Hi Sean,
You point out how Hudson’s current WiiWare offerings don’t stack up to their VC offerings, I think that’s true but it may be impossible to avoid. The old games were developed on a then-full AAA budget with a full team and a full dev cycle, selling for 50$ and more at the time of their release. A WiiWare game sells for 5$ to 10$ and has nowhere near the sales potential of an old day retail release simply because it’s online only, thus the dev budgets must be scaled back and the result is a game that’s much more cheaply made than the old VC game. I don’t think it says anything about the quality of modern day retail releases but I think it shows that WiiWare sequels to old games are a terrible idea. Nintendo Life has been tracking the sales charts on WiiWare and while there are no sales numbers available the relative positions might help us understand what sells well. For Hudson’s WiiWare games, their top sellers seem to be:
My Aquarium, it has been holding on to the top spots for so long that I believe it may be the best selling WiiWare game out there. It’s apparently a video aquarium like those you can buy on DVDs except it costs only a fiver and is more dynamic, you can select different fishes and feed them and stuff, not just watch a video loop. It also generates funny screams from the hardcore crowd every time a WiiWare chart is released.
Bomberman Blast, it may lack a singleplayer mode but I think most people buy Bomberman for the multiplayer anyway and it seems to offer a good selection there that’s competitive with the old Bomberman games.
Onslaught, a singleplayer and coop FPS.
Water Warfare, a multiplayer arena FPS.
Snowboard Riot, a snowboarding game with items like Mario Kart.
Most of these have absolutely no competition from the Virtual Console, in fact they may not even have competition at all. Bomberman is the only one that does and seems to be faring well enough. The VC simply doesn’t offer a video aquarium or FPSes and I’m not sure how much racing is available on the VC. These games weren’t made on bigger budgets than the other WiiWare games but by going for the blue ocean they succeeded where the red ocean WiiWare games never had a chance.
So overall companies should just realize that the WiiWare service isn’t some magical wonderland, it still plays by the rules of the Wii market. Do what customers want (a video aquarium, apparently) and you shall be rewarded, be uncreative and try to fight incumbents several times your size head on and you shall fail.
But Bomberman Blast sales is not good if Hudson is complaining about them and Wiiware in general.
I disagree that VC games cannot be matched because their ‘quality’ was made with AAA budgets. You know why? It is because the budget of a WiiWare title is closely similar to a game of that time period.
Gaming is full of added knowledge and exploration. It is hard to criticize early games because they made mistakes. They are early games and had nothing to learn from. But decades later, games of 2009 should feel superior to games made in 1994 or earlier. The fact that many don’t is alarming.
Back then, consoles were feeding off the arcade experience. Today, it seems like game developers do not know how to make that arcade experience. At best, we get remakes of old arcade era games like MegaMan 9. At worst, we get indie games or cell-phone games.
Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, and all did not require or even have much of any budget or staff whatsoever. I believe only thirteen people made Super Mario Brothers 3. Back then, it was like memorable game after memorable game. Today, it is like a wasteland. I get the sense that the loss of the arcades has meant the loss of the addictive arcade gameplay that made those older games so interesting and timeless.