Sony: Nintendo 1st Party Games So Good, Nothing Else Sells

[|darc|]

At the "Lunch with the Luminaries" luncheon at GDC this year, Sony's president of worldwide studios Phil Harrison told EA Blueprint's Neil Young that making Wii games may not be as viable as third-party publishers think.

Due to competition with Nintendo's unstoppable games, according to Harrison, who was speaking at the invite-only press lunch: "Your addressable market is only 40% of the installed base."

Young countered that EA's recent successful Wii title Smarty Pants, which had its gestation in meetings at the last GDC less than a year ago with developers Planet Moon, was "very easy to build very quickly."

The EA executive suggested that it was "...fundamentally much more fun... almost like Xbox Live Arcade [development] to some degree" - he feels that's where the Wii's strength lies

What the hell kind of logic is this?

If you make a good game and people have the system it's for, they'll buy it. That means EA needs to make good games, not shit (compared to Nintendo's software).

[Veggita2099]

Maybe they are talking about cases where a person owns a Wii and/or PS3. I know I personally would buy the game on the 360 or PS3 because it will have better graphics. Others probably would rather have a Ps3/360 version of it since the Ps3/360 isn't scared to death to let people use the internet for on-line play. Also how many games on the Wii have additional content available via download?

I have played a few 3rd party games on Wii and none of them appealed to me. Only good games on it IMO are the ones made by Nintendo. Other companies just make games more difficult trying to be creative with the Wii-mote (Sonic and the secret rings for example, or the wii-mote controls for Nights).

[|darc|]

Maybe they are talking about cases where a person owns a Wii and/or PS3.

I don't think so, because the the point was that Wii people will only buy Nintendo stuff, if they had a PS3 they obviously would be buying more stuff than only Nintendo titles

Sorry if I didn't make sense, I'm a little drunk right now, hope I was clear enough

[FiendWithoutAface]

Sony is commenting on the fact that any developer that puts out software for the Wii will have to compete with arguably the best developer in the world (Nintendo) and that creates a problem for 3rd party developers in that they will have to put Ass Kicker 4 up against the likes of Mario and Link. Unless Ass Kicker 4 has some clever marketing and is an improvement over the other three Ass Kicker games then said 3rd party developer may not get the sales they want from Wii consumers.

[Covar]

its funny how no one had this problem on the super nintendo or nes. different buying habbits or quality of games?

[melancholy]

So a company has to go against the one of the best developers in the world. That 'best developer' puts out a game about every 3-4 months. That's not enough games to steal the thunder of third party developers. Any company could easily make a stellar game and get the same amount of attention as a Nintendo-created game.

The real problem lies in the games third parties opt to make instead. It's actually quite ironic, the most innovative system of this generation has hands-down the most generic uninspired crap for third party releases of any major console. They give their big heavy-hitting releases on 360 and PS3, and then make yet another crappy party game for Wii. And then they complain how Nintendo takes their sales.

[Dreamcast4life]

Sadly this problem may kill the wii. I have a feeling the crap released on wii people will buy and the money companies make from the garbage will be used for kick ass games the wii will never see.

So much potential being wasted because companies don't give a damn about wii. They are just going to continue making garbage while nintendo brings out the best wii titles.

[Ex-Cyber]

I don't think it's that third-party Wii games look bad compared to Nintendo ones. I think it's that some publishers see a console positioned for "casual" gamers, with cheap development cost, and think they can get away with phoning it in. This seems to be happening on DS to some degree...

[Veggita2099]

its funny how no one had this problem on the super nintendo or nes. different buying habbits or quality of games?

Less competition back then. The only two popular systems was SNES and Genesis. Both of them offered just about the same features. I don't know all the details but I don't think one was any better (or more/less costly) to develop for then the other. Another good thing to point out is during that era both Sega and Nintendo was releasing good games. I may be wrong but I don't think it would take as much effort to make a multi platform game between Genesis/SNES as it would to make one that fits the Wii/PS3/360.

I am probably missing something but for the most part there are not a lot of must have 1st party titles for the Ps3/360 right now? Most of the better selling games have been 3rd party haven't they? When you look at the Wii games like Mario, Metroid, and Zelda are all the best sellers?

[Christuserloeser]

A solution would be if Nintendo came up with a system similar to what they did for the NES and SNES to ensure quality.

Since however they are aiming on reaching smaller independent developers (in Japan), they probably should enforce a quality control only on major companies like EA.

[mankrip]

its funny how no one had this problem on the super nintendo or nes. different buying habbits or quality of games?

Try playing the SNES and Genesis game libraries again. I noticed that most games on any of them are just crap. By the way, all of SNK's fighting games for the Neo-Geo prior to Samurai Shodown are just awful. Maybe the consumers have learned to demand more quality.

[Christuserloeser]

Since quite a while I am playing more MD/G games again, mostly on real hardware. - There's a lot of garbage but also a lot of very enjoyable games. Most of them are by Sega and their smaller 2nd party developers (Compile, Technosoft, etc.), but there also are excellent games by Taito, Namco, Capcom and Konami; - and the later European releases by former Amiga developers are interesting too.

Since I love Japanese games, the SNES probably has the biggest library of interesting games, and most are excellent.

- The NES has a great library of very playable games too. Note that I am not saying they all are better than today's games, but most of them are at least playable. - Compare that to the VCS2600!

I think the "problem" is that today we got hundreds and thousands of games to choose from, so you just tend to get bored quickly.



Anyway, back on topic: The Wii also aims at smaller developers with a tight budget. It doesn't really matter if the major companies don't make the money they want if they flood the market with cheap software; there's still room for smaller developers to develop and publish a successful game.