Simon Phillips of Gusto Games is worried about the future of Wii development. While the success of the console is certainly a positive, the consistent shortage of hardware, the massive number of low quality (read: crappy) titles for the system and a lack of innovation on the part of developers are all cause for concern, according to Phillips.
“It does create a number of concerns,” said Phillips, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz.
“Obviously development has a huge lead time on it, so, we assume that the supply problems will get ironed out by the time that our products launch – hang on, weren’t we saying that last year? – but unfortunately it makes people nervous.
“As projections are re-cast and supply shortages effect growth, money men can get twitchy. Which isn’t great for us. On the flip side, demand is outstripping supply and I’d almost certainly rather be in that situation than there being no demand at all,” he added.
Phillips thinks that Nintendo needs to make some effort to prevent low quality games from making it out onto the system. He went so far as to characterize the possibility of a flooded market as a “massive problem.”
He of course suggested Gusto Games’ titles will be different from what’s already available on Nintendo’s console, thanks to the unique hardware. But he also worries that the reason other developers have moved to the Wii is that it’s cheaper to develop on.
“I’ll have to hold my hands up to being a little pessimistic initially about this, but the demand is still there and Nintendo has certainly opened up a much wider audience that previously was hard to reach, which is perfect,” he said.
“The best thing Nintendo can do is keep supporting the development community and we will naturally innovate and deliver. It’s great that they have chosen a slightly different path to the other format holders as it gives us more diversity, and that after all is the spice of life,” he added.
1 Comment to Product Shortages, Low Quality Titles Concern Wii Developer
by: Jeremiah
On October 17, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Finally, someone sees the same issue with Wii games as I do! It frustrates me to open up a gaming magazine and see a huge number of awesome games coming out for 360 and PS3, then only a few and mostly cruddy games for the Wii. Its almost as if game companies think that since the Wii is not high on graphics, that they can shell out any game that they want to and expect it to sell. It just isn’t fair to Nintendo. I mean, think about it. What Wii games can you think of that are really solid and of high quality that are not made by Nintendo, not a remake, and exclusive to the Wii? They are probably out there, I just cannot think of one at the moment.