Will Wright, the successful games developer behind the renowned Sims franchise has spoken openly about the Wii’s place in the video game market and publishers difficulties on the platform at GDC 10.
“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. 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.”
Wright continued, talking about the now clearly longer console cycle the industry is in: “But in a broader sense, I think that whole model [has changed]. We’ve gotten very predictable in terms of when the next console generation is coming along – it was usually on a 4-year cycle and then it was in a transition cycle… but that’s been shattered. I don’t think this will necessarily be the last console generation we’ll see, but I don’t think it’s going to be this clockwork-like, predictable business that it had been. I think the fact that people are struggling on the Wii in a business sense isn’t necessarily indicative of the Wii. 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.”
We followed up by asking Wright about developers or publishers feeling somewhat limited in making Wii games if they can’t build core experiences on the console. He responded, “I think it’s the direction that Nintendo chose to go down. I think if you have a hardcore gamer that’s 22 years old and he wants to play a first-person shooter, he’s going to go buy an Xbox to play Halo. Microsoft has done a great job of covering that market. So Nintendo said, ‘Ok, we’re not going to go head-to-head with that.’ So Nintendo decided to lean younger and they took the industry in a really interesting direction, where we have games appearing on the Wii that people never would have dreamed of five years ago. And that broadened the market in really interesting ways. I think it’s kind of cool that they decided to go off and find a different sandbox to play in; I think it’s been very good for the industry.”
- Will Wright, game designer and co-founder of EA Maxis
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