Sony's Phil Harrison: Wii's audience plays hard to get

[wraggster]

At yesterday's "Lunch with the Luminaries" panel at GDC, five of the planet's most prestigious gaming industry figures had the opportunity to sit down for light snacks, civil discourse, and, of course, to flame their competitor's consoles. At least, that's what Sony exec Phil Harrison had in mind, as he warned EA Blueprint's Neil Young that the Wii is unfriendly territory for third-party developers -- due to Nintendo's overwhelmingly successful games on their own home console, everyone else can only hope to market their games to "only 40% of the installed base."

Young didn't deny this claim, but retorted that the development of their most recent game for the Wii, Smarty Pants, was "very easy to build very quickly" and "fundamentally much more fun" to create -- apparently, more fun than it was to actually play. Have third-party developers resigned themselves to living in Nintendo's shadow, prompting them to fire out "easy to build," mediocre titles? We don't think they quite understand -- if only 40 percent of Wii owners are buying your games, it's because the other 60 percent know better.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/22/so...s-hard-to-get/

[Kaeruyaki]

Yeah, I feel like this is the attitude that is plaguing the Wii right now. We need a good, solid non-nintendo title to do really well before we'll get any sort of flood of good games.

[DPyro]

It's hard enough for Nintendo to get my money for a game, 3rd parties it would seem is pointless.

[quzar]

Lovely sentiment. "Nintendo is making such great games, that nobody wants to buy anyone elses'."

So... make better games. Just because people settle more easily for mediocrity on your console doesn't mean they should in general.