You know Will Wright right? He’s the guy behind The Sims, he knows casual games better than anyone else in the business.
Nintendo however has grabbed the aforementioned market by force, hauling in everyone from ages 5 – 100. So if you thought you were the daddy of casual games and suddenly this company starts pulling in millions, leaving almost no share for others to bite, wouldn’t you take notice? Wright did exactly that.
But even after Nintendo has sold millions upon millions, more than any other company in the seventh generation of consoles, he’s yet to be sold on the Wii.
“I think the Wii is a very unique platform, and that’s kind of its core value. That’s why it’s been so successful – because it’s pretty clearly different than the Xbox or the PlayStation. I think the Wii provides very fun experiences for the most part, but it’s kind of a different level of experience; it’s not like these 40-hour involved RPG games as much as it is like these fun toys to pick up and start playing in five minutes,†Wright told Industry Gamers.
He added: “And it’s really fun with a group of people sitting around… It really is more into what I would call the toy market, because most of the Wii games I’ve enjoyed felt more like toys than like games.”
And in Wright’s opinion, it’s one of the main reasons publishers delve into Wii development full throttle only to run for their lives after getting mired in the middle of nowhere.
“I think the fact that people are struggling on the Wii in a business sense isn’t necessarily indicative of the Wii,†he noted. “What we’ll be seeing going forward is that the console businesses will each have a very specifically defined niche. And Nintendo is just about the only manufacturer that invests in much as software as they do in hardware – or probably even more in software than hardware actually. So it’s always been a very unique platform in that sense because the biggest competitor as soon as you go into that market is always going to be Nintendo.â€
The full quencher’s through the link above.
