The Wii,s amazingly strong showing at the E3 convention brought a new respect to the game console as a viable contender in the next-gen console wars. In addition to its successful unveiling, Nintendo,s new console also caused game developers to seriously consider the Wii platform as worthy of development.
Karl Winters, CFO of Take Two, remarked during an investor,s conference call that, "The reception this platform received at the E3 show, you know, is one that makes us take a real strong look at it. And as we grow our sports business, there are opportunities with our sports games to extend them to the Wii system, particularly if you look at baseball where we have exclusive arrangement, as well as, you know, some of the other sports games, which would play extremely well on the Wii product; the non-licensed league ones."
As much as the Wii,s novel motion sensing controller capabilities serve as a lure for developers to incorporate these features into their games, there are other factors which make the Wii an attractive platform to develop for. The Wii dev-kits (pre-production units used for programming) are relatively inexpensive to purchase–approximately $2000 per unit. In contrast, dev-kits are normally sold for $10,000 or more. The PS3 dev-kits are in the neighborhood of $20,000 each. The Wii is also code friendly. Since the Wii uses currently available technology, instead of true next-gen hardware, the machine is simple to code for. Nintendo has opened its doors to developers in order to offer as much assistance as possible in making the process of developing software easier.
In contrast, developers were literally pulling their hair out when working on Nintendo,s last game console, the GameCube. Reports circulating among the game industry provided a nightmare scenario of Nintendo constantly changing game specification guidelines on developers. In short, games were being rejected by Nintendo because the games didn,t meet standards-standards the developers had no idea about. But this has all changed and Nintendo is making serious efforts in bringing back the game companies into their camp.
