Wii Market Over-Saturated with Product, says Developer

After the release of Wii Fit, the fitness market has exploded on the Wii, leading to the release of many titles of varying levels of quality. Lightning Fish Games created My Fitness Coach 2 for the Wii, though Simon Prytherch indicates that the developer will be concentrating on the PS3 and Xbox 360 more from now on.

“I don't think you can ever write Nintendo off, but the Wii market - from a third party software developer and publisher perspective - is over-saturated with product. Consumers have been damaged by a lot of sub-standard software, so now they only trust big Nintendo brands,” said Prytherch to GI.biz. “So going forward we're moving onto other platforms, and we always have been over the course of the company. But in this coming year we're definitely going to be doing PS3 and Xbox 360 titles.”

As far as the PS3 and Xbox 360’s advantages, Prytherch was quick to point to their PSN and Xbox Live online services leading to unique connected experiences.

“For the online side it you only have to look at Facebook and the proliferation of online networking - the way that people interact now, they want to be entertained, but they also want to keep in touch with their friends. If you can combine the two, where you play games that allow you to socially interact, then it becomes a much more fun experience,” described Prytherch. “I'll give you an example - we're doing fitness titles - I might go to the gym with a few mates because I don't like training on my own. But if I could do a workout in front of my console and be joined by my mates in their own homes, I might not go to the gym so much, but it would still be the same socially interactive experience - and I'd probably do it more often that way, because trying to align when you can all go to the gym... it becomes a lot easier.”

As with last week’s story when Blue Fang Games chief operating officer Scott Triola talked about a “downward spiral” with Wii software, we believe all the low-quality software on the system has a cumulative negative effect on sales for third parties.