Those hoping for a Just Cause game — or any game from developers Avalanche — on the Wii U had better not hold their breath, because while the studio is in possession of some development kits for Nintendo’s console, it’s certainly not using them. In an interview with Norwegian site pressfire, Avalanche’s Christofer Sundberg says that the company’s Wii U kits have “collected dust”.
“It’s a bit sad, because we wanted to do something”, he adds. “I think it is a cool platform, but right now it’s not just up to us. We want the game to reach as many as possible.”
Asked by the site if that’s because there are too few Wii U owners, Sundberg replied “Yes, it actually is”.
Utviklermaskinene støvet bare ned [pressfire, via NeoGAF]
Comments
34 responses to “Developer Says Its Wii U Dev Kits Are ‘Collecting Dust’”
ouch. the cycle has begun.
Ouch. The hate keeps on coming.
I wouldn’t read that as hate. Just apathy.
Apathy is even worse, because then nobody will talk about it and it becomes forgotten.
Yes, let’s forget about it, lock it in the basement and not talk about it. It’s an abomination. Nintendo have completely lost the plot.
But if somebody released a big game on the Wii U, it might just get people buying the console. A lot of people are complaining about how the Wii U doesn’t have many games, why not make them?
Because it’s not their job to sell the Wii U. That’s Nintendo’s job, and it’s why Nintendo should have had more of its big first party games ready at launch or, if not at launch, then at least long before now.
As it stands, the install base isn’t big enough to make it profitable to develop a lot of the big AAA games for it. Nintendo can afford to take a risk on their big first party games in the hope that they’ll sell consoles, because even in the event that it doesn’t sell enough to make a profit on its own, those console sales it generates will later recoup the losses through further game sales. If a developer like Avalanche made a Just Cause game for it, that game has to turn a profit in its own right. And let’s face it – nobody’s going to buy a Wii U to play Just Cause 3 (or whatever Avalanche are making) because they can just get it on the PS3 / 360 (or next-gen if Avalanche are going down that route).
Nintendo need to get their own games out there to sell the console, not expect 3rd parties to take the risk.
Because they think they will make a loss.
Just Cause is a great series, but its not system seller, particularly given the fact its multiplatform.
Damn, as I was typing my response, two of you said the same thing using a hell of a lot less words 🙂
If you had limited funds (as any business does) and you had to make a choice. Let’s say that you had determined that to make the game cost $1m to release it on one platform (any of them) and then an extra $500,000 to release it on another console (any of them).
Now let’s assume that you only had $1.5m to play with, what would you do, what decisions would you make.
Sony PS4 has 500,000 units in the market
Microsoft xbox 360 as 400,000 units in the market
Wii U has 50,000 units in the market
Personally, and if I was answering to ANY shareholders, we would all make the decisoin to develop in that order and WiiU would be left out. It is up to Ninty to generate the demand for their consoles and build up the player base. They have failed to do that and this is the impact.
Also, imagine you started with a budget of $2m but half way through dev, you realised that there were problems with the idea and you had to find an extra $500,000 to pay for whatever it was… where do you take that money from. Making it for 2 consoles well where you have a good chance of sales, or cut a little off them all and risk bad metacritic ratings and poor sales across the board.
Now, if Ninty for example, provided a bonus to the developer and said they would pay the $500,000 or perhaps an incentive based approach where they get incentivesbased on units shipped, then this would tip the scales in Ninty’s favour.
It’s always just a business decision and you invest your money where the potential growth is.
If you assumed that 10% of the console owners would buy your product, then you would sell:
50,000 with Sony
40,000 with M$
5,000 with Ninty
Either make developing for that console a no brainer by making some awesome first party launch titles or providing financial incentives for exclusivity or sales based rebates or similar.. or actually market your console well??? and we don’t have this conversation.
Note all of the above is just opinion and speculation but surely some of that contributes to what we are seeing here.
I think youve nailed it. I remember thr Gamecube having a similar problem in its first year with only smash bros being worth anyone’s time
COUGHPIKMINCOUGH
True, but at the time my younger self didn’t want Pikmin, nor did I care for Luigi’s Mansion. For the first few months I think I owned Smash Bros, Extreme G III and Tetris World. Until Mario Sunshine came out that console was underused.
I’d argue that the WiiU has a much better selection of games available at the moment, but all but 5 of them are available on consoles you already own.
Once Nintendo brings a 3D Mario, a Mario Kart and something else big (not Wind Waker) people will start buying the system.
Wii U has five games that were on Wii…?
😛
I had a Gamecube. I had Windwaker (with the free copy of OoT) and RE Reboot and Rogue Squadron….
And a mate came over, and asked if he could borrow it. I said sure and I never saw it again.
And…. I still don’t feel bitter or angry. Nor did I ever ask for it back. Because I still feel nothing major was lost. (Wii U will be the first Ninty console I don’t own).
Not even Nintendo is releasing “a big game on the Wii U”. Not yet at least. 6 month drought yet again.. I thought they learned from the 3DS =(
The thing is when the 3DS came out it was powerful enough to have a few years of being technically relevant.
It’s not the best thing going around but still sharp enough that it could pump out some impressive graphics (and a 3D effect you can’t really get on other systems).
It’s only direct competition is the Vita and it’s been able to have the time and market space required to gestate into a fantastic portable.
The console market right now is completely different, cross platform AAA games are the norm and the developers who make these games only have so many resources. Developers are split not just across “next gen” development but also across the enormous markets of the two long established current gen systems which the WiiU is technically comparable to. Why would they develop games for a 3rd current gen system which doesn’t have an install base?
The WiiU doesn’t have the time the 3DS was given to build a software library, Nintendo knows this, that’s why we’re getting ports of Zelda and Wario Minigame collections rushed out. If they can’t get games out to build a install base before the next-gen systems launch the WiiU will be floating face-down by next March.
Honestly don’t know why they couldn’t just store the bloody thing in a room somewhere until they had a good line-up of launch titles. I’m always hearing about hardware being a big loss which is made up for by sales of first-party titles.
If all they’re doing is selling a platform so that they can recoup the costs of it by selling first-party games, why don’t they just fucking sell their games on other platforms? If it’s the only profitable part of their business, why not focus on it exclusively and work to make it MORE profitable?
Zelda on 360? I’d have played that. Hell, I might even have given all those Mario games a whirl, too. Who thinks a HD Metroid Prime remake would be any good? Anyone? Feh. I sure hope there’s something more sensible and substantial in the way of that kind of decision beyond stupid pride.
“its ok guys! just wait untell the next mario and zelda come out! then it will sell like hotcakes…because unlike activision is OK when nintendo does it!
I despise Nintendo’s ability to get away with murder. Sony gets derided for showing a Killzone on PS4, yet Smash Brothers can go unscathed despite being basically unchanged since 1999. Or that the last new Nintendo franchise was Pikmin… 2001
Warioware – 2003
Nintendogs – 2005
Brain Age – 2005
Battalion Wars – 2005
Geist – 2005
Bit Generations series – 2006
Drill Dozer – 2006
Elite Beat Agents – 2006
Odama – 2006
Wii Sports – 2006
Excite Truck – 2006
Rhythm Tengoku/Heaven – 2006
Disaster: Day of Crisis – 2008
Endless Ocean – 2008
Captain Rainbow – 2008
Steel Diver – 2011
Xenoblade – 2011
Plenty of new stuff since Pikmin.
And how much of it developed in house, or by Nintendo owned studios? I’ll bet other than Warioware none of it.
Edit: Add brain age.
Wii Sports
Nintendogs.
So three mini game collections and a dog Tamagotchi in 12 years… knocking it out of the park there Nintendo.
This might have something to do with Nintendo’s current stagnation.
Haha. Yeah. It is a bit sad.
Most of them, I think. I tried to not pick ones that weren’t.
Warioware, Nintendogs, Brain Age, Rhythm Heaven, Steel Diver were in-house. Disaster and Xenoblade were by Monolith Soft, Drill Dozer was Game Freak. Geist was n-Space, which I’m fairly sure are all Nintendo studios.
Exactly, but when people see the words Mario or Zelda, people just assume rehash without looking into what is different about them. The only thing that stays the same is the characters, basic controls and even then, that changes a lot as well. The only games that could genuinely be called a proper rehash would be EA sports games where even some consecutive releases are almost 100% identical. Even Call of Duty brings something new to the table in terms of content.
So a Zelda game isn’t a story of rescuing the princess by visiting a bunch of dungeons each giving you an item to complete the next dungeon? So you consider innovation the adding of various transport methods, boats and trains. There is very little character development, and lets face it the reason you are doing what you do isn’t particularly compelling. It scratches an itch, an itch that was scratched by a truly great game in A link to the past and then ocarina of time (which was a 3D LttP).
If your sole reason for playing the game is the story behind it, then I’m not sure that they were ever the right games for you.
Gimmick controller with only slight graphic update from Wii. Who wants to buy it?!
Just compare NSMB with NSMB U. You expect people to splash $300 just for that kind of differences?
Wait if it was just a gimmick why do we see sony and microsoft offering similar capabilities on their next consoles? LOL you need to get a reality check. You may feel its a gimmick like some here but all console makers see the gamepad concept as a popular enough feature to offer there own versions of it. You need to deal with that.
I wont deny the NSMB and NSMB U were basically the same game with the U version had better graphics, But basically all franchises do this and if it sells why get so worked up? Because its Nintendo? Stop being a hypocrite. Obviously there is a market for it and Nintendo like any successful business fulfills that need. Thats all it boils down to. Hate it and hate Nintendo if you want. But dont call out Nintendo for something every developer has been guilty of, hell every business has been guilty of since the dawn of time – giving its customers what they want.
The Wii was a gimmick controller with only a slight graphic update from the Gamecube and it sold 100,000,000 units. The difference is it was a gimmick that caught the public’s imagination. This one isn’t capturing much of anything so far.
They’re dumb enough to release the console that early without any “must play” game for the gamers. No 3D mario, no metroid, no zelda, no mario kart, no Donkey kong, nothing. By the time XBOX and PS3 came out, possibly in early 2014, Wii U will looks pale compare to that because the weaker graphic and the fact it was released in 2012, which gave people an impression that it’s an old console.
Hmm…. and I thought people used to bitch that Ninty was being unfair to 3rd Party devs coz their day ones always were flooded w/ 1st party must haves and 3rd Party didn’t get a chance to make their own games… blah blah blah…
Chicken and Egg problem here folks….
I’m sorry I’m no Nintendo Evangelist but if you think there’ll be a substantial graphical difference between a current gen and next gen game I think you’ll be in for a disappointment. I can barely tell the difference between current gen games and real life (only the lack of water reflections this gen gives it away) I can’t see how much more fidelity would actually be discernible to the average consumer.