SEGA: We we're the first 3rd Party to believe in Wii

[ShadiWulf]

According to Sega of America President Simon Jeffery, Sega was the first publisher, not one of the first, to believe in the Wii. A new interview with Simon was done by San Francisco Chronicle about the Wii fanbase.

“70 to 80 percent of Wii owners are young males, and there hasn’t been much fodder for them on the Wii.”

Really? According to Nintendo a huge chunk of their profits come from females, who do I believe? I will just go with Sega, if I say otherwise people will call me a Nintendo nerd, don’t want that to happen.

I think Sega should try to have this sort of success on HD consoles and fill up PSN/XBLA with some goodies, seriously they are pretty bare boned right now, outside of some Sega Genesis games.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../e110343S54.DTL

http://www.seganerds.com/2009/03/06/sega-w...eve-in-the-wii/

[Thrippa]

I'm not a young male. Actually, most of the people I know who have Wiis are neither young nor male, and I really wish game-makers would get rid of the stupid stereotype. They shouldn't really be making games for 'males' or 'females' anyway, they need to just make good games of several different types, and they'll find out that male AND female gamers play FPS's, RPG's, simulations, platformers, etc. etc.

[Kernel Machinegun]

I actually find all the criticism of the Wii to get rather annoying. If you don't like it, ignore it.

3D Realms bashed it, saying it would fail rather easily as the 360 and PS3 would smoke it, but it succeeded by sales, but definitely not by critical acclaim. Yet 3D Realms are still "working" on Duke Nukem Forever.

As for Sega believing in the Wii, I personally think they could have succeeded with the Dreamcast if they included a good DVD player, a more different controller and released it somewhere in the middle of 2009 for Japan, a month later for USA and month and a half/two months later for Europe and Australia, respectively.

[Patticus]

“70 to 80 percent of Wii owners are young males, and there hasn’t been much fodder for them on the Wii.”

If they're so aware of this, why hasn't Sega been endeavouring from day one to rectify this situation? Securing MadWorld and The Conduit and bringing out House of the Dead Overkill does not make up for years of laziness on Sega's part. They are as guilty as any other company of publishing and creating rubbish Wii games that don't serve any audience well.

If they want to serve the Wii's audiences well, they need to, first and foremost, treat it as an equal to the PS3 and the 360 for "core" games and wide audience games - Wii games can look as lovely in their own way as any on HD formats (hell, even the GCNs Wind Waker can still compete with the best of 'em - hope it gets a New Play Control release), and they can sure as hell play as well as them.

The idea that "core" games can only be done justice on HD formats is a fallacy and the result of a kind of bigotry "core gamers" spread as they see the medium they always wanted to be accepted gain a wider acceptance (helped along by Sony's years of dominance) in a way they had not foreseen among the general population.

[Sega DogTagz]

They shouldn't really be making games for 'males' or 'females' anyway, they need to just make good games of several different types, and they'll find out that male AND female gamers play FPS's, RPG's, simulations, platformers, etc. etc.

Bah. Knowing your target audience is the first step to making a good game. Developers of MadWorld probably thought as much of Female players as Hello Kitty games thought of the guys (couldn’t think of a girly game).

That doesn’t mean that girls won’t play CoD4, but don’t bash the industry for encouraging “man” focused games.

@ Kernel Machinegun

a more different controller

Whoa, slow down there. The DC Manta Ray was pure win. But I agree, the DC could have been competitive with a few additions.

That and the fact that it was WAAAAAY before its time.

[Kernel Machinegun]

They did have great DC games like Soulcalibur, for example.

[Mollfie]

Most people I know with a Wii are boys, most people I know who actually play with their Wii alot and really love it are girls. The guys seem to just have it to complete the collection of consoles.

I hate girly games. You don't need games for girls and games for guys fffffssss DX they're just games! Anyone can play them.

ooh 100th post

Edited March 8, 2009 by Mollfie

[Indigo Rush]

If they really believed in the Wii, then I'm sure they would have put more effort into Sonic Unleashed for that version, rather than the "Next Gen" version.

Aw well, Wii version sold more and had better ratings.

[ShadiWulf]

Lol whoever likes the Wii version better is crazy, SEGA Likes the 360 version better even, they have office speed run bragging with the 360 version

http://blogs.sega.com/usa/2009/03/04/aweso...shed-speed-run/

This video also made the rounds internally here in the office, and we were all quite impressed - especially the Sonic Brand Managers!

Well, that’s not quite accurate - actually, one of our Sonic Brand Managers prides himself on being the fastest player in the office, and was astounded when he realized that this guy absolutely smoked his best time. In fact, he says, this is quite possibly one of the fastest level clear time they’ve seen for any stage in the entire game.

[Max Gene]

The Wii version was better liked for cutting out a lot of the "between level" crap to just dialogue you could skip through, among other things.

[Solid SOAP]

Except that the hub worlds were actually more skipable than those dialouge trees, which were lame as hell and didn't have fun side stuff for you to do.

[TheGerkuman]

The critics hated the mularky inbetween levels, and the Wii version cut it out. (Plus, many of them thought that Dimps designed the levels better than the others). But that's pretty much off topic.

On topic, I agree with Pat here. The Wii needs more of the sort of games the other consoles have. But well, it might already be too late for that. You know the damage has been done when you hear people saying that Dead Space will "become crap" when it's ported to the Wii. (Though it's more ignorance on their part >.>)

[Blacklightning]

You know the damage has been done when you hear people saying that Dead Space will "become crap" when it's ported to the Wii. (Though it's more ignorance on their part >.>)

I'm pretty sure seeing a simplification of an intuitive gameplay style down to a rail shooter could be seen as more than just plain ignorance, though.

Shovelware aside, a big problem with the Wii is that, as far as its usage in games goes, it's a relatively new technology, and that nobody (even Nintendo inclusive) really knows what constitutes as a great motion-sensitive game. Sometimes you'll find great games, content-wise, with either incredibly moronic or needlessly simplistic motion control that can easily ruin the experience for most (Twilight Princess, Splinter Cell Double Agent), or games that actually have a sparkle of motion-controlled brillaince let down simply by the fact that the game itself is crap (Samurai Warriors KATANA, Red Steel). There's only a couple of games I can think of right off the top of my head that could be considered likable Wiimote usuage - even less that are genuinely brillant games.

How about we put a little perspective into things here? How long has the traditional gamepad been leading games? Good lord, longer than I've been playing, anyway. But anyway. Point is, even the simple buttons-on-a-plastic-holdable-object approach has had to be refined over the years too. Yep, I can already tell you're laughing, but even things utilizing a d-pad and two buttons have been royally fucked up constantly back when it was a relatively new concept, too. Hell, the Angry Videogame Nerd makes fun of them on a regular basis. Nowadays even shovelware makers have more sense than to not include a crouching function or force you to press two buttons instead of one for jumping - because the style of gaming has had well over twenty years to develop.

As much as I hate to say it, this is a necessary phase. This is more an issue of time as opposed to an issue of design - slowly but gradually, developers will universally realize that generic waggling is not a substitute for a button press, bounding boxes are a plauge to FPS games, the nunchuk is excruciatingly painful for long-term play... hell, eventually somebody might even get it into their head that a Wii RTS is actually a good idea. But for now? It's an experimental phase and nobody can be entirely certain which concepts work and which ones don't. That which might sound like a good idea could easily be a spectacular flop (Red Steel again, lol), and the only way people are going to consistently get it right is years and years of trial and error. Exactly like every other neat idea that enters the market every now and then.

[Patticus]

Fantastic post, Blacklightning, I found myself agreeing with much of what you had to say (though I always felt TP's motion controls were a cut above past Zelda controls, albeit only a small one) - the last paragraph in particular is a fact of life that all too many people don't take into account. They see a system sporting a new (standard) control layout (true 3D, or as close as any of the Big 3 has come), see games "disappointing" most of the time on that platform due to lazy developers or shitty publishers, and write of the entire notion of motion-based control technology. You shouldn't do that, ever. Time and experience, not to mention adoption by Sony and MS and subsequent competitive refinements there, will turn it into the next industry standard control platform.