Seven months is a long time in videogaming. Franchises can fold, consoles can collapse and a raft of titles that we were gibbering madly about in anticipation have been played, completed and subsequently forgotten about.
But it was seven months ago Nintendo launched the Wii's service for bespoke downloadable games - WiiWare. In conjunction with the Virtual Console's catalogue of retro titles, this plucky download service was designed to compete with Xbox 360's towering Live Arcade catalogue and PS3's anaemic PlayStation Network.
And since its Japanese launch in March and European debut in May, WiiWare has done pretty well for itself, building up a respectable wealth of titles and giving gamers something more to spend their Wii points on than another copy of the Ocarina Of Time.
Indie nation Because it's divorced from Virtual Console, WiiWare is a markedly more experimental entity than its rivals, designed specifically to bring smaller budget games to the market. The only problem? Developers have to work hard to keep their games under a Nintendo-set limit of 43 megabytes. Despite that, the service has been successful in fostering new talent - around 80% of the titles are from people who've never made a game for Nintendo before. As Ray Liotta told Kevin Costner in Field Of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come".
This raft of indies flocking to develop for WiiWare has had at least one unforeseen consequence: for once, Western gamers are getting a better deal than their Japanese cousins. Yup, with Japan only seeing around two thirds of the WiiWare titles released, it's fair to say that the land of the rising sun is finally getting a taste of the release schedule disappointment we're all too used to over here. Hey, we happen to like our revenge petty and served several years cold.
In the months before the WiiWare launch, Ninty promised us that "remarkable motion controls will give birth to fresh takes on established genres, as well as original ideas that currently exist only in developers' minds". But has that happened? Well, yes and no. The service's top sellers are a mix of traditional franchise fare and the occasional indie gem. By way of example, the top three best sellers in the PAL region are Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A King, LostWinds and My Pokémon Ranch - and it's the latter two that best exemplify the highs and lows that the service has to offer.
For us, LostWinds is the embodiment of what the WiiWare service is all about - a daring independent game sold for peanuts that makes full and dramatic use of the remote's capabilities. The game's production values are startling when you consider the teeny file size devs Frontier had to work with. But it's their attention to the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities that's truly remarkable.
They do some things that put many a standard multi-million pound Wii title to shame, letting you control the wind and guide young Toku through this lush platformer with the miracle white rectangle. It's enough to make you believe in the power of independent games development. Alas, the game is rather on the short side, but that's a price we're willing to pay for innovative development, particularly since they've already promised a longer sequel.
On the flip side is My Pokémon Ranch - an utter catastrophe in terms of selling WiiWare to the public. Effectively a glorified screen saver, Ranch allows you to upload up to 1,000 of your Pokémon from your Diamond and Pearl DS games and, well, look at them in 3D - occasionally harassing them with your Mii avatar. At 1,000 Wii points (the same price as LostWinds), it's an extreme disservice to WiiWare that this was ever green-lit by Nintendo as a launch title.
However, despite WiiWare titles' status as brand new games, their sales are still dwarfed by the enviable trade done by the Virtual Console and its stable of decades-old, tried and tested titles. PAL sales for Super Mario Bros 3 have already breached the 300,000 mark (as of 11 September), but LostWinds - which is WiiWare's top selling title - has shifted just 129,000 copies.
Ware next? So where does WiiWare go from here? There are omens, both good and bad. There's the semi-tragic tale of World Of Goo - a spectacularly promising WiiwWre physics puzzler involving the construction of towers made from, um, sentient mounds of goo. The US and Japan are getting it on WiiWare, but the European release of World Of Goo was bumped off the schedule and straight into a hard retail release, leaving us to fear for the safety of games considered 'too good' to feature on WiiWare. Now that World Of Goo has seen its production costs shoot up, it could very well come up against an indifferent public, meaning the death of a promising developer.
But then there's the case of Mega Man 9. The Virtual Console numbers prove that retro gaming is where the downloadable dollar is, so Capcom took the bold next step - developing a new NES title, the new-but-old-school Mega Man 9. The game will likely make a fat financial return in comparison to the paltry sum Capcom spent developing it, potentially leading other large publishers to look into revitalising their retro catalogue.
After all, who wouldn't want to see a Super Mario Bros 4, Super Metroid 2 or even (deep breath) an Ocarina Of Time spin-off? The leap in technology since these games originally debuted means that what was once a huge project - requiring an army of devs and a mountain of cash - can be scaled back to a few code monkeys toiling away on the original engine. We predict that it's only a matter of time.
Thankfully, it can only be good for the service and it's the path we hope to see WiiWare take - walking into the future with trail-blazing independent devs and franchise-laden publishers arm-in-arm. The Wii is two years old, so WiiWare is a relative youngster in those terms.
As for the future? Well, 2009 looks to be the year when we'll see WiiWare grow up. We're looking forward to it with bated breath.
Some ok points, some flat out ignorant statements. How the f**k does the release of World of Goo as a retail title in Europe risk the developer's future? It only means a publisher paid them enough to go for this avenue. The game still has been released online in the USA (and Japan? Maybe?) and is also available on the PC via Steam (on any region if you were fast enough to buy it before the forced European delay). This only means they have a bright future ahead of them if a publisher was willing to go to this length, while even if it fails, they still get the revenue from the online sales, as well as the contract money from the European publisher.
Also, no mention of the Art Style or Strongbad games? Sure the former are not available in Europe yet but, come on! They're big titles worth a mention for their originality alone. You could also note the problems with region specific releases via these. European gamers are still waiting for the likes of Gyrostarr to show up, though we are more eager for the newer Art Style games of course.
Also, Japan doesn't wait for games thanks to WiiWare, Japan waits for games thanks to more active western developers. They always had to wait for western games to get there so there's no change here thanks to WiiWare, only the application of pre existing trends.
Nintendo did make a "New Super Mario Bros" you know, sure they didn't go for NES graphics like Capcom did but it was still a much cheaper game to make than Super Mario Galaxy or even Super Paper Mario. Heck, look at the DS library, all those ports and remakes/updates of classic titles selling like hot cakes. Of course that's on carts but they'd probably see equal success if taken online.
Nintendo would be willing to publish such titles on WiiWare for sure, it's up to developers to actually decide to make them, like Capcom did. XBLA also became known for the excellent updates of retro games. Sure it's not like VC but they're hardly up to modern visual standards just because they enhance them to work right in HD resolutions or at times add online multi player.
Also, most every Zelda after Ocarina of Time has essentially been a spin off anyway. If they were to reuse assets outright, why not reuse GameCube assets for a prettier game? If you meant a low-end all new game, well, that would still take a lot of work as long as it's stylish 3D so I'd prefer a proper sequel to use those resources instead.
Again, a lot of innacurate statements, a lot of wondering over questions that have already been answered, etc.
I can't believe World of Goo is going to retail - I told my mates to download it as soon as it was out when we were drunkingly debating the worth of the Wii in the pub Friday
129k downloads of lost winds. That's crap. Not exactly what you'd expect from such a large install base. I guess they're all too busy playing wii sports...
@Al3x I assume the biggest problem they have with a retail release of World of Goo is that it'll bump the price up something crazy. On WiiWare it'l be maybe 1000 points for the US and Asia. Here you know it's going to be at least double that, and more likely more, to pick up on a disc.
Where can WiiWare go next? how about releasing that No Mercy remake I heard about quite a while ago.
I haven't downloaded any Wiiware games, none really interet me much, only bomberman, but thats not much different from the XBLA and PSN versions, which I think are slightly cheaper.
I would like to point out I got SMB 3 free because of the buying points with stars thing, so its worth mentioning not all PAL "sales" are making Ninty money.
If you look at the size of a lot of ds games and the 43MB limit Ninty put on wiiware, perhaps there's going to be some classics for download on the dsi? (I live in hope...)
Nice comment timmy, thats the first thing i thought too, made me lol. Who the hell writes these things? seriously... its not as if Majoras mask was a passively forgetable game, It wasnt much worse than Ocarina which i consider to be the best game of our time.
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