Wii 'Inhospitable' for Third-Party Games

What's there to discuss? Nintendo's strategy is to target their loyal fans and a part of the market that has traditionally not been too interested in video games. You've repeatedly made posts to "bring it to light" and continuously been met with responses that indicate this.

Yeah, Nintendo's pretty much abandoned their fans in lieu of the casual gamer. A few years ago, Sony and Microsoft did the same thing to the Nintendo fan in favor of the type of person that stole a Nintendo fan's lunch money in elementary school. The thing is, the few games that I enjoy on my Wii I enjoy a lot. So there's not many of them; wasn't the same true of the XBox in its initial period? For the longest time, there was nothing but the promise of Halo, then there was Halo and not much else. By the way, how's the PS3 library looking right now? There's Metal Gear Solid 4 and... Metal Gear Solid 4. Your best value right now is the PS2, and if you look at the signal/noise ratio on that library you'll find that if you think the Wii's abysmal you have a very very small idea of the abyss.

So yeah, I'm pissed at Nintendo. Still, I play a good game when it's made and Nintendo makes good ones, so I'll buy those. Lately I'm an MGS man; I have to wait for the next time Nintendo remembers people like their franchises to get another good game.

By the way, it's interesting that one of your points is the Wii's only good games are PS2 ports and tired sequels. I just looked at your gamertag, and let's look at the cream-of-the-crop original games you devote time to:

• N+: Port of a years-old flash game.
• Bionic Commando: Rearmed: Sequel to a decade-old NES game.
• Marathon: Durandal: Sequel to a decade-old FPS game.
• Call of Duty 4: Millionth sequel of generic WWII FPS
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars: Mod to the 4th sequel of a decade-old FPS
• Rez HD: It's Rez, in HD!
• Geometry Wars Evolved: Another sequel?
• GTA IV: 4th sequel to a series; judged as groundbreaking and lackluster depending on who you ask.
• Halo 3: The first was bland; was there really a way to make a sequel let alone 2 sequels?
• Pac-Man C.E.: Pre-Atari port?
• Bomberman LIVE: NES port?
• Street Fighter II: HF: SNES port? Does Capcom even know how many sequels there are?
• Tetris Splash: Is there anything that this hasn't been ported to?

Man, I can see how the Wii's library of classic games wouldn't appeal to you; you spend your time playing only first-rate games that you can only get on consoles advanced enough to push 16-bit sprites!

Atma, Call of Duty 4 is the first to leave WW2 behind. It's not a bad shooter by any means. SF2HF is the Arcade Version emulated (or possibly a port), not the SNES.

I do agree with you that it's not about having a million suprb games in the library. Really there aren't that many games on any recent system that I think are all that amazing. Most systems have alot of average and crap games.

The reason I don't care for the Wii is Price and the low number of games I find interesting for it. Not to mention the lack of quality online play. Funny enough, that's the same reason I'm not into the PS3.

We've been through this a million times now. The Wii most certainly is getting in profits. Probably for 3rd party developers too since the costs are much lower. They just don't have that many games out that those of us fine amazing.

Since when does a game have to get good sales to be a good game? The developers may justly care about sales, but the only gamers who do are rabid fanboys desperately trying to make stabs at each others pride.

I have a Wii because Nintendo will occasionally throw a good game at us, and for me at least thats more than Sony and Microsoft's consoles do. Shooters and Sports games bore me. When a decent (By my standards, which means "Worth spending money on"😉 game comes out for the 360 or the PS3 that isn't an FPS or another Madden game, let me know. I haven't seen a single one yet. I'll be waiting with my wallet.

The only games I care about for the Wii right now (and have) are Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Sports. And the upcoming ones that I care for are Tomb Raider: Underworld and the new Zelda (yay!). I don't really need any other games right now, I'm happy with the Wii, although the addition of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts would have been nice. I still like the Wii so far.

There are a lot of games I'm looking forward to at the moment, and most are non-Nintendo games (now that all of Nintendo's "big" games have already come out, such as Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Smash Bros, and Mario Kart)

I will say that the biggest thing that bugs me about non-Nintendo games is that visually they are hit or miss. Graphics aren't as important to me as gameplay, but I do expect a certain level of quality. The Wii isn't as powerful as the 360 and PS3, but it's more powerful than the Gamecube, yet many developers are making games that aren't much better than PS2 graphics.

Yeah, it's interesting. On the 360 you've got some good titles and some bad titles.
On the Wii you have 90% bad titles, and 10% frickin' awesome titles.
And the PS3 has...well, I'm not sure honestly. The only PS3 games I've ever even heard mentioned are MSG4 and Little Big Planet.

But yeah, Wii games are extremely hit or miss. Either it rocks or it sucks.

Revfan9 wrote:Since when does a game have to get good sales to be a good game? The developers may justly care about sales, but the only gamers who do are rabid fanboys desperately trying to make stabs at each others pride.

True, however this is a discussion thread ultimately about sales. And why is it with such a large install base (the biggest of the three consoles) that so many third-party games don't sell as well as you would expect.

I think a lot of it has to do with who's bought the Wii. I think a lot of people bought the Wii for Wii Sports and think of it as Wii Sports. People who hadn't really played any games before, who could never handle a game like Madden which most of us would find overly simplistic.

As for those of us who bought a Wii for the games, well, most of us have a Wii and either a 360 or a PS3. So when something comes out that is multi-plat, we end up getting it on the 360 or PS3 because it looks better, and most multi-plat ports have less than exciting motion controls. Really, how many games other than by Nintendo have been built around the Wii and the motion controls? There's Boom Blox, which started kinda slow but has actually sold decently well. There's Carnival Games, a game most would consider shovelware, but that's sold over a million copies. And then there's Mario and Sonic, which sold far better than it had any right to. So if at some point in the future we see more games designed around the Wii instead of simply ported over to it, I think we will see better third party sales.

Thats why I'm excited for MadWorld, Conduit, and especially, especially de Blob. All three look like they've nailed it. Too bad it's finally starting to happen so far into the systems life.

Revfan9 wrote:Since when does a game have to get good sales to be a good game?

Why spend tons of time, effort and money on a good game for the Wii when you can make something on the cheap and easy with some lame gimmick or on some known franchise and sell a million copies?

Granted, this tactic is as old as time itself, but the Wii is in a rather unique position for a couple of reasons. First, the Wii is using last-gen relatively well-known hardware. Companies already know how to work with it, with the added benefit of essentially getting a free PS2 port out of the deal if they're so inclined.

An upshot of this is that the standards are lower. Last gen-games have last-gen sets of expectations. You're getting five-year old graphics. Multiplayer (or online functionality at all, such as online high scores/leaderboards) is an afterthought and usually poorly thought out and buggy if implemented at all. There is no expectation for any of the games to be 'meaty' with extra features, continued support through updates, downloadable content, or anything that makes you feel like you're getting your 50 dollars worth (the sole exception to this rule being Super Smash Bros Brawl). WiiWare is pretty stale compared to some of the truly awesome stuff that's available and soon coming out on Xbox Live Arcade So basically you can get away with even less effort than you would if you were writing crapware for the 360 or PS3.

Really, if you enjoy games at all, you're doing a major disservice to yourself if the only console [strike]your mommy bought you[/strike] you own is a Wii.

Maybe we just live in different worlds, but I'm not a hardcore gamer. I have a Wii, with a library of about 7 games, and I never touch it. Aside from when I briefly reminded myself of how much Super Mario Galaxy sucked balls sometime last week, I haven't turned it on in months.

I just like a video game that fills you with that good feeling inside. Games these days don't really do that for me anymore.

Revfan9 wrote:Super Mario Galaxy sucked balls

Well, I guess I don't have to listen anything you say for the rest of history, since you just relinquished your credibility.

Galaxy was so awesome.

Beldaran wrote:Well, I guess I don't have to listen anything you say for the rest of history, since you just relinquished your credibility.

Galaxy was so awesome.

Revfan, is there anything you DON'T hate?

Super Mario Galaxy would be awesome... If it had functioning camera control. Half the time I just can't see where I am at all and the other half the camera is so far zoomed out that it hurts my eyes to try to play. And there is an option that lets you zoom in to see where you are... That you aren't allowed to access in any place where you would actually need it.

Unless there's some super hidden button combination that I just skimmed over in the manual and never managed to figure out on my own, I'd love to know it.

It's called controlling the camera properly.

Beldaran wrote:Well, I guess I don't have to listen anything you say for the rest of history, since you just relinquished your credibility.

Galaxy was so awesome.

I also agree 100%. Super Mario Galaxy was epic freaking awesomeness! I loved being able to jump around a small globe and totally get like 2 full orbits before the gravity pulled me back. So sweet!

Revfan9 wrote:Super Mario Galaxy would be awesome... If it had functioning camera control. Half the time I just can't see where I am at all and the other half the camera is so far zoomed out that it hurts my eyes to try to play. And there is an option that lets you zoom in to see where you are... That you aren't allowed to access in any place where you would actually need it.

Unless there's some super hidden button combination that I just skimmed over in the manual and never managed to figure out on my own, I'd love to know it.

I hereby christen thee thread "Bash Revfan"

Really, if you all really are capable of playing the game just fine with how the camera is implemented in it, then you're the better gamers. You're better with gaming than I could ever be. I'm amazed at your incredible superiority.

I'm just damn confused - I never had any issues with the camera.

Yeah, I remember it getting awkward like, once, at this spot in Honeyhive. Other than that, everything was great.

So let me get this straight. The general consensus of you think Galaxy was epic greatness, yet Revfan dislikes it, therefore Revfan has no credibility, is wrong about everything he had grievances with, and apparently "sucks". I'm quite sure that speaks volumes about the rest of you if you jump on him about his opinion.

In any event, Galaxy was "okay" in my opinion. Really fun with two players, and nothing glaringly terrible about it.

Concerning the Wii's lack of this or that, and how "fanboys lap it up", or how it doesn't have "superior than PS2" graphics... It's something you'll be complaining about until the next generation of consoles comes out sometime in the next several years. I really doubt there will be a Wii title that will just make everyone go really ecstatic. Calling a game "hit or miss" is a little backwards because every title that comes out is "hit or miss".

I've made several purchases for the Wii I regret, but I'm not gonna trash the Wii. Those purchases are good for giving to other "non-gamers".

It's not that he doesn't like Galaxy, although that is kinda weird. It's the fact that he seems to think the game is technically flawed when none of us have ever experienced anything of that nature, certainly not on the scale that he's talking about. It's really hard to take someone's opinion about a game seriously when they're seeing technical flaws that other people aren't. Well that, and he does kinda have a reputation for being a downer on everything.

The fact is, if you think Mario Galaxy has a difficult camera system that makes it too difficult for you to complete the game, then you flat out suck at the game. The camera system is excellent, and far surpasses that of most 3rd person platformers, especially considering the unusual geometry of the levels.

I think what it comes down to is this: if you're trying to take control of the camera and move it around all the time, then yes it kinda sucks. Having to use a dpad (that isn't even in a place that's easy to reach) instead of an analog stick does make it more difficult. However, as Amaster42 noted above, I only really wanted to change it once or twice in the entire game. It wasn't always perfect, but really it was about as good as you could expect considering that you're always running around blocks of level geometry. So I think Revfan's problem was that he was trying to fight the camera instead of just letting it do what it wanted to do.

It's not so much that I was trying to fight the camera as it was that the camera seemed to be perfectly programmed to try to make me die for no reason (And always seemed to wait on the Purple Coin stages until right when I hit around 95/100). It put me into akward positions constantly and in most of these trying to fiddle with the camera control didn't help out much. Admittedly, it happened more often in some galaxies than in others (And a couple like the Space Junk Galaxy were absolutely perfect and gave me no problems), but its these ones that ruin the entire experience. Maybe it's just because I'm no good at jump estimation, but gaming experiences (and therefore opinions) are subjective. If I don't have a good experience with a game, no amount of outside opinions who had a great experience will change this. I'm not saying that people should follow my experience alone (as no one experience is enough to judge a game by itself), I'm saying that it should be at least considered and taken into account.

And I'm also not a very easy person to satisfy, I'll often stop using an application after the first couple of times it gives me issues, technical or otherwise, for example. So always take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

AlexMax wrote:I'm so glad I sold my Wii.

You'll wish you didn't when the new Zelda game is released! 😃

Frankly, I just don't know how anyone can say "Gee, I don't need Mario Kart or Smash Bros." Okay, there are other versions, I suppose, but the Wii finally lends net support to both. Besides, my other all-time favorite version of Mario Kart is 64, but I only own it via virtual console anyway. I do have the original Smash Bros., and there is Melee, but I don't have Melee, and the original just doesn't cut it these days.

I can see how someone would say that they don't need the Nintendo staples. I can see someone not enjoying them, especially when some of them had motion controls tacked on to them (looking at you Twilight Princess and Galaxy). That said, I've quite enjoyed having my Wii. Galaxy was great despite the waggle ad-on, Prime 3 felt amazing to me on the console (it was, after all, the game at E3 2006 that convinced me that the Wii was something I wanted), and Wii Sports, for all its simplicity, worked great and even appealed to my parents who never play games otherwise. I don't play it that much lately as I'm getting kinda tired of Mario Kart and I don't know what the next game coming to it will be that I will want. But that's pretty typical really. Before Vesperia came out, I hadn't hardly played my 360 in months. So as far as I'm concerned, they're both good consoles to have. Though these days I'm mostly playing Team Fortress 2 on my PC.

I'm pretty sure the idea that third-party games don't sell on Wii is a bunch of hogwash, at least based on everything else I've read before this article came out.