Wii isn’t going to get a lot of use this year. That list is horrible…heck they even put that crappy Konami shooter game on the list. That thing is embarrassing.
Nobody expects 360/PS3 graphics, but I think it’s reasonable to expect better than PS2/GameCube graphics. And it’s reasonable to expect games that aren’t minigames or so sickly sweet that you get zits from them. Please learn something from Nintendo….they’ve pushed the graphics of the Wii, and proven that you can make a cartoony game that appeals to older gamers.
At this point, I think the Wii has actually taken the “kiddie” level worse than the GC. It’s not so much Nintendo’s fault, but right now the Wii’s library is overall pretty bad.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
@ boisv
On DS ignorance I’m referring to Western Developers. I believe the highest rated Western developed DS game is still the second Tony Hawk game with a metacritic average of 84%.
In other words;
In three years, the fastest sales in history, a 60 million install base, paltry competition, brand new markets to access, ultra low development costs and no signs of slow down, More than 2/3rds of the industry have yet to bother designing a DS game that rates higher than an 8/10.
I am not joking in the slightest.
It’s true that Japanese developers have (finally) dedicated resources to DS (although I’m still shocked and appalled at the number of JRPGs treating the system like a glorified SNES). However despite all the DS success, and despite Nintendo being the ONLY game in town, I swear to God that 360 is seeing more Japanese support than Wii, including genres that primarily sell to the Japanese.
For Pete’s sake, 360’s already seen TWO Dynasty Warriors games. They get REZ and we don’t. They get Star Ocean and we don’t. They get every Q entertainment game and we don’t. They’ve gotten TWO Winning Eleven games and we’re still waiting for our first.
In fact, can anyone name ONE SINGLE SOLITARY JRPG ON WII? 360 has like what? Ten? All of them flops yes? After a year the closest we come is Dragon Quest Swords. Which isn’t an RPG. Or long. Or particularly good. In fact it’s First Person, which the Japanese traditionally hate. Guess what else; despite these shortcomings it still sold >400,000 copies.
AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
WAKE UP YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!
(this is supposed to be a blood curdling death knell directed at every single 3rd party bar Ubisoft).
January 17th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
@ ResidentEvil
I was having the conversation with used cisco earlier, my opinion being that developer support is actually weaker for Wii than it was on GC.
From a technical perspective, I’m certainly seeing that most ‘2nd gen’ Wii games are definitely technically inferior to many 1st generation Dreamcast titles. We’ve also seen the odd game that looks suited to N64. Anubis 2? Cruisin’?
What really shocks me is that I’m not seeing visual effect beyond real-time light sourcing. This is unbelievable, because one of the specific technical strengths of the Gamecube was hardware special lighting effects including bump mapping and specularity (albiet fixed function). IE, no brains necessary to get them working.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
@Elmer:
I haven’t sat down and done the math, but I can remember when the DS came out and everyone thought it was a joke. And I remember everyone saying that it would be dead and no one would make games for it and it would be gone in a year, that Sony now owned (pwned?) the handheld market.
And they were obviously wrong. What do we have? A FUCKING HUGE library of DS games, coming at us from virtually every developer I can think of. What developers aren’t developing for Wii? Or what developers are, in your opinion, giving little effort? I’ve always thought that the DS was king of the handheld RPG.
But I will say that I am still disappointed because it could be so much more. When the DS came out I imagined a role playing game where you could be in a public place with your DS on standby and it would actually recognize other DSs around you, and signal each player to a battle or a meeting or plot advancement or something. Imagine walking through the mall with your DS in your pocket. Suddenly it beeps and you get a notice that there is a level 14 thief in the area and he is challenging you to a duel. Or maybe he just picked your pocket and you caught him. And some guy in Sears has his DS out, his thief character running away with your enchanted dagger. His dexterity and cloak ability enabled him to spot you before you ever heard him. Imagine a game that mapped out a fantasy world with land forms placed and shaped in relation to the real world. Imagine your wifi access point related to the same point in the fantasy world. Frickin’ awesome.
But getting back to the Wii, you are so right. All the arguments for not developing for Nintendo systems (e.g. higher cost, lower install base, kiddie image, no online, etc) seem to be slipping away, and yet it’s still the same old story. The Wii is getting shit on. XBLA gets Rez, Symphony of the Night, and now Bionic Commando Rearmed, and we get Star Tropics? This sucks. (For one thing, Nintendo better roll out Wii Ware right QUICK, and it better be damn good. If “Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Extremely Stupid Long Name Involving a King I Think” is a bomb, then they’re got a mess on their hands.)
However, the way I’ve always looked at video games is that I only buy maybe 5 or 6 a year tops. So as long as at least 5 or 6 great games come out a year, and they do, I’m happy.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
@ResidentialEvil:
I too am sick of lazy, uninspired developers throwing half-assed schmaltzy crap at us for a quick buck. “Carnival Games” is a perfect metaphor for what third party support on the Wii is like now.
January 18th, 2008 at 4:34 am
If the game is really that good perhaps they should go see the guys at Nintendo themselves.
I reckon if Nintendo published a scary and dark game, like they did last generation round eith the above mentioned Eternal Darkness, then other publishes might start to see that its a good idea.
Otherwise maybe this developer should try out its own model to release the game as it’s own publisher.
But it’s a shame that publishers wont take risks, especially on a what is said to be a good execution.
January 18th, 2008 at 6:56 am
And lets not forget that the next Fatal Frame game is going to be a Wii-exclusive.
I really doubt that, if this game is as good as they say it wouldn’t sell at least good enough to pay for itself. Heck, why does a game has to make a ton of profit for a publisher think it sold well? Can’t it make a reasonable profit instead?? This is a crazy world, indeed.
Best!!
January 18th, 2008 at 9:36 am
I hope the “dark and scary” game finds a publisher if its good. But more importantly I hope it finds a good marketing dept. Thats what these games need. Good is not enough. You’ve got to get consumer awareness and in the case of the Wii, thats part of the challenge because the demographics are different. Its not that Wii-owners won’t buy good mature titles, its that advertising to a Wii customer is harder to do. Unlike with the 360/PS3 where you can alert 90 percent of the install base just by putting a few commercials on during South Park or WWF or something.
January 18th, 2008 at 10:04 am
this came up in a previous thread, but in a more general sense as “why 3rd party games don’t sell.”
MARKETING!!! Seriously. I watch a decent amount of TV (I don’t over due it, but enough to stay in touch) and I have seen little to no commercials for Wii games aside from Nintendo’s First-party offerings. Get some air time on G4. It’s not a great network, but it’ll definitely reach the teenage core gamer crowd.
January 18th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Year 1!!!
I think we have to realise that no developer really thought the Wii was ever to sell this well. So after waking up too late for the show they all had panic and started to rush together whatever old project they had lying around. The result being alot of halfshitty games not making much use of the Wiis capabilities.
Year 2.
Installbase speaks for itself. With the right game theres money to be made. No developer will neglect that. Be sure theres some really interesting games to see for the Wii in 2008-2009.
Im sure 2008 will be a great year for the Wii.
Meanwhile in another part of Sweden…Quizzly and his family is having a ball playing Wii Sports, Guitar Hero III and Super Mario Galaxy.
Its all about having fun folks. And the Wii offers just that
PS. Sorry for any weaknes in the english language. Im using a swedish keyboard.
January 18th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
@elmer
I totally agree. While I’ve seen one too many Nintendo fanboy trot out the “gameplay over graphics” excuse, it shocks me that so many games for the Wii look worse than most GC games and like you said, look more like something we’d see first gen Dreamcast. To me that’s beyond the graphics/gameplay argument, that’s downright insulting, and no amount of fanboy spinning changes that. Because I must have not gotten the memo that “innovative” and “fun” means paying $30 to $50 for games that wouldn’t even be that impressive 1.5 generations ago. The “fun” argument only goes so far, at some point you have to tell it like it is, and that’s too much of the Wii libarary is pure crap.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:04 am
Bully is coming to the Wii in March. So there is another M game.
Although, it IS a friggen PORT of a PS2 game with Waggle put in for good measure.
Now, how about more ORIGINAL M games.
January 19th, 2008 at 8:28 am
What about games like Halo and COD4? Those are M games, but there not really that dark or scary.
But sadly, most M games are shooters :[
January 21st, 2008 at 3:22 am
If they’re going with the cheap route every time for the Wii thinking “mature” games don’t sell or are too expensive to risk on a system like that, then they might as well stick to 2D or pre-rendered backgrounds giving us point and click games. You can’t get cheaper than that so long as you put some creativity into it. It sure can’t be any more expensive than those 3D “casual games” they like to rely on.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:33 am
THE BEST WAY TO SELL GAMES ON THE Wii , IS TO MAKE THEM MULTIPLAYER, IF THE GAME HAS A FOUR PLAYER OPTIONS, I BET PEOPLE WILL BUY IT!
January 27th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
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