May 29 2007
Reggie speaks with the Wall Street Journal
Nintendo president, Reggie Fils-Aime, recently sat down with the Wall Street Journal and talked about third party success on the Wii and the recurring idea that graphics will play a major role in the console wars further down the road.
Even though he admitted the no third party game has yet to break the one-million sales mark, they’re getting close - at least two Ubisoft titles are closing in on the milestone. In addition, while many large publishers early on kept initial focus on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and decided to create or utilize second string development teams for Wii game production, the shift in support in favor of the Wii is moving resources to development for Nintendo’s console. As the big publishers and developers start putting more resources into Wii production, the game quality will go up and the sales will follow. Reggie himself expects to see great success from EA’s Boogie and RedOctane’s Guitar Hero III.
In response to the widespread claim that the Wii will age faster and have a shorter lifespan due to its graphical inferiority to rival consoles, Reggie simply had this to say: “I guess when you’re not doing well you have to grasp at something.” After all, how’s that DS doing?
Wall Street Journal
via Gamasutra
One Response to “Reggie speaks with the Wall Street Journal”
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Again, Reggie tackles the questions with the right answers. Sales alone speak for themselves, but it’s quality games and mass appeal that are going to ensure any of the consoles’ success. Nintendo has found a way to appeal and broaden videogames to not only the hardcore gamer but also the casual, and most importantly, the non-gamer. As far as being able to continue to compete with the other two consoles is somewhat of a moot point for now. Graphically, the Wii cannot, but gameplay and quality-wise definitely. To prove this, Reggie commented on the success of the DS compared to another unnamed handheld with better graphical power and multi-functional use.
Yes, the waggle and flicking of a lot of the early games sometimes seem tacked on, but it hasn’t even been a year yet and developers more than likely are getting accustomed to the new controls. So we can expect to see better Wii games in the near future. It’s only been about 6 months since the Wii’s launch and there still isn’t much signs of slow down anytime soon. Whether or not the Wii can survive a normal lifespan is too early to tell, but don’t count the big N out yet. Afterall, it’s just begun…