House of the Dead: Overkill studio's workforce also cut in half.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/23738
Headstrong Studios, developer of the critically-acclaimed Wii title House of the Dead: Overkill, has seen its studio head Bradley Crooks laid off by parent developer Kuju. According to a report from GamesIndustry.biz, his position was considered redundant as of the end of June.
The move is part of a staff reduction at the developer in general, with Headstrong starting 2010 with 70 employees but now standing at half that. Kuju CEO Nigel Robbins described the studio as "fragile" at its former staffing levels, primarily due to its reliance on Wii titles. Robbins stated that the studio was "pretty much solely reliant on Wii work, which as we all know has thinned a little [in terms of demand]." He did praise Crooks' work in the position, however.
Steven Pritchard and Tancred Dyke-Wells will now head the studio, which along with PlayStation 3 work will focus on titles for the Nintendo 3DS. Robbins did clarify that the studio will remain "Wii-friendly" despite this shift in priorities.
Both Ubisoft and Capcom have recently announced that they are cutting back on wii development.
Both Ubisoft and Capcom have recently announced that they are cutting back on wii development.
Maybe they're working on No More Heroes and Dead Rising for the 3DS.
I think you're going to see a lot of companies dumping Wii development in favor of 3DS development over the next six months. It's cheaper from a development cost standpoint, and the general consensus is that the 3DS system is going to be a surefire hit. You won't see third-parties jumping on the bandwagon late this time around, because they know they can make a lot of money if they release quality games for the system right out of the gate.
I think developers will keep making games for the DS, but will swap their Wii development for 3DS development. After all, the 3DS is GameCube-ish in terms of power, meaning that any Wii development team will already be comfortable working with that level of graphics and system muscle.
I get what Kytim's saying.
The short answer as to why the 3DS is going to get better third party support is that third parties seemed to have arbitrarily decided to make strong games for the 3DS before it's released. They're ditching the usual "wait and see" crap like they did with the DS and Wii and making sure they have competitive product in the stores on or near day one. The long answer involves two primary reasons including the long term health of the various third parties and Nintendo's current financial status.
One reason for this is that, while much hay can be made from the usual whine that only Nintendo games can be sold on Nintendo systems, it doesn't take a genius to figure that's usually because Nintendo makes the better games on said systems. While this can be useful when you need to write off a system (Nintendo or otherwise) that isn't performing very well, when you ignore a bonafide hit that ends up being the best selling game system of all time because of a preconception, you look like a fool to both gamers and your finance department. Considering the 3DS is the next system after the best selling system of all time, it's pretty much guaranteed to get a healthy userbase right out of the gate, especially considering their closest competition from Sony seems sluggish to respond or reluctant to participate, and the next competition from Apple seems rather unexciting at this juncture (despite Matt Cassamassina's input.) One of the things that crippled third parties on the Wii and on the DS initially was the fact that they did not make very good games consistently and mostly tried to cash in on what they perceived as a "casual wave" as evidenced in the "Third Party Wall of Shame" thread here:
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=30478.0 (http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=30478.0)
This gave them pretty bad reputations, as the Wii itself is definitely not an unprofitable platform (just ask Nintendo,) but it can be a prohibitive environment when all 75 million Wii owners think developers that are not Nintendo make junk, and rightly so. Conversely, if a similar wall were created with the third parties' current 3DS offerings, and consumers were to see this on the shelf accompanied by other high quality titles, then third parties have a decisively better chance to be more relevant to a large userbase.
The second reason for the third party boom is that Nintendo's got a lot more money this time around and is in a better position to give "incentives" for third parties to make games on their handhelds as opposed to their competition, as Sony's game division (and Sony itself) is in dire straits through repeated losses and thus is less inclined to offer incentives, Microsoft seems uninterested in the handheld space at this time, and Apple seems to be unable to turn touchscreen-only micro-transaction games for cellphones and Tablet Macs into real market movement.
I still don't understand why people are treating the 3DS like the successor to the Wii. They are two entirely different markets.
If anything, the 3DS hardware being on par with Wii hardware (if true) will likely mean that those games could be released on both Wii and 3DS, if the arcitecture is similar and the games could be easily ported to Wii. That's what I think we'll be seeing, until the Wii successor is released.
The move version of Overkill 2 will be in HD.
The DS market is a much more lucrative market for 3rd parties than the Wii has shown in its life cycle
The DS market is a much more lucrative market for 3rd parties than the Wii has shown in its life cycle
How many Wii consoles have been sold? Sometimes like 70 million worldwide?
How many 3DS systems have been sold? Oh, that's right--zero.
