Is The Wii U Overhated/Underrated?

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It bugs people especially Misery and others because it has lead to a massive contraction in the diversity of games.

EA used to make a lot more games in pre 2005 and now they literally only focus on EA Sports, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor.
They occasionally make a another game that isn't a yearly or biannual installment.

Activision before Kodiack took over in the early 2000s made over 10 games a year.
Now Activision makes only Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Destiny and Skylanders.
Activision wil not green light a game unless it has a chance to be a mega hit like their main 4 properties.

Ubisoft used to make at least 10 diverse games a year, now they focus mainly on Assassin's Creed (no game this year), Ubisoft the game (Watch Dogs, The Division, and another title which all play nearly a like hence the term), Splinter Cell, and Just Dance.
They purposely canned all the rest due to the games not selling millions and making huge profits.

Though Ubisoft is fighting a hostile takeover from Vivendi.

WBi used to make more games than they do now.
WBi literally focuses on Batman games, Lego games, and the biannual Mortal Kombat game.

TakeTwo only makes Sports and the occasional party game
Rockstar (owned by TakeTwo) only makes GTA now and hasn't produced a non GTA game in almost 7 years.

The lesser Western 3rd parties such as Acclaim, Avalanche, Left Field etc... have either been bought out or gone out of business last gen due to mid tier games no longer being popular in the West.

Harmonix is trying to use Kickstarter to avoid bankruptcy.

Eidos was practically bankrupt and bought by Square-Enix
Midway was bought by WBi
THQ was liquidated and it's IPs sold off to other major 3rd parties.
Lucas Arts was bought by Disney and then shut down shortly afterwards.
Factor 5 went bankrupt when Lair bombed on PS3.

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As for Eastern developers

Konami last gen reduced itself to making only Metal Gear and Pachinko machines (those Japan only).
Sega was restructured recently by their owners Sammy, to focus on making Sonic, Football Manager and one other series.
The other series were dropped due to them not making enough profit to suit shareholders.

Capcom is struggling to get anything not branded SF and Resident Evil to sell in well in the West, in Japan only Monster Hunter and Ace Attorney/PW sell well.
Capcom was forced to scale back the production of other games due to low sales of those games.

Square-Enix is seeing low sales for anything not branded Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.
Though thankfully they are still making lesser RPGs.

Namco-Bandai are struggling in the gaming sector.

Marvelous is struggling in sales, but they have always been niche.
Natsume is also struggling this gen, but they are also niche but bigger than Marvelous
Prope is struggling too
Sunsoft hasn't released anything since 2010
SNK is struggling


Index/Atlus was recently bought out by Sega-Sammy
Chunsoft merged with Spike to stay afloat
Tecmo merged with Koei to avoid bankrupcty
Platinum was forced to become a contract developer because Bayonetta 1 and others bombed badly enough that Sega dropped them.
Grasshopper and Suda aren't doing well etiher.
Cing is bankrupt and out of business
Husonsoft was bought out by Konami in 2012 and shutdown shortly afterwards, most of the staff went to NDCube division of Nintendo.
This means Mario Party starting with 10 is internally developed at Nintendo.

A few other lesser Eastern studios have shut down too last gen.


Nintendo's only games that do well in the West are games that are branded Mario, Zelda, Kirby, DK, Smash Bros. and Pokemon.
Everything Nintendo makes struggles to sell enough to breakeven in the West.
Though Splatoon was the unexpected success.


The point is the diversity of gaming has shrunk massively over the past 10 years. This largely due to a massive rise in development costs and due to gamers ignoring anything that isn't a brand name established game with state of the art graphics.

There is exceptions to games that do well (that arent the most well known franchises), so let's not forget those! Yes the number is low but its still there.

Games like Minecraft, Rocket League, Spelunky, Don't Starve, Binding of Isaac, Stardew Valley and so on. Great examples of popular games that arent made by the biggest companies. However I will state that the makers of Isaac probably are one of the bigger indie companies now (due to the success of Meat Boy, Isaac, Isaac Rebirth, etc). Most of these had more success on PC, but its a good sign when many of these games get console ports. Unfortunately many get ignored because not enough exposure and too many gamers hooked into big name games and not much else.

I strongly agree that diversity has shrunk. Most of the top selling stuff on consoles is the violent games and sports games, not much else. Gamers have gotten predictable, as has gamer makers. More change needs to happen.

Only Minecraft and Rocket League are popular and have sold more than 1 million copies globally.

Binding Isaac is just controversial for it's content, but is still niche.
The rest of those games are niche.

You keep listing mainly niche games for some reason.

This came out today.

The top 5 grossing Handheld, iOS and Android games for 2015 have been revealed.

3DS and Vita (all are 3DS games)

1. Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer
2. Monster Hunter X
3. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D
4. Yo-Kai Watch Busters: Red Cat Team / White Dog Squad
5. Pokemon Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire

iOS App Store

1. Clash of Clans
2. Monster Strike
3. Game of War - Fire Age
4. Puzzle & Dragons
5. Fantasy Westward Journey

Google Play

1. Monster Strike
2. Clash of Clans
3. Puzzle & Dragons
4. Game of War - Fire Age
5. Candy Crush Saga

Notes of Interest

Android phones trailed significantly behind the other gaming platforms in typical hours of gameplay per week. (Such
gamers spent less than one-third the time of those on home game consoles, handheld consoles and combined PC and Mac.)

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.appannie ... 015-EN.pdf

You can read the full report for 2015 from App Annie (yes they are a credible analytics company that specializes in mobile)

Yeah, pretty much. It's gotten BORING. Everyone just puts out the same damn things over and over and over, and what's more, they're usually dumbed down, easy, and trying more to be movies than games.

But people keep gobbling it up... and then wondering why nothing NEW ever happens. Facepalm.

That's why I want to see the industry crash, so that maybe some changes are outright FORCED, and so that maybe the big guys get some new ideas shoved through their thick skulls. I have a hard time seeing the big guys making such changes actually on their own.

And I'm just so tired of all of it.



I think what he means is that games like Isaac are successful and big when it comes to what "big" means as indie games go. Nobody expects indies right now to sell 10 squillion copies... Minecraft and the like not exactly being the norm.

But as something like Isaac goes? That one didnt hit the crazy point that Minecraft did, but it still hit the big leagues as indie games go. Indie "big leagues" are very different from the AAA version of that concept. Which makes sense, indie devs dont have crazy budgets for advertising and tend not to produce games with mind-blowing graphics.

At some point maybe that will change and they'll be able to become bigger in a more general sense, but not yet.

I already mentioned that I don't play those licensed sports games. I'm just mentioning criticisms on them that I've read elsewhere. Mario Party at least has different types of boards and minigames in each installment, not to mention new gimmicks in each one as well, which is more than can be said for Madden NFL.

n-Space is officially closing it's doors.
The company made most of it's games with Nintendo.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news ... -its-doors

What the heck is "n-Space"?

A developer who worked almost exclusively for Nintendo.
Their first game from the partnership was Geist on Gamecube, which was fun twist on shooters where you possessed your host and other things to complete levels.
It also had a fun multiplayer mode.

Here is list of the games they've made
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Space

I've never played anything from them, but... still, interesting.

Seems they were a fairly prolific developer.

Geist is their best game, despite it's flaws.

I strongly disagree. They arent niche games. Please learn what the word actually means. Also Binding of Isaac is a solid game, even if its controversial.

A game isnt instantly niche because you say it is. Also not niche because it didnt sell enough according to you.

It's not according to me.
It's accord to NPD (sales tracking agency), EEDAR (the main analytic group), Nielsen, ESA (The industry body), and publishers.

I'll put it to you this way.

NPD and ESA calls Fire Emblem Awakening a niche game because it sold only ~1.2M globally.
NPD calls Fire Emblem Fates (all version combined) niche even though it has outsold Fire Emblem Awakening wiithout launching in Europe.

Most Nintendo games are considered niche including Splatoon which is nearing 5M sold because it isn't sold to the "hardcore" gamer.

All indie games are considered niche by NPD, ESA and publishers with Shovel Knights being the best selling indie game after Minecraft.

Minecraft used to be labeled niche until it went mainstream around ~20M mark.
Now it's accepted by the industry due to Microsoft buying it.

Most games are classified as niche by the industry and sales trackers unless they sell millions and/or adopted by the "hardcore" gamers.

Do yourself a favor and read NPD gaming reports, EEDAR reports, Nielsen gaming reports, and others to learn how games are officially classified and the sales/demographic break down of the industry.


Next Thursday at 6:30pm or shortly afterwards NPD will release the monthly NPD gaming chart for March US sales and sales information.
NeoGaf users who have access to the NPD information will leak the rest.

Those who fail to break into the TOP 10 chart, are considered failure.

EEDAR report will be released that day.

FYI Binding Isaac has been banned from numerous platforms and has seen lackluster sales despite all the publicity it received.
Nintendo and Microsoft have been receiving a massive public campaign to have it removed from their digital stores.

They can call the games niche all they want. I play whatever games I find fun- same goes for nearly every gamer.

A game doesnt need to be a million copy seller to be good, period. They have nothing better to do so they have to label games as niche, seems so pathetic. Many games that have sold under a million have gotten great sequels as well.

Minecraft was accepted by gamers way before Microsoft bought it. That's what matters in the long run- GAMERS HAVING FUN! Not corporate heads acting snobby, and certainly not people that analyze everything to death. It's unfortunate the industry is full of idiots that need to label stuff, bash indies, comparing useless things to each other and so on.

But its like that everywhere- a movie has a bad weekend and people panic thinking that its a dud. Weeks and months go by- and the movie makes it budget back and then a profit.

I'm generally against the term niche, because its overused, people act like elitists when they spew nonsense about things being niche. Everything realistically doesn't need to be a huge seller! A game can be more than successful without being a huge seller. Word of mouth goes a long way. If elitists and ignorant gamers don't want to leave their comfort zone of only select few games- thats their problem.

Also- I already said Isaac is a solid game. I don't honestly care if stores get it removed. Just whiners overreacting because it doesn't fit into their certain mold of games. As much as I enjoy Nintendo games, the company is pretty dumb at times. Targetting only select age groups needs to stop. Same goes for Sony and Microsoft. Everyone should be a potential buyer of your product, no excuses. If something is too mature (like Isaac or bloody games or violent games or sexualized games), then so be it. There is ratings systems in place for good reason. Unfortunately they arent enforced well. Many kids go into stores and buy M rated games all the time and the cashier doesn't care, because its money. Plus many people have the mindset of "its not my problem, so I'll just ignore it". Online is even worse, seeing as how kids can just "borrow" parents credit card to get games of any rating.

/Rant over for now.

Ah you sound a bit like I often do. Dont worry about the rant there, this place can take it, I fire blasts like that all the time seemingly at random about basically anything. Lately, mostly about the indie side of the industry VS the nasty AAA side.

Anyway, for some of what you said, the really sad thing... and what bugs the hell out of me really... is that this really is what the industry has become. But it's not JUST those within it, it's the consumer too. The industry labels things, but the consumer FOLLOWS those labels, and often if a game is technically "niche"... or just indie in general... plenty of players wont even TRY it. Because why play those silly little games, when they could play a REAL game? Bah. That the "silly little game" often contains HUNDREDS of hours of depth and challenge, and that the AAA game contains like 5 hours mostly consisting of cutscenes, doesnt cross their mind, provided they even notice those things. Bah!

Most of what I play myself is those smaller indie or "niche" games as the corporate analyst guys put it, and honestly, switching to playing those instead of JUST watching the big guys like I used to years back (and like so very many gamers do now) was the best gaming-related idea I ever had. It's almost like I'd forgotten that games were supposed to be fun, and those reminded me of it. And that's the other thing about the industry (and it's consumers) too; people seem to forget what games were intended for in the first place. They absolutely will play such-and-such game even if it JUST makes them angry all the time. I've watched this, been astounded at it, over and over and over, particularly within the fighting-game genre. It's... sad. And I think: Is this what gaming has become? Because I watch my friends do that with the games they play too.

Also yeah, I dont really use the term "niche" myself, but in this case it's more just a technical term. Though, among consoles in particular, it certainly fits something like Isaac. Everyone into PC gaming knows what Isaac is, but most that are console gamers seem not to... easy to spot why. Feh. Banned from consoles, you know, THAT bit bugs me. That game gets banned (or there's people attempting to do so), but I think of all the stuff that DOESNT get banned and such, and the whole thing is just so hypocritical.


And finally, I agree, Isaac is pretty good, eh? Certainly one of my favorites. Though... I could have done without some of the astonishingly irritating "challenges" they came up with for Afterbirth. Someone in the dev team needs a good kick, from a horse.

This is why I am so glad my parents actually paid attention to that kind of stuff. Sure, we have some M-rated games now, and we do have a few for our N64, but for the most part I grew up playing games rated no higher than T. Didn't really start buying M rated games again until we got an Xbox 360, and that was after I had left for college. People really should be made more aware of what exactly the ESRB rating entails. If you won't take your 10 year old kid to see an R-rated film like Deadpool, why would you let him play a game like GTA 5, right? People complaining abiut stuff like this in the early 90s when Mortal Kombat came out is why we have the Earb now. Some parents are just stupid.

And the term "niche" can mean different things in different countries when applied to video games. FPS games are pretty popular here in the US, but it's my understanding that such games are considered to be a niche market over in Japan. The reverse can be said about JRPGs.