I've been engaged lately in a lively conversion over on the Smash World Forums about whether or not there are any good Wii games coming out. I, predictably, came out in full force to defend the Wii, citing Guitar Hero: World Tour, Tenchu, and Fatal Frame. Others there picked apart the Wii's lacking graphical capabilites (have they even seen Mario Galaxy?!), historically shoddy third-party support (I'll cover that one in a bit), and less-than-desirable online gameplay (okay--they can have that one). Obviously, there was no clear winner in a discussion such as this, but I happen to think that us Wii-defenders fared pretty well. Here's to hoping we're not going to end up like those Dreamcast guys...*shudders*
The way I see it, the Wii's current "lack" of "good" games is a product of a few different elements that have come together to create a relative drought, but certainly not a permanent one.
Reason 1.) Nintendo was predictably tight-lipped in the months leading up to the Wii's launch, and from what I've heard that included developers. The dev kits most companies were working with were little more than Gamecubes and TV remotes. Most developers didn't get their hands on the Wii until we as consumers did. A lot of companies were just thinking it'd be another 360, so when it turned out that the Wii was less powerful than originally predicted, a great deal of scaling back had to take place. Add to that the fact that the Wii's specs have still not been officially released as far as I'm aware of, and you've got a machine that developers were stuck with on day one trying to figure out for themselves.
PS3 developers just began using the same graphics that they had been using on the 360, even though the PS3 is the technically superior console. To date, they've still been using essentially the same graphical engines that drive 360 games. The Wii hasn't had the benefit of an existing engine to drive it's graphics (unless you count the PS2. Urghhh...) so it's engines have had to been built from the ground up.
Reason 2.) Developers only started to realize that not only was the Wii the current-gen leader, but also that it was here to stay around the middle to end of 2007. Assuming that a good game will take roughly 1 1/2-2 years to develop, we will just start seeing the first fruits of that labor near the end of this year. Conversely, we've seen a Wii market flooded by casual games because they take a great deal less time to develop. Time will deliver hardcore games to the console yet, if gamers would just be patient.
Reason 3.) Casual games sell consoles, it's as simple as that. It's the not-quite-gamers who only want a system for one or two games that create a market share. Then, it's that market share that they've created that drives developers to make hardcore games for the console.
Take my mother, for example. She purchased a DS for the sole purpose of playing Animal Crossing--no ambition of further great games that would be released, no worries about how it looks that she owns the system, just a desire to play Animal Crossing. Yet, that DS she bought shows up on sales charts and makes developers look and say, "Wow, with this many DSs sold, we might be able to develop a game and sell it." They know that not every single person who bought a DS will buy their game, but if only a million people do, they've got a hit.
That, in a slightly large nutshell, is what the discussion consisted of. I just implore any Wii owners to just wait a bit longer--the games are coming. Patience.
D Haines
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