Gotchaye said:
I'm confused about something:
Why are people who generally dislike the Wii pushing this idea that the Wii doesn't sell third party games very well? Why are people that seem to like the Wii fighting back so hard with the graphs and such showing that it sells much more than the PS3 does?
If third party software on the Wii was selling in the same proportion to first party software as third party software on the PS3 was selling to first party software, wouldn't the obvious conclusion be that third parties are doing exactly what the Wii's market wants? If third parties are having tremendous difficulty competing with Nintendo on the Wii, isn't the obvious conclusion that the third party offerings on the systems aren't what the Wii's market is looking for? Isn't there general agreement that Nintendo's first party titles are much more appealing to core gamers than the typical (or even above-average) third party title on the Wii?
I just don't understand why the same people who complain that the Wii has nothing but shovelware apart from a few titles like Mario Galaxy and such will then turn around and say "ha, Wii owners aren't buying crappy games!" What is it that some of you are trying to say when you say that Wii owners don't buy third party games? It's clear that it's meant to somehow disparage the system or its userbase, but in what sense does it do that? How is it more than an attack on third parties for miserably failing to give the Wii's userbase what it wants?
It's a catch 22, isn't it? Looking at it from either perspective. For example, consider third party sales for the Wii:
1) Because Wii owners buy the third party games being given to them, we conclude they like the crap they're being fed and feed them more of it.
2) If Wii owners did not buy these games, third parties definitely would slow support down. Obviously they aren't going to start spending a great deal more if they're already doing poorly.
Using this logic, there is no outcome that actually fosters the creation of better games for the Wii. And while I may make this logic seem absurd, I think a great deal of publishers are using this exact logic, and we're seeing the result on the Wii system itself. This is why negative feedback loops are so hard to break out of. In Nintendo's case, they're in a feedback loop that started with the Nintendo 64, which means they've been spiralling downward for more than a decade. It's a very difficult cycle to break out of.
