The Wii's weakest link--software sales
Category: Wii, Posted: 12/17/2007 at 09:46PM CST by Frank Ling, Editorial Director
You would think that the immense popularity of the Wii and the constant shortages of Nintendo's game console would send the word out to the game publishers to develop more games for the Wii in order the catch the wave on profits. But according the thestreet.com, it just isn't so.
According to the logic, although Wiis are flying off the store shelves like free water in the middle of the Mojave Desert, game companies are still cautious about making games for the Wii. Why? The typical Wii purchaser isn't a person who buys video games on an active basis.
These are your casual gamers--not hardcore people who normally buy at least one game per month or more. The attach rate or games purchased with the Wii at the point of sale is approximately two times less than that of the Xbox 360.
Additional figures also point to the possible Achilles heel for the Wii--relatively low video game sales numbers even for highly acclaimed titles.. According to The Street, Super Mario Galaxy, which received rave reviews, only moved 1.12 million units so far. Most industry experts were expecting at least 3 million sold units by the end of 2007.
So while the figures for Wii sales is keeping everyone grinning from ear-to-ear at Nintendo, if things don't turn around, as far as increased software sales for the machine, the unthinkable may happen once the marketplace is finally saturated with Wiis-the sudden collapse of the game console because of poor revenue numbers from software.
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Its because wii sports is free. Its the truth and nothing less. And u can score wii play without a remote for 15 on amazon. I agree this is bad news, but it aint going anywhere.
Plus nintendo is making cash on the console package. As long as people want Wii sports which comes with the consonle they can't really lose.
Unfortunately, this puts Nintendo in a spot. Do they just release a new console every time one console loses its initial appeal? It seems the overwhelming majority of Wii users just see it as a Wii Sports machine. Great for Nintendo in the short term, but unless they plan to release a new toy every other year, the long term is bleak.
I don't feel a crisis is imminent, and I still think the major reason no one is developing for the Wii is because it is truly innovating and developers have a hard time adapting to that (they're not used to real innovation)
Besides, with its popularity, there's a significant percentage of the normal market that owns Wiis. True, there is also an enormous part of the wii ownership that aren't prototypical gamers who might never buy another Wii game.
We'll see how it develops. Too early to cry wolf, though
"I still think the major reason no one is developing for the Wii is because it is truly innovating and developers have a hard time adapting to that (they're not used to real innovation)"
That's a really underhanded insult, and one Nintendrones have been hurling at 3rd parties ever since the tail end of the N64. Fact is, other than maybe Wii Fit (which doesn't even use the remote!), the Wii's games aren't exactly groundbreaking either.
"I don't feel a crisis is imminent, and I still think the major reason no one is developing for the Wii is because it is truly innovating and developers have a hard time adapting to that (they're not used to real innovation)"
That is ridiculous. It's more like developers are having trouble trying to find something gimmicky enough to catch on. The Wii controller is like the iPod. Nintendo took something that has been around and made it user friendly and it's since turned into a freak of a fad. I was not at all impressed with the Wii controller. It reminds me of my wireless presentation mouse, or a laser pointer. Give me a mouse or controller any day, I like to feel like I'm in control.
"That's a really underhanded insult, and one Nintendrones have been hurling at 3rd parties ever since the tail end of the N64. Fact is, other than maybe Wii Fit (which doesn't even use the remote!), the Wii's games aren't exactly groundbreaking either."
A funny remark, because I'm a Segaist and have hated Nintendo since the SNES. You can accuse me of a lot of things, but being a Nintendo fan is not one of 'em.
Look, I'm just calling 'em as I see 'em, the past "gens" of consoles have really just been technical upgrades, the iterations of the playstations and Xboxes haven't changed much other than the specs. It's not an "underhanded insult" to then simply assert that developers have got used to developing rote games for rote spec-upgraded consoles (though they seem to have some difficulty with catching up to the PS3's high specs fast enough).
The Wiis status as just a fad doesn't really relate to that, either. It's not like that means the controller's possibilities are somehow really, really limited.
Most wii titles to date other than the big nintendo titles have been rather halfassed quickie games so not surprising most of them aren't selling that well. Galaxy is more of a surpise since it's a damn fine game by all accounts but one possible explanation is simply that sales won't be as "front-loaded" when you are dealing with a casual/non-hardcore audience. Halo3 sells 12 bajillion copies in the first hour because everyone who wants it knows lots about it and exactly when it came out. If the wii audience rally is different from the normal gaming audience they may well not have much of a clue what Galaxy even is let alone that they should buy it. What will be interesting is to see Galaxys sales six months from now as the casual audience hears about from friends and so forth. It may be that it only sells a few hundred k a month ...but keeps selling a few hundred k a month for the next year. If that doesn't happen though they may be in trouble and have to work harder on pitching games to the audience.
Actually my biggest concerns since purchasing the Wii last September stem from the fact that even first-party games (besides Wii Fit) simply aren't selling as well as they should. I myself have put off purchasing Zelda: Twilight Princess because it looked and felt like Ocarina of Time with wiimote functionality tacked on. As for third party titles I've considered Sonic and the Secret Rings and Excite Truck but some of the control schemes are a turn-off. I would play Battalion Wars 2 and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption more but the controls are sometimes counterintuitive.
One thing that came to mind today could be that Nintendo's insistence of third party developers using the wiimote by any means necessary could account for the sub par games, not to mention that Nintendo has lowered their quality control standards thereby opening the software floodgates. I can't blame Nintendo completely for this as (supposedly) high-profile games such as Manhunt 2, Call of Duty 3, Farcry: Vengeance, Soulcalibur Legends, Namco Museum Remix and several others have simply been poor attempts. Whether or not Nintendo will reexamine their quality control guidelines, re-educate the developers on proper wiimote use and use their hardware revenue to develop new IPs will be anyone's guess
For the record - the new PS3 advertising, lower price point and promises of a stellar software lineup for 2008 is getting harder and harder to ignore. Casual gamers won't care about it but I'm starting to make plans for my upcoming tax refund check and those plans have nothing to do with Nintendo. This is a problem that Nintendo needs to correct.
Mark Rein, the head of Epic games, made a pretty good estimate in November of 2005 on what would happen to the Wii and it's controller. He said, "Don't kid yourself - you're going to see more gimmicky, crappy, cheap, I-wish-I-hadn't-bought-it gimmick games based around that controller than you can ever possibly imagine."
Looks like Mark was pretty much spot on.