Enthusiastic support for the Wii has come from THQ CEO Brian Farrell. In an interview conducted by Eurogamer TV, Farrell expressed his opinion that Nintendo has it right as far as going back to basics and providing gamers with the “fun” factor.
Farrell elaborated on his positive feelings about the Wii by saying, "We love the Wii – it’s all about having fun, right? Games are about having fun and sometimes this industry takes itself a bit too seriously. If you watch people with that Wii controller, it’s just fun to play with.”
He continued by commenting on the possibilities of the Wii controller being used in a variety of game genres. “A lot of our properties, like Cars and SpongeBob and others, really map well… Potentially even wrestling – I can think of a lot of great things to do with the controller for that product as well."
While THQ has thrown its support in favor of the Wii, the battle continues between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to gain dominance in the next gen console races. Farrell welcomed this scenario and said, "It’s all about competition between the platform holders and we love that actually. Their job is to drive hardware into the market – for a software publisher, that’s nirvana. The more hardware, the more intense the battle to drive hardware into homes, the better the addressable market for companies like THQ.”
Exclusive titles on game platforms have been a shaky endeavor for game developers to engage in, principally because profits are greater with broad publication on several consoles. However, with the Wii, Farrell sees this as an eventuality. "Because of high development costs it’s going to be harder and more costly for someone to do an exclusive title. We’ve done exclusive titles in the past; we’re always open to having those discussions. I think what you’ll see with the Nintendo Wii, though, because it is a unique platform, you’ll see unique if not exclusive titles."
Nintendo president, Iwata Satoru has often expressed the direction of the Wii in making it a user-friendly game console with a fantastic library of fun games. Farrell agreed with this philosophy and stated that THQ is moving in a similar direction as far as developing games is concerned. "Our goal at E3 was to put a flag in the ground as a true next-generation games company, and I think we’ve done that. He who has the best games wins – that’s what’s great about this industry. We’ve built out our global infrastructure, we have a world-class development organization, we understand what gamers want. So once you have that infrastructure and that know-how in place, it’s all about the games."
