Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg has gone on record to point out that third party Wii developers have had a hard time finding success on the Wii. In the latest issue of Edge, he explains:
“Over 70% of third parties that are selling games today are actively making games for Project Natal. That’s impressive for something so new, that doesn’t even have an installed base yet. A couple of things play into that: People know we’re a software company, we have the best tools and internal support; and second, people who buy Xbox 360 buy a lot of games. Third parties have really thrived on our platform. Look at Wii – while it’s done really well, third parties have struggled, so we’ve left a lot of room for people to believe in the ecosystem, and Natal is a part of that.”
To be fair, a lot of those third parties developing for the Wii were working with relatively new control interfaces when the Wii first launched, experimenting with the motion gestures and trying out ideas. It just so happened that those publishers decided to release those experiments to retail, and the shovelware just snowballed. While Natal is different enough to also be considered a new interface, I’m sure a lot more publishers have figured out what works and what doesn’t in regards to motion control. We should see a higher standard of games with the Natal launch.
