The
Nintendo Wii is a sales phenomenon and, for the past two years, has almost single-handedly been responsible for the increase in popularity of gaming and the whole industry behind it. The fact that, even after so much time, the console is still meeting huge demand has proven that casual gaming is the biggest segment ever to appear.
But the big potential of this market sector has led to some very poor-quality titles, thinks Christoph Hartmann, the 2K Games global president, who stated that these titles would eventually lead to the downfall of the Wii. He went on to say that, because only a handful of Wii titles were actually any good, with the rest of them of very poor quality, the casual gamer would slowly but surely get deterred and stop buying any other games in order to avoid wasting precious money.
“Where people go wrong in the casual market is that, while the development costs are exploding on the casual side, they’re treating the Wii like the old PC market – making cheap, accessible games. They think if they make ten titles and two are hits, they will finance the other eight. But they forget these eight [poor] titles will flood the market and will lead to problems in terms of production – and upset retailers. Also, the consumer will be [angry] because they’ll be confused.”
The portions we edited contained some very strong content, which really emphasizes the fact that the 2K president is very worried about the state that the
Wii market is in right now. Since this wide variety of titles appeal to almost anyone remotely interested in games, and, thanks to the marvel of marketing, almost any game can seem like the greatest thing ever, a lot of people don't bother checking specialized website for reviews in order to see if their possible future purchase is any good.
Such a thing is very bad, as gamers tend to be fooled by expensive trailers or promotions and buy a game they might not enjoy. Let's hope that things will take a turn for the better in the future and that developers that make games for the Wii will concentrate on bringing higher-quality titles.