Another Developer Down on the Wii
Here’s another case where a third-party developer is not too high on the Wii.
Goichi Suda, developer of No More Heroes (due out this month in the US) has been disappointed with the game’s sales in Japan and sales of third-party games for the Wii in general.
“Actually I was very surprised about the reality about Wii, because before I was making this game, I wasn’t expecting that Wii would be a console targeted only for non-gamers. I expected more games for hardcore gamers. The reality is different to what I expected,” he told CVG.
This is exactly the attitude that I am afraid will become more and more contagious with other developers leading to no one wanting to put out games for the Wii other than Nintendo itself.
I have not played No More Heroes, so I cannot really attest to the strength of the game. I did however come across this review (contains objectionable language) by Insomnia which found the game to be incredibly bad to put it mildly.
Describing the game’s functionality with the Wii controls the reviewer writes:
What’s happened here is that the remote/nunchuk functionality is used to mask how terribly shallow the fighting system is. So shallow, that it is quite possible to win half the fights in the game by — get this — turning your back on the TV and mashing the A button while vigorously shaking the remote in random directions. There’s essentially only one slash and one kick, and the gimmick is that when an enemy is near death you get a prompt to “slash” with the remote in a specific direction to finish them off, though it usually doesn’t matter in which direction you slash — nine times out of ten the game will register a hit regardless of direction. And the various wrestling moves you acquire (which you are prompted to use once you’ve stunned an enemy with a kick) are yet another smokescreen, since all they do is add variety to the finishing moves, but not to all the fighting that precedes them.
I should mention that others have found the game to be very good contrary to the above reviewer’s opinion.
But maybe the problem is just that third-party developers don’t get the Wii’s controls. Maybe Nintendo having developed the technology (allegedly) just understands how to utilize it better and therefore will continue to have the only popular titles.
Then again, as I always say, maybe it will just take time for the other developers to learn to use it to the best of its capabilities.
Unfortunately, it seems like they are losing their patience with the Wii and that isn’t a good sign.
Image from GamePro.com
January 18th, 2008 at 10:13 am
I don’t understand what the sales problems of third-party games have to do with the Wii itself or even Nintendo. Is Nintendo supposed to promote their games for them? Is Nintendo supposed to do their quality assurance for them?
Sure, I’d like to see the Wii have ways to promote new games, but having a 360, I have never bought a game because it had ad space on the 360 Dashboard.
On the 360, third-party games that sell well have the same quality as first-party games. I don’t see that nearly as often on the Wii.
January 18th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Yeah, I think it ultimately comes down to quality.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:27 am
The way things stand at the moment the only good content for the Wii is the first party nintendo stuff
I think that in regards to third party games, developers know that they are catering to the casual gaming market and can get away with things that the seasoned gamers would never put up with. Casual gamers don’t usually read reviews before they pick up a game, in a lot of cases they just pick something if they like the cover. As a result of this and the rapidly growing Wii user base developers can get away with lazy design much more easily than on other platforms.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Played it. He’s right about the game being shallow… but dang, it really doesn’t matter ‘cuz it’s amazingly FUN!
The style, characters, and humor are all very entertaining. I think THAT’S what really counts. FUN. And this game has it in spades.
February 8th, 2008 at 4:54 am
In general, I think it’s not up to Nintendo to promote other companies games. If someone deliver a crap game it won’t sell, that’s not the fault of Nintendo. Just look at Resident evil 4 as an example, a super game with a super sale! It also has good use of the remote and nunchuck. So, if the developers lack good game design it’s their own fault. The controls on the wii is excellent