Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Here we go again, again. Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has been running his own sophisticated computerative thinkonometrics regarding the effect of Nintendo's massive success on third parties, and he disagrees with Todd Mitchell's negative assessment.

Basically, Mitchell said that because Nintendo titles dominate Nintendo consoles, that a market with a Nintendo console in the lead would lead to smaller market percentages for third parties. Pachter called the prediction "naive," noting that part of third parties' relative failure on previous Nintendo platform was the fact that they didn't do much publishing. He cited EA and Ubisoft specifically, both of whom are showing more activity on the Wii and DS. If publishers release more games-- and non-games-- they'll sell more!

Shigeru Miyamoto sat down with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal earlier this month and aired out his concerns with third party developers not putting their best efforts behind games for Nintendo systems. Companies often find that their biggest competition on consoles like the Wii and DS is Nintendo themselves, but according to Miyamoto, most third parties aren't rising to the challenge with their top development groups. Instead, they're depending on third- or fourth-string teams to produce their titles.

While not every game from Nintendo is a blockbuster hit, Miyamoto says that the company makes sure to put its best people behind titles that are "designed to really support and sell hardware." Can most third parties say they're doing the same? If not, then how much longer will it take before developers approach their Wii releases seriously and start using their star teams to create AAA titles for the console?

One of our astute readers was just speculating in the My Sims DS comments thread about why EA didn't use Miis in My Sims, especially given that the Sims as they appear are very similar to Miis, and now we have an answer: Nintendo is being stingy! According to a quote in Next Generation from a producer at EA named Eric Chartrand, Nintendo hasn't let any of its third-party friends have development tools for integrating Miis into their software. Whether this means they haven't yet or they won't is still unknown.

Nintendo not cooperating with third parties... this sounds familiar somehow. We hope this isn't an ominous portent for the future of non-Nintendo games.

The Next-Gen article is not just about Miis, although they do figure into the whole idea about user-created avatars and content as a step into, and reaction to, the Web 2.0 participatory culture. It's a pretty good read.

[Via NeoGAF]