Thrillville dev: Wii popularity could dwindle like EyeToy’s
In an interview with Next-Gen, veteran games developer, David Braben, (responsible for co-authoring Elite back in the 1980s and more recently the founder of Frontier Developments), has compared the Nintendo Wii to the Sony PlayStation 2’s camera accessory, the Eye Toy - something novel in the beginning that people may get bored with after 18 months or so.
It wasn’t completely damning, mind you. Braben reiterated the point that developers will have to keep coming up with new and interesting ways to use the console in order to keep audiences interested:
“We’re treating all three of the new consoles in the same way that we treated the PS2, so we’re putting PS2 games on the Wii and in some cases it’s just a token effort to use the controller. Ultimately it’s what you do with the gameplay that counts. And I think a lot of people are looking at the Wii, especially as it’s not a high definition machine, as a sort of party game machine. Certainly that’s how I’ve ended up using mine, playing Wii Sports and Wii Play, so a certain kind of game will do well on Wii and other kinds of games will do less well.
“What’s interesting is that people are talking about the novelty of the Wii as if it’s something completely revolutionary but actually we went through this same process with EyeToy, which allowed for gaming where you can stand up and do active physical things, but the EyeToy as a device lasted maybe eighteen months before people got bored with it, so that’s something that we should bare in mind with the Wii. We’ve got to keep doing new stuff to keep people interested.”
Frontier’s latest Wii title is Thrillville: Off the Rails, a theme park simulator on which players create roller coasters with gaps in the track used for all sorts of airborne mayhem.
I think the real problem is that most developers are Halo-loving thumb fairies that would prefer to sit on their butts and veg. If developers use the creative side of their brains (and stop making ugly ports with wonky controls), then there will be no reason why the Wii should not last as long as the PS2 or Xbox. HD graphics are great (and I might buy a PS3 one day for the Blue-Ray), but there are way too many cookie-cutter FPS games whose only defining feature is how realistic water and fire look.
do mind, wii offers so much more options then eyetoy ever could have given in the gameplay area. its not weird that eyetoy got “old” after 18 months, considering it was always more of a gimmick. if gamedevelopers do their part and actually try making interesting stuff instead of blatant generic games, then there’s nothing to worry about.
I agree with the article. I’m most excited about the virtual console games. I bought the Wii on launch day, and after I got tired of Wii sports, have rarely played it again. I purchased Zelda and Rampage. I was underwhelmed with most of the controls. I do think the controls will be a gimmick, but with the price of the console and nintendo’s production capacity, I can see this selling well for another year. I think after Christmas 2008 the wii will be finishing up the majority of its sales.
Let us remember though, for every Wii sales, nintedo makes money so they don’t have to try and keep the system out for a long time. They are probably already working on its succesor, which maybe finished well before the end of the wii’s life cycle, but nintedo will wait, in my opinion, until the end of wii to release the new console.