Wii Musing

Posted by oddbob on August 6, 2007 · Lovingly Filed Under Articles 
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Ah proof positive that you can slide any word after “Wii” and it sounds like a Nintendo product.

Chris Bateman’s Only A Game blog recently carried a rather interesting post on the shift in the gaming market caused by the Wii being unleashed upon the world. First off, I’ll let it be known that I love my Wii (oh, it never gets old!) and my DS to bits, but one can’t help notice that despite all the promises of good things to come and all the potential of the pair of machines - things have gone a little weird on the software front.

With game budgets for AAA titles on the increase, and the length of time, effort and the size of the teams required to produce these games, it comes as no surprise that a lot of publishers are now looking to the Wii and the DS with their lower specs, high install base and cheaper development costs. Surely, I should now be thinking “Huzzah! Lots of games for me to tuck into…”

Unfortunately not. In the same way that the later years of the GBA were soiled by shovelware - due to the natural progression of the hardware, the DS is already finding itself in the same position. There’s hundreds of games on the horizon and I’d hazard a guess that maybe 10 at a push will be worth investigating. The rest will be clones of Big Brain Academy, Brain Training, Sudoku, Match 3’s, Spot The Difference and My Pet Orangutan or some other random pet.

The Wii also appears to be suffering a similar fate.

Ok, I can handle the shovelware. You can just ignore all that and sit tight till the next AAA title comes along, and I’d like to be clear now that by AAA title I’m not erring towards the hardcore necessarily - simply a game that has high production values (or not) and screams “play me, play me now”.

But there’s a shift, and this is where things get weird. Publishers want in on the casual market.

The Indie casual market is huge. You only have to take a gander at the occasional info on Indiegamer from portals like Reflexive and their ilk to see that clearly there’s gold in them thar hills for the right title. It’s only natural that mainstream publishers will look at the Wii/DS install base and think “hmmm, people of all ages are buying these…” then glance at the portals and the Indie casual market and think “hmmm, people of all ages are buying these…”. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what the next logical step is for them to take.

Both the Wii and the DS have immense potential for opening up gaming to more people. Sadly, like a hefty proportion of Indie dev’s who target the perceived demographic of the portals - the mainstream publishers will doubtlessly piss away a fantastic opportunity.

Wii Me Up

Wii-me-do

As Chris points out in his blog post - the scales have been reset. Sadly, I think he’s right with his assumption that instead of studio’s opening up games to more and more people we’re just going to see a shift in the demographic they target. Instead of aiming for the “hardcore gamer”, we’ll see the money funelled into the “casual gamer” market. What they don’t seem to grasp is that you can target one without having to exclude the other - it just takes a bit of thought. Unfortunately, its a ripe new market for the shafting as far as publishers will be concerned. Instead of aiming for that “great game anyone can play” middle ground, I predict a million more games in the vein of the Indie Casual Quick Buck Portal Fodder(TM).

The last thing the world needs really, is any more of those.

This is a chance in a million - the opportunity to use the tech and relative ease of development to finally start getting some proper mainstream accessible gaming out there. Games that aren’t targeted purely at either end of the spectrum. Sure, we’ll get *some* and that’s better than none at all, but I’m willing to bet that we’re going to be party to one of the biggest missed opportunities in gaming history.

If only publishers and portals would realise that you don’t have to hem yourself into a particular niche. The Wii and DS hardware has proved without a doubt that you can pull in people from all corners of the gaming spectrum. We need to stop thinking what is good for the hardcore and what is good for the casual gamer and concentrate more on just making fucking great games.

In my Utopia, there’s room for hardcore titles and casual titles, but more importantly there’s room for those that fall into neither category. Ninty have realised this, we just need the people with the dollars to realise it next.

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2 Responses to “Wii Musing”

  1. Richard Phipps on August 6th, 2007 10:36 pm

    Mummy! This site keeps changing.. changing! Changing!!

    Make it stop Mummy!

  2. Sokurah on August 7th, 2007 8:42 am

    Yeah, don’t you know you’re supposed to remake /games/ - not your site? ;)

    …are you my mommy?

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