Scott Steinberg, VP of Sega's marketing division, recently spoke to GameDaily about the next generation of consoles. There was a good amount of Wii-speak, including a reaffirmation of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz at launch and a tentative release date of March for Sonic Wildfire. From the interview:"There's a bit of a design, creative learning curve on how to fully exploit the nunchuks and Sega is already thinking about its second generation software. So if they're not already here, they probably weren't on board at the beginning and the companies are going to have a harder time thinking about ways to innovate and Sega's already thinking second generation."
Sega's quite a supporter of the Wii, but Scott does comment that he hasn't seen a metric ton of Wii games in development from third parties, contrary to the raving Nintendo fanboys. Hopefully, games like Banana Blitz and Wildfire can create a large enough install base to make those third-party games worthwhile for developers. More delicious interview in the link.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-29-2006 @ 9:50PM
peregrine said...
I think on one of the few people that enjoyed Sonic Adventure (1 and 2) on my Dreamcast, and I've got to say the next gen Sonic titles have me totally stoked. I'm surprised Sonic Wildfire didn't get more coverage at E3, everyone who saw it said it looked fantastic.
I think we can all agree that the current-gen sonic titles have been lackluster at best - news like this gives bolsters my hope that Sega will successfully resurrect my favorite anti-plumber in the next gen.
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6-29-2006 @ 10:28PM
student said...
I don't know, I think the third party support is off to a good start with two square enix games (thats already double what they've put out for the last two nintendo systems), and several titles from ubi soft. Hopefully more will pile on but it's not a terrible showing thus far.
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6-29-2006 @ 11:01PM
AzaMcWazza said...
Third Party games are GONNA HAVE to make a good showing on the Wii or it will go the way of the gamecube. We need to do more than 'hope' they will show. We need to demand it.
Monkey Ball and Sonic don't do it for me in the slightest. We need to see the top games the people love on the other consoles, appearing on the Wii for it to be successful. As much as I hate almost all racing games, we need em. We need good FPS's, we need the GTA titles, Resident Evils and more. Forget all the weird (To western gamers) Japanese stuff that's gonna come out - who cares. It will make it an OK machine for big N if that's all the do, but to make it a killer they need the western, mass appeal titles.
That said. I don't care if the only game they ever release is Zelda. I'll be buying one anyway as that's why I get Nintendo's consoles.
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6-30-2006 @ 2:19AM
Rabish12 said...
"Sega's quite a supporter of the Wii, but Scott does comment that he hasn't seen a metric ton of Wii games in development from third parties, contrary to the raving Nintendo fanboys."
Well sure, the third-party support isn't absolutely astounding the way some fans are claiming. It's still pretty impressive, and it's a pretty big launch compared to most. It's also looking a hell of a lot better than Nintendo's had with their past two systems. Just for comparisons' sake, the Wii has 16 third-party-published games reportedly expected for launch already, well before the system's expected to come out, as opposed to the Nintendo Gamecube's ten third-party launch titles and the N64's complete and total lack of third-party games at launch. And those are just the games we know about - that list could get bigger in the future. The system isn't going to launch until the end of the year and it's already got a larger third-party launch line-up than its predecessor did (and a larger line-up in general). Overall, it's got 20-22 games total expected for launch, with the Playstation 2 being the only released system that had a higher number of titles at launch.
*all my numbers come from Wikipedia and may therefore be completely and totally false
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6-30-2006 @ 2:52AM
michael said...
hmm to me compared to the ps3 im definately more interested in the 3rd party support shown so far for the wii, it also seems to be about the same amount of support as well. and if its anything like the ds it'll start off slow and then hopefully boom. but i think the big difference between the 3rd party support for the wii and the likes of the ps3 and the 360 is there will most likely be so much more indy support thanks to low development cost.
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6-30-2006 @ 3:48AM
Furniture said...
Do you think this affordability is going to allow for much greater third-party support on the Wii than Nintendo has seen on previous consoles?
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6-30-2006 @ 4:48AM
BPMΩ said...
Wii launch will have Metal Slug Anthology. That's enough 3rd party support for me. :D
And if PangYa for Wii does get online mode after all, I'm definitely getting that, too.
Red Steel also looks interesting. And if they're improving the controls like they've said they are, then it may become a must-buy title.
New FFCC? Yes.
I think the low development costs of Wii ($2,000 developer's kit, easier to code, etc.) will definitely attract developers. And if Wii adoption rate is like DS's, then developers will eventually be flocking to it.
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