The Wii has been a consistent enigma for third-party publishers, leaving them scrambling to try and capture part of what seems to be a large installed base. Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello reiterated these frustrations during a conference call with investors coming after the company's fiscal report.
"To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share," said Riccitiello [thanks GI.biz]. "Frankly, I think they need more beats in the year than they get out of a first-party slate – to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like. We are building the products that I think the most highly rated on the platform and at this point in time, generating the most revenue of any third-party platform."
"I think driving revenues up on that platform from where we already are, which is up substantially from where we were a year ago, we are reaching out to Nintendo to find ways to partner to push third-party software harder," he continued. "Wii is where we are missing it and so I really do think that the opportunity exists to find different ways to partner with first party in this case to sort of help establish in the minds of the consumer legitimacy of some of these other brands when they are going out multiplatform because very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii."
Riccitiello also pointed out that the oft-stated 50 million Wii consoles out there in homes isn't feasibly reachable by Western publishers like EA, because of the difficulties with reaching consumers in Japan. "I would point out, by the way, the 50 million number of course includes Asia or Japan and I don’t think any of the Western companies are likely to participate much at all on the Wii platform in Japan, so the addressable market we see is just a little bit below 40 million but that is still an important opportunity," added Riccitiello.
Fueling these comments was almost certainly the sales of Dead Space: Extraction for Wii coming in at little over 9,000, adding credence to our argument that the mature audience for Wii just isn't there.
7 Comments
3 months ago
A lot of publishers got drawn in by the siren song of a Wii third-party market, but there's been a tremendous pullback of commitment in the past 12 months. EA is not alone in this mistake.
The real questions is whether their shifting of assets away from Wii & consoles and toward Facebook games will be something they'll have to apologize for in their 2011 quarterly resorts. Is this another phantom market, or will people really keep spending $1 on virtual farm animals?
3 months ago
Good point innerloop. I think the social games market is definitely here to stay though.
3 months ago
I really wonder the attached rate for the typical Wii gamer? I really can see many users buying only a couple games per year (usually 1st party) and being quite happy.
3 months ago
This is why I think that third party publishers need to make less Wii exclusive games on focus on porting existing 360 and PS3 games to it. They'll spend less money that way and won't require a large sell thru to make their money back or even.....*gasp*....make a profit off of a Wii game.
3 months ago
But who's going to buy a shitty port of a high-end game on Wii? The people who want those games usually already have them on either 360 or PS3. That's the problem. So I think that's why publishers went the exclusive route, to start leveraging the specific features of the Wii, but not enough hardcore gamers cared about that either, as evidenced by Madworld and Dead Space Extraction. It's a real conundrum. At this point the Wii has been pegged as serving two purposes: giving Nintendo faithful the usual IP they crave with Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc., and providing family-friendly fun with crappy mini-games and evergreen casual stuff like Wii Fit and Wii Sports. I don't see Wii ever escaping this "trap," which has made Nintendo zillions of dollars but hasn't been so nice to third parties - then again Nintendo platforms historically never have been.
3 months ago
EA has done well with titles like Grand Slam Tennis, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 and EA Sports Active, but those are appealing to different markets than your typical core titles. More and more, it's becoming evident that the audience for the Wii is different than the other consoles.
2 months ago
It's ridiculous to assume that you can slap an M on a game and it's going to have an audience. EA's Dead Space was a good game -- a very good game -- and I was happy when I bought it for 19.99 on Black Friday. Sega's HOTD: Overkill had the same problem: asking someone to pay $49.99 for a "light-gun" game is asanine. Madword is stylish, but headache inducing, and tedious. They're not matching price-points with audiences, and are making "hardcore" gamers feel like Wii is gaming backwaters: Castlevania Judgement, Soulcalibur Legends, DS:E, Resident Evil: Chronicles, Madden 10 {cartoon graphics}, CoD" Reflex... if they're not obvious cash-ins their percieved as such; they've tarnished THEIR brand publishing on Wii.
If IP's like Castlevania, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden, a Wii-exclusive 'Tom Clancy' property, Grand Theft Auto, Panzer Dragoon, etc. were built from the ground up and exclusive for Wii, they'd sell like gang-busters.
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