Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello Opens His Eyes: Wii Is Good
- Scribbled on July 27th, 2007 by Derrick Schommer
- Filed in Industry News, Nintendo Wii
John Riccitiello, head of EA didn’t realize the Nintendo console was going to do well… or they just didn’t feel like making games for it? It seems the little console that could is now opening the eyes of third party developers now asking to get in on some action.
Unit sales for the Wii are outstanding and critics continue to say “well, no third parties will develop for this console” because, historically, they never have. On top of which, Nintendo’s “killer apps” (anything named Mario, Metroid or Link) have always done well in the face of all odds. How does a third party compete?
They compete by trying.
“[The last transition] was tough because we typically have two to three platforms and a five year period… One of the biggest challenges, of course, was that not a lot of people anticipated the success of Nintendo that they’ve shown with their wand controller and their Wii.”
The story we hear each week: Not a lot of people anticipated the success of Nintendo. Apparently that magic wand Nintendo is waving around is bringing gamers and non-gamers alike to the TV set. Now, third party developers must play catch up to see if they can put out some products for the highly sellable console.
Consoles drive developers to produce games and a big game library drives console sales. It’s a yang to a ying to a yang again, almost a catch-22; you won’t have good console if you don’t have any games. Nintendo has struggled with this in the past, perhaps that will change.
EA isn’t the first publisher to say “oops” in this Wii mess and they probably won’t be the last. In the last famous words of John Riccitiell: “That got ahead of us a little more than our expectations.”
Do I have to say “I told ya so?”
I told ya so.
(Thanks, next-gen.biz)
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