 |
|
|
| |
Opinion: What Went Wrong With WiiWare, DSiWare, & PSP Minis?
by Ryan Langley [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
|
|
| |
|
January 11, 2010
|
| |
[In this detailed analysis, editor Ryan Langley of Gamasutra sister site GamerBytes looks back at 2009's downloadable console games to determine why WiiWare, DSiWare, and PSP Minis are languishing -- at least from an online press and attention point of view -- while Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network are thriving.]
Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network have firmly established themselves as successful gaming platforms, capable of supporting a diverse ecosystem of titles. But after more than a year of operation, Wii's WiiWare still has difficulty attracting the same attention online.
2009 saw the debut of yet more downloadable console game programs, this time for handhelds: DSiWare, exclusively for Nintendo's new DSi, and PSP Minis, for all models of PSP as well as PlayStation 3. Since launch, proprietors Nintendo and Sony have faced significant challenges establishing a reputation for -- or even awareness of -- their new services.
So what went wrong?
WiiWare and DSiWare
The Wii and DS brought more games to the digital table than the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network this year, but actually engendering interest in the two platforms is becoming more and more difficult by the day.
There are many people at fault for this. Nintendo itself seems so secretive about the weekly releases that it's become a frustration for gaming websites, even those like GamerBytes that exclusively cover the console downloadable sphere. In the last month or so alone, some 10 new titles have been released in the United States on a weekly basis, but we'd never even previously heard of some of them.
WiiWare games often come out the same day they’re announced, and the only pieces of media Nintendo gives the press are screenshots like these:
 
Believe it or not, that is the resolution at which these screenshots are officially released. How am I meant to make a decision on buying a game when the only screenshots available are thumbnails? I can't let readers know more about these games when I'm not given the tools I need.
Developers are also often to blame. Most WiiWare and DSiWare games have been self-published, or published by, say, a German publishing label that has no pull in North America. A lot of these companies completely underestimate the need to engage in public relations. That's not how this needs to work.
Take some upcoming releases by Nintendo on DSiWare. There have been three DSiWare games developed by Q-Games and published by Nintendo. Q-Games is well known for its successful PixelJunk titles on the PlayStation Network, so having such a pioneering developer on DSiWare's side should be something for Nintendo to celebrate.
Instead, the studio's first release, DigiDrive, just popped up one day without even an official announcement. The same thing happened with Reflect Missile and Star Ship Patrol, which just came out in Europe. All of these games are set for release in North America some time during January, but outside of them having being named, there have been no publicity or press releases regarding the games.
To make matters worse, Nintendo has determined that each game must be renamed for the North American and European territories. In the global space that is the internet, all that does it cause mass confusion. Reflect Missile is Trajectile in North America. Intersect is DigiDrive. This creates havoc when trying to find reviews or update database websites like Giant Bomb. It's completely unnecessary.
In terms of independently-published games, let's look at Glow Artisan, a new DSiWare title that was released on the 28th of December. Prior to its release, there were only two other places the game was ever mentioned: it was entered in the Independent Games Festival Mobile, where it was one of 172 entries -- meaning nobody would ever actually come across it naturally -- and it was announced on developer Powerhead Games' official blog with a press release a week before launch. At no point does it appear that the announcement was sent to wire services like GamesPress or fan sites like GoNintendo. Nobody knew of Glow Artisan's existence.
And apparently the game is really good. I wouldn't even know but for a single website's review -- and that review was only conducted because the site reviews every single game. Nothing about the game inherently suggests that I should trust the developer of Mary Kate and Ashley games. Powerhead need to convince someone, otherwise Glow Artisan is just another random game on the DSiWare schedule that will get no attention.
Other developers of downloadable games for Nintendo systems haven't helped themselves with their lack of real innovation. There are at least eight Sudoku games on or coming to DSiWare. There is no reason why there need to be so many essentially identical games -- except that they're easy, they're cheap, and two guys can make one in a couple of months. That's not how this new medium should be used, and it makes the whole platform look bad. It makes it feel like the bin of "101 games" discs at a 99-cent shop.
There were plenty of great games on WiiWare and DSiWare this year -- Swords & Soldiers, NyxQuest, Lost Winds 2, Excitebike World Rally, and Mighty Flip Champs, to name a few -- but it's been difficult to get the word out.
In 2010, Nintendo needs to man up and take its downloadable platforms in a new direction. Although some people seem to think that Nintendo's consumers are so 'casual' that they don't read the Internet or check out info or review sites, we think those type of customers are much more likely to stick to retail-only game buying.
And in any case, even the most casual consumers need some criteria to make a purchase. Demos are a great start, but let's hope they continue on that path. And developers need to take charge too. Get the word out there.
The PlayStation Minis
The PlayStation Minis program has been riddled with problems from the start. It's been fascinating to see it all unfold, but there are some quality titles which, much like many on WiiWare, are completely overlooked based on their platform.
The first problem is that Sony didn't announce the ability to play these games on the PS3 as soon as they came out. It's clear why -- Sony wanted to push the program out alongside the PSP Go to promote its new hardware revision -- but this introduced confusion into the marketplace.
Due to some odd circumstance, certain Minis will only be available on the PSP and not the PS3. Tetris from Electronic Arts is the first culprit -– EA holds the handheld rights to Tetris, but not the console rights. I would imagine Pac Man Championship Edition may have the same problem, as Microsoft has exclusive home console rights for the game during this console cycle.
Another bizarre inconsistency is that Sony Computer Entertainment Japan has forgone the PSP Minis program entirely, meaning a third of the possible base of owners of PSPs and PlayStation 3s right now cannot go out and buy a Minis game. If your worldwide company cannot unanimously agree to allow a service to exist, something is wrong.
This means many of the "PSN Exclusive" PSP games that have come out recently, like Thexder Neo, Loco Roco Midnight Carnival, and Elemental Monster TD, skip the Minis line and go straight to the big list of regular retail games for download. I imagine Tetris would have gone the same route had Electronic Arts actually been aware of this state of affairs from the beginning.
We also now know why Minis cannot use certain functions like multiplayer: The functionality of the PlayStation 3 and PSP platforms are so vastly incompatible that it would never work. Unfortunately, that's a big missed opportunity, particularly with all the puzzle games coming to Minis that would improve considerably by having online leaderboards. It also means that playing these games on the PlayStation 3 won't allow local multiplayer features or use of the second analog stick.
And yet, despite all these blunders, there are still quite a few great games on the platform -– Blast Off, Let's Golf, Cubixx, Zombie Tycoon, and more to come -- but thanks to the lack of a good PR push, and the large volume of cheap iPhone ports, websites are losing interest fast. Their editors already have iPhones; why would they bother playing a PSP Minis title when they'll probably be able to get the same game for 99 cents in a month's time?
Sony's weekly store updates on the North American and European PlayStation Blogs aren't helping either. PSP Minis are relegated to the end of the list, usually without a description of what the game actually is. It's hard enough to get people to open up the store at all on their PlayStation 3 systems, let alone to check out the new PSP Minis releases.
I hope that Minis developers take a stand in 2010, creating truly original content made for the PSP and PlayStation 3 platforms -- not just straight ports of iPhone titles, not just myriad identical puzzle games. What the program needs are clever, cheap games that work on both host platforms -- and a good push.
[Full disclosure: I do work for Halfbrick Studios, who has worked on PSP Minis titles. This is an opinion piece based on my thoughts prior to joining that studio.]
|
| |
|
|
The Wii from what I've seen gets more use as a hacked system running home-brew than it does for much of anything else. Their Virtual Console offerings consist of 'classics' that not many people really care about or want to play, and there are only a handful of WiiWare titles that are of actual substance and/or worth.
I am canadian and Sony's offerings in canada are below sub-par so I can't comment on that with any measure of accuracy.
I do hope they fix this so there is some more room for competition and innovation between these platforms
The problem with Nintendo is that they're very inflexible: they dislike change or experimentation (and for those who point to the Wii: it may have been a revolution in the marketplace, but the hardware follows the tried and tested "cheap components used in novel ways" principle which started with the Game and Watch stuff in the eighties and was followed up with the Gameboy and DS).
(an alternative viewpoint could be that the Wii has been so successful as a standalone gaming device that there hasn't been any need for Nintendo to innovate further with their online featureset: they just need to keep throwing marketing budget at the lifestyle/casual demographics.)
The WiiWare and their retro sections are badly designed, slow to load and offer minimal useful information - as per the article above, the screenshots are of no use and there's a longstanding resistance within Nintendo to the use of demos. They may have started to experiment with enabling demos for WiiWare games, but I suspect it's too little, too late.
I'd also argue to a degree with the idea that WiiWare developers need to spend more effort on marketing. Obviously, every little helps, but what's really needed is a centralised, standardised information feed.
Interestingly, Nintendo's WiiWare website is actually making some progress on that front - and it also appears to offer gameplay videos - it's a bit of a shame that (when last I checked, at least) these aren't available from the shopping channel. I'd also like to understand what the default sort option is - where and how is this "buzz" calculated?
None of this is to say that Microsoft are perfect, but they have managed to learn from experience and evolve the marketplace: demos have always been available, as have full-size screenshots and there's a lot of useful sorting options on both the marketplace and xbox.com views - user ratings, download counts, release date, etc...
There are no demos of the game or games I am interested in. I'm used to that by now since demos were never part of the equation with Nintendo (until recently that is). So what is actually offered? Basically a leap of faith purchase option! The best product description I can find is some PR bullshit paired next to tiny screenshots that cannot even be enlarged. If I want more information on this game I need to hop to a separate channel, the Nintendo Channel, and from there try and find the game again. There isn't even a guarantee that a video will exist, and if one does exist, there is a strong chance that it is only a launch teaser trailer containing very little gameplay. It's so hilariously tedious that it's easier to never spend money with the service.
Finding reviews is next to impossible. I would settle for user ratings or reviews at this point, but we are already aware of Nintendo's hesitation to outright fright when it comes to allowing users interact with one another.
Such a huge overhaul is needed with their marketplace that I honestly don't see it happening until their next console.
Unfortunately, I don't see Nintendo changing the marketplace for their next console, for the simple reason that the casual/lifestyle market offers far more profit for the same effort. Put simply, WiiWare isn't worth actively investing in.
On the other hand, if the casual market stops being a cash cow (e.g. market saturation, player ennui, competition from Microsoft/Sony), Nintendo may find themselves back in the Gamecube-era position of having to try and bring back the hardcore gamers. Whether or not that'll happen quickly enough to turn WiiWare into a mass market feature is debatable...
Many gamers aren't giving Nintendo the time of day. The majority of XBLA games don't really get much more marketing than WiiWare games, but they get a lot more people playing and talking about them. There are more people on the internet talking about WiiWare who haven't played the games than those who have.
Nintendo has a negative bias against it at the moment, and that is definitely falling down on it's downloadable games as downloadable games are more likely to be purchased by those who connect their consoles to the internet (those who are more core gamers).
Most of the other issues noted are true:
- Nintendo could do more marketing for the service (though they have advertised the latest Pokemon WiiWare game on TV...which may bode well for the future)
- Nintendo hopefully will further consider demos
- Game Developers need to improve the marketing of their games (sadly, most of them don't have the money to do this, if they are able to get a press release out they feel good...and they don't have the a press list to email it to even if they do it)
- Developers are making a wider variety and quantity of games on WiiWare/DSiWare, which means there is a greater amount of stuff that is niche and garbage (from some people niche also equals garbage)
- The Wii Shop Channel interface is somewhat difficult to navigate, lacks user information (some is found on the Nintendo Channel...a totally different place!), and it isn't pretty - it's a fairly sterile gray on gray with more buttons and text than pictures
- Nintendo follows the money trail - WiiWare, like XBLA & PSN, feels good about creating games that generate a million dollars in revenue. Nintendo generates millions of dollars on its games that miss the mark (WiiMusic sold in the millions of copies, which would make you guess it's in the 10s of millions in reveue). With games like Excitebike on WiiWare, Nintendo is still clearly supporting the service with some of its best content, but they have to wonder at the financial potential. Certainly it's very small compared to retail
Notably, the arguments are mostly about the need for more awareness, not the need for more good games, which is certainly a step beyond how the media portrayed WiiWare a year ago. I think that change should be appreciated for what it is, along with the the need for more improvement in the service. Last year you could name most of the good WiiWare games without forgetting any, this year there are so many good games on the service it's hard to remember them all.
I'm hoping that Nintendo continues to improve the service for the coming year...though I think that overcoming the bias and apathy is really the number one issue facing them, and I don't know that they can win that battle.
I'm one of those cases. I know I could work around the system, but I don't bother. I ran out of space, I cleaned up, I ran out again, I cleaned up enough to use the memory to save games that come on Disc. I'm not bothering with anything else on the system. when the competition not only has more space, they have demos, reviews, screen shots, and more. There isn't a reason to bother with the Wii aside from a few Nintendo exclusives and the few games that are only on the Wii for some reason.
It's slow, poorly organized and did I mention slow?
Oh, it's also slow!
Also, it seems to me that a large percentage of Wii owners are non-gamers who either don't know the wiiware channel exists, or they are complete strangers to DLC.
VERY true, IMO
"Sony's weekly store updates on the North American and European PlayStation Blogs aren't helping either. PSP Minis are relegated to the end of the list, usually without a description of what the game actually is."
I am not sure the store update is necessarily the place for describing the games in detail. I think Sony should push all developers to put up at least one post on the blog about their game prior to it being published on the store. For example the post on Alien Zombie Death linked below. Then in the store update post each title could link back to the post that describes that title.
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/01/06/alien-zombie-death-on-psn-this-week/
The blog posts would generate interest in the title prior to release and provide an appropriate place for media (images, videos and the like). It also presents a great opportunity for the developer to interact gamers via the comments section.
The trouble with the Sony blog (at least for me) is that it's so dominated by PS3 news. Since I don't have one, only a PSP, and news for that is so sporadic, there's little point in following it.
Then check out promotion that each platform holder makes for these menus, including simplicity of connecting to WiFi, steps to activate accounts, etc.
I went through development and publishing of hundreds of digital games over the past 7 years on variety of platforms and developed several online stores and shopping dashboards.
Compare streamlined Casual Games dashboard (e.g. even mediocre Real Games and better solutions like BFG), Amazon, Xbox Marketplace, PSN and **iWare.
WiiWare and DSiWare navigation should be showcased as a usability disaster masterpiece.
There are FUNDAMENTAL errors in USABILITY, USER PERCEPTION that have FOREVER spoiled experience for MILLIONS of players. Once you try it and find unusable, you'll have to work hard by saying "guys, we have improved and streamlined experience".
Even if I want to buy a pack of games, there's no chance I could do it, you have to wait like 10 minutes to buy 1 game.
They don't provide receipts of purchase to my e-mail address, I can't even make a complete photo receipt of my purchase.
Sony is almost there yet, but not quite.
Many years have passed, there are no screenshots of the games in a PS Store.
PSP PC software is built on top of a clumsy media manager that has PSN Store as one of the tabs that you have chance not to find, plus its installation is one of the worst on earth.
Meanwhile Xbox rocks. Buy games instantly via web, background downloads and much more.
Then check out search and ranking features on each system.
Now, think of the industry standards. One click purchase, single-step registration with verification of account via association of payments versus dozens of EULAs and confirmations that make you cry: "I REALLY FUCKING WANT TO BUY SOMETHING!!! PLZ!!!".
I have to say that the setting up of our PC based “Get Games” digital download service was perhaps simpler to bring to fruition than some of our excursions into these new digital frontiers. What we would love is direct to consumer opportunities, viral marketing and canny thinking – perhaps difficult to get to with companies used to operating more of a “walled garden” service.
My view is that Mastertronic were perhaps too late out of “boxed” thinking” to exploit the XBLA. The three boxed games first route to a publishers XBLA license is tough, but more to the point I feel this new hardcore area has very demanding consumers. The bar has been raised by companies like Team 17 who can now place significant investment into the XBLA area.
So Microsoft offer what is an undisputed winner for the hard core audience, for companies like Team 17 (and others) I can see that they really do “deliver” their marketing both for and with them. Thus, they are better prepared and drilled than some of the new entrants into the direct to consumer areas. Where competition can be as fierce as it is in XBLA it is sometimes wise to move on and explore your own “Blue Ocean Strategy” looking for less congested areas.
Apple knocked down a lot of the mobile industry based walled gardens. With the iPhone service there is a lot of content to compete with, but I have to say that on their virtually automated process to market I have been impressed by the simplicity of their process. Here we hit one the major issues of a crowded deck, standing out from the crowd. So low entry costs but again fierce competition- also a very tough area in terms of “marketing.”
Even if you have the correct Online details for the sites to promote your game, outside the USA you have no “redeem codes” to even facilitate promotional copies. (50 codes US store only-Europe you need iTunes gift cards or ad hoc builds, of which you get 100 a year) no doubt Apple Europe will fix this but I raise this point to illustrate that even well thought out systems need tweaks.
I suspect that the “less crowded” Sony systems may suffer from resource issues with their new more outward facing system. Having just produced some PSPgo titles to enter submission this month, it is a little early to say exactly how that process will develop. Sales figures of the hardware seem to suggest I need not push too hard in order to rush to market.
Our own DSiWare release with developer Airplay has been a steep learning curve. We know the” boxed” procedures inside out, less so the new process – as we know the world is changing more direct access to the consumer means we need to adapt or face the consequences. There are few “established procedures” for communicating directly with the consumers. The Nintendo store needs to deliver a lot for us!
A year ago our base would have been a few hundred retailers, and fifty or so key magazines and web sites – today our base may well be 12 million individual consumers. We are all learning new ways of working, and although no great defender of Nintendo I would say we are all learning a little together.
At a recent BAFTA event the topic was “Do developers need publishers?” it did raise a cynical smile on my face, even the most hardened development based artist must see that they will need PR and marketing functions to help reach the new audience. Our deal with Airplay puts both developer and publisher a little closer.
My guess is that as the games market is in transition towards direct to consumer delivery a lot of our contacts in Sony and Nintendo have “day jobs to do.” By that I mean that the day to day “boxed” parts of their job may not mean they cannot focus exclusively on these new areas. As resources are limited they will be stretched thinly.
I would agree that the WarioWare site is sometimes confusing and I find it hard to find everything I need on there. I have been frustrated in that I think my DSiWare title will reach the market later than I wanted as too many pieces of confusing paperwork got in the way - but in a world of Email and expectations of instant feedback perhaps we can all occasionally be a little too demanding.
I have to say that the Nintendo “digital process” could be improved, I am not sure of how well many developers will cope with securing the age rating certificates and other non-core areas as they generally prefer to focus on their game. I do have to say that whenever I have asked either NOE or NOA for help that the response has been swift and positive. (Thanks to Noriko, Patrick and Mark in the USA - Ryuicihi in Oz also Anna, Natalia and Takashi in Europe)
I hope to have a few more years of discovering and adapting new ways of reaching the consumer with an entertainment based digital offering. Also with the sales of Wii over Christmas don’t be too quick to write off Nintendo. The day they put exclusive Mario levels on the DSiWare, is the day massive numbers of consumers will instantly learn to find out how to download.
Well thats because DEVELOPERS NOT ADDING THEM to PS Store actually.
But im agree about REACH the audience, those are new markets and new opportunities.