Wii sales fall and publishers react.
Some of the most troubling concerns about the possibility of waning enthusiasm for the Wii include whether there are too many Wii games on the market, whether gamers have had their fill of so-called Wii casual or party games, and whether publishers have a handle on the moving target that is the Wii audience.
“Third-party publishers are having a hard time determining who the Wii audience is,” says Chris Kramer, Capcom senior director of communications and community. “You can no longer say it is solely casual gamers or that only E-rated games own the space. For any sort of solid statement you want to make about the platform or the audience, there are enough opposite proofs to show that it is extremely scattered and chaotic.”
“The Wii is clearly not going to sell as many units this year as it did last year,” says EA CEO John Riccitiello, but because EA has a low-20 percent share on the Xbox 360, a high 20 percent share on the PS3, and a 19-20 percent share on the Wii, he is indifferent to what platform performs well. “I’d like them all to [do well]… but if one goes up and the other goes down, we make money.”
Read the entire article by Paul Hyman at Gamasutra.
There are too many sub-standard, let’s not mince terms – rubbish – games available on the Wii platform. Can the public have too many quality games? Of course not, but if the Wii becomes synonomous with rubbish games, then the platform will decline fast for all gamers, casual or otherwise. Conversely, when Nintendo release their typically well made games, I’m thinking of the exergaming genre specifically, then they sell them in the millions.
2010 promises new exergaming developments with Sony and Microsoft releasing motion sensing devices and associated software. Good for competition no doubt, hopefully this will cause Wii game developers to shift to quality rather than quantity, well see soon enough.
By Brett W M Young Founder of Exergaming Australia and Finland
(reposted from Linkedin Discussions).