EA claims Wii success surprised developers
By Dave Parrack
You are probably as surprised as I am how successful the Wii has been for Nintendo, selling 9.3 million consoles worldwide. But shock at this success story wasn’t just limited to us mere mortals, as games developers have now also admitted to being caught off guard by the unexpected boom.
Dave McCarthy, executive producer of EA Canada’s Fusion team told The Vancouver Sun:
“If you talk to anyone in the game industry, you’ll hear that they were caught a little off-guard by the popularity of the Wii and how quickly the machine took root in the market,”
“It was a real curve ball for us as a publisher and developer of games because it was a completely different system, [differing from] where the rest of the market was going.”
The Nintendo Wii’s control system was always seen as revolutionary, but this change in the mindset of how interactive games could be seems to have really caught big name developers like EA off guard.
Dave McCarthy continued:
“You have to understand a different consumer and a different way of using the machine, and it touches every area of game design,”
“We have to create control schemes that are much more intuitive and much easier to pick up and play quickly.”
So it seems that the Wii has actually made developers have to think about games and the way they are going to be played from the top down. For years it has been too easy for games companies to push out yet another tired old update of a popular game, and EA have been the kings of this.
How many Christmases in a row have we had the Fifa and Need for Speed franchises slightly altered to nab yet another generation of first time gamers? It seems the Wii may be responsible for changing that policy and making game designers go back to the drawing board.
McCarthy did however add his weight to the ‘Wii is for casual gamers’ debate that Akira Yamaoka, chief composer for Konami started a few days ago, saying:
“You have to appreciate the way people play this machine. It has a lot of appeal… if you just enjoy playing games casually,”
“If you’re a hardcore gamer who camped out in line overnight to buy Halo and you play everything on your Xbox 360, this is probably not the product for you.”
And he was doing so well too, praising the Wii and it’s legion of fans as major players in the overhauling of the games industry.
The fact remains however that even if most Wii owners aren’t hardcore, their machine may be forcing a rethink on the part of devlopers for just throwing out slight update after update. PS3 and Xbox 360 owners take note, you may have more to thank your Wii owning brethren for than you realise.
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October 22nd, 2007
The Wii, annoys me… People praise it but do not play it. The only good selling products are 1st party titles and that cripples the independant sector of gaming that has in the past and is currently the battle grounds for new expiarances. With 1 out of 5 games being profitable, these casual players are like chasing smoke for most devs. I like my Wii when I am drunk, but thats not enough to warrent my purchase, and game makers are feeling more pain now than ever.
October 22nd, 2007
Hey Daniel,
Why don’t you try posting on J F*#I)@*$ Schlaffer’s blog instead. He’d welcome you with open arms.
October 22nd, 2007
LOL! No doubt!
November 22nd, 2007
[...] been an incredible success so far, selling in huge quantities, and surprising gamers, pundits and games developers [...]