Monday Short – Third parties and the Wii

First off, I want to make a quick note of our Goldeneye contest- great support so far! I’ll take article submissions for a few more days (the ones I’ve gotten so far are fantastic!), but the commenting piece of the contest ends tomorrow! Best of luck to all of you!

I’m a proud Wii owner. Even with a lot of my friends making fun of the system and talking of the betrayal by Nintendo, I stick by that cheap little white piece of plastic like it’s my conjoined twin. Why? Because I love it, I love the games, and I love Nintendo. There is really nothing like beating a Zelda game, nothing like traversing tens of levels in a Mario Bros. game, nothing like exploring the emptiness of the sci-fi Metroid world, and nothing like bringing some friends together for some of the fun that can be had with the various local co-op games Nintendo brings to the table. It is for these reasons that I think many hardcore gamers own the Wii and own it proudly; we love our system, and want it to be treated with the same respect that the other systems get. We expect that a third party developer won’t announce a Wii exclusive game, and then port it to other systems, water down their Wii games to “appeal” to us, or cancel Wii versions of games due to system limitations.

You see, readers, it has come to my attention that, while third parties bicker and fight about how to make their games sell on Wii, and then complain about the system limitations or the ignorance of the audience, we really have no reason to feel sorry for them. Case after case after case, we see some developer assuming it’s okay that they’re gimping their games for us, or cutting us short on features from a game for ridiculous reasons, and honestly, I’ve finally grown tired of it.

I’ve grown tired of it, I say!

You’re probably asking, “Why so upset now, Austin?”. Well, it’s because of this:

I guess what we are asking is, if the wiiware version was clearly the least ideal version to buy, would you still buy it? or just get SMB pc. if we decided to try to find a publisher & do a boxed version for $20 (with extras) but come out later on the wii, would you hold out? – Team Meat Twitter

You see, I have utmost respect for Team Meat; they are doing something that I could never in my life do, and it’s just two of them. I understand what their motivations are for doing this, and I can’t fault them for it as people or as a company. I can, however, be upset by it. When Super Meat Boy was announced, it was said (or at least heavily rumored) to be a Wii exclusive, and now we’ve come to the point where the XBL version comes out first, followed by a PC version, THEN the Wii version, which may end up costing more than originally planned and be a retail game. This, in my humble opinion, is not really cool.

Also recently was the whole NBA Jam fiasco, and that’s one that still ticks me off just a little bit. For those that don’t know, NBA Jam was officially announced to be Wii exclusive, followed by rumors it would go multiplatform, followed by it going multiplatform. The kicker in this case is that the Xbox and PS3 versions of the game will actually have working online play. The Wii version? You bet they scrapped it, and yet they’re still probably expecting it to sell.

Then, of course, you have Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s latest game (Child of Eden) which he said would be a Wii title, but ended up being only for PS360, as well as Goichi Suda’s latest (Shadows of the Damned), which he said would be Wii-exclusive horror game, turning out to be 360 exclusive.

Grrr! Those third parties!

These things, coupled with the poor ports of various games to Wii, really can make a Wii owner frustrated, and only serves to do one thing: Cement the Wii as a Nintendo-ruled platform. I mean, honestly, do you expect your 7.0 game to sell when it’s going up against the industry-standard games like Mario and Zelda? Maybe on 360 or PS3, but Nintendo-fanboys like myself have a much higher standard. We do not “settle” for games, regardless of a system’s limitations. We’re not looking for generic shooters or action titles. We want something original, fun, bright, and surreal. Forgive me for speaking as the voice of all Wii owners, and feel more than free to disagree with me- after all, the Wii only proves that we are able to have opinions that are aside the norm- but I think I speak for everyone when I say that If Nintendo can make some of the greatest games of all time on “two Gamecubes taped together”, third parties are more than capable of figuring it out as well. Until then, they can keep complaining, but I’ll be sitting around getting lost in some of the greatest worlds that gaming has to offer.

Comment. I’ll read em all and discuss all this nonsense with you!