Wanted Designer Trashes Third-Party Development on Wii; Compares to Genesis vs. PS3/360

With their latest console, the Wii, Nintendo has boasted the opportunity for developers to have a platform which is less graphics-intensive and thus easier to develop for, and also easier to turn a profit on. However, it seems that not everyone sees it that way.

Appearing on a recent episode of GameTrailers’ Invisible Walls, designer Peter Wanat (of Scarface, Chronicles of Riddick, and Wanted: Weapons of Fate fame) expressed how it is impossible for anyone but Nintendo and Ubisoft (by virtue of their Petz line) to turn a profit on the console. He goes on to add that if a developer spends $300-$500K on a game for the platform, they will not see a return due to “how badly third-party Wii games sell.”

He claims that Wii players are “little kids and old people” and “hardcore Nintendo fanboys” who enjoy games with “crappy graphics and basic control play.”

Flipping the coin and looking at Xbox 360/PlayStation 3/PC development, Wanat explains that the profits lie there as the games made for those platforms not only share development cycles, but their respective userbases are hardcore gamers who are more willing to buy games.

He goes on to say that in order to develop a Wii port of a game made for the other three platforms, it would need to be designed as “less than a PS2 game.” He then went on to say the Wii was comparable to a “****ing [Sega] Genesis” compared to the PS3/360.

Ouch. Those are some pretty harsh criticisms, most of which I don’t really agree with, but then, I’m not a developer. Even then, I don’t think the graphics are universally crappy; every console has some duds, and the Wii has churned out some nice stuff.

You can see the entire episode at length here at GameTrailers.