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Not the direction I thought they'd go, but whatever works for them =p | |
Authenticity's sake, yeah, authenticity's sake. It's too bad that many people will dismiss this game just because you don't kill things, but I hope it does well. The "thinking fire" sounds kind of like the Director for L4D, though, so hopefully it's well implemented. | |
Kinda lame that it's only for the Wii... A good firefighter simularor would be could. | |
Just another type of firefight, I guess. | |
There should be a multiplayer mode where you get to play as the fire. | |
That's pretty cool, but wasn't there already a FireFighter arcade game? | |
Sheesh, "helping people?" Seriously lame, guys. Okay, it's on the Wii, which means some grandmas might buy this, enough to make a profit anyway, since I don't see a lot of investors jumping on this product, but still: lame. | |
Not if I don't own a wii... Seriously, they just said discussed how "core gamers" don't appreciate wii games, then they talk about how they are gonna win them over. No single game is gonna make me go out and purchase a console! First Silent Hill remake...now this...why are developers screwing the rest of us over by releasing exclusively to the wii. The machine was promoted as "casual gaming" of the most lax kind...now Nintendo wants to pull of this 180 degree turn? | |
The fact that this is announced only 6 days before it's released says enough: There's most likely a very good reason that these people are not part of the Infinity Ward team anymore. | |
You have trouble understanding why developers would avoid wasting tons of money on graphical content, engine licensing, and programming? On topic, the premise is interesting. Don't see many games where you actively fight fire. | |
Maybe nazis lit buildings on fire. | |
looks like something you would play on windows 98. | |
I have trouble understanding the logic of targeting "core gamers" on a machine that has cemented its reputation as a "casual/lax gaming". If games on the Wii don't "appeal" to gamers, chances are, they don't own a Wii. And among friends that I know who do own a 360/wii or ps3/wii, all they have are smash brawl, some wii party games, classic snes titles, and house of the dead style rail-shooters. I understand the cost benefits of developing on the Wii, but I'm talking about wether or no its worth it in the long run. I'll shutup if you show me stats that say a game targeting "core gamers" on the wii can be just as successful on any other console... | |
Bryan and Nathaniel never developed a Call of Duty game. They were QA testers and low level Producers at Activision Publishing. | |
First, make it clear what this distinction is between 'core' and 'casual.' | |
Because grinding out normal high profile games on a tight stressful deadline can be annoying to the point you don't want to do it as much...or your are a few times removed from said process and need new work..... In today market anything goes...and quality just went.... | |
I'm not gonna have a battle of "semantics" when the differences are easy enough to see. I only use 'core' and 'casual' because these are the same terms the industry likes to use when talking about the Wii vs other consoles. The Wii was marketed as being "family friendly". As such, the assumption was Nintendo wasn't going to have many "Mature" titles. An assumption that doesn't just play off of the consoles marketing, but also is true when you consider the history of Nintendo releases. Now, Nintendo wants to tap into the market that the 360/PS3 appeals to. Not only do I think its too late though, I find it annoying. I did not purchase a Wii because their selection didn't appeal to my tastes. Now that I see titles like Silent Hill (a remake of the good one too) being done exclusively on the Wii, of course its gonna bother me a bit. Especially since THAT is the kinda game I purchased a non-wii console to play! Its safe to say that the kind of games gamers expect to see on the 360/PS3 are considerably different from what they expect to see on the Wii...
Thats why I want to see the stats of these games on the Wii. An article on the Escapist discussed how for the costs of your average game, a developer now hopes to move 500,000 units at least to break even. Of course, that figure relates more to the 360/PS3 consoles as I understand it. I want to know how the figures compare to the Wii. Games that were targeted to appeal to the "other" audiance, such as "Mad World" have sold only 66,000 units first month. House of the Dead: Overkill has 45,000. So yes, it is question of "is it worth it in the long run?" Because I don't think people are focused on seeing these types of games on the Wii!!! | |
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Thanks for the stats. But those are franchise games, and as we all know, those are guaranteed financial successes (ex. Halo vs any new upcoming FPS). Those are titles whose fame have already been firmly established. I mean take rail shooters for example. What made Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles sell so many more units (over a million) compared to House of the Dead: Overkill? But World at War still proves the point. You win | |
Here's where I quote you:
And here's where I quote myself. You never said 'show me a non-franchise title that can be just as successful on The Wii as it could be on the PS360'. Now if we are to get into this question, the problem with your point is that the majority of titles that sell well on the PS360 are actually established franchises. With the exception of games like L4D and Assassin's Creed, around 95% of the games that have sold over 1.5 million copies are established franchises, with most of those being shooters. The only real non shooter franchises that have gone over that mark are Assassin's Creed and Oblivion, as well as Mass Effect if you want to count that as well. Non established franchises don't actually do amazingly well on the 360. The same goes for the PS3, the exceptions being LittleBigPlanet and Assassin's creed. So the question is, can non established franchise titles really commonly sell millions on any console? | |
Well from what I have gathered from rumors and and general lulzy at best research, the WII has a slightly lower attach rate this means less dedicated consumers. They have roughly twice(rounded up) as many "consumers" but they are not very dedicated to "normal" events(flash ship (for lack of a better word) titles like Halo,Gears,GOW,COD,ect,ect,ect) in the game industry. This means it's more tricky to sale AAA "flagship" titles on the WII alone, shovelware aside the industry itself is not supporting the WII like it should this means if publishers are not pushing their wares on the WII you get less wares sold simply because its not where everyone is at. This means I feel that Madworld(260K so far) and HOTD:Over Kill(330K so far) did rather well to be niche titles on a niche system, sure it might be a large niche even bigger than the "normal" consoles of the PS3/360. The conduit seems to be 100K+ so far, again not half bad. But I bet you 6.9M is one third of the development cost for the 3 titles combined... which is not that rare for mature based action titles because you are always betting on the next big hit or trend. Where as your shovel brand...er...sorry... shovel ware(any randomly crappy thing) and brand ware "trend" titles (Gears,Halo,Zelda,Mario,COD,Red faction,Tomb raider,ect) tend to bring in more steady income or not at all. So you can boil down my mental droolings here as its mostly fact that the "core" gamers tend to spend more on brand names were as casuals randomly spend their money. In the WII's case I bet half of the unit onwers(or mroe realistically 30% of unit sales no longer own/use the unit, and half of the remaining number are core gamers) are some form of dedicated gamer they either have a PS360 and or PC or not and game on some combination, thus why the WII has a attach rate of around 6. I myself like the wii its no worse or better than the industry norm of "shallow and pretty", the WII looks good, looks great on paper but until you experience the pitfalls of haphazard motion control(they should have spent more money on the motion controls and made them more responsive from the start...) you find out its just as lack luster as the other 2 wanna be's who excel at pretty and shallow-er.... .
Not bad but but these games can equal to a simple horror flick that is not over the top with gore and or a action flick, what I am getting at they are much more family friendly than mad world or HOTD:OK, speaking of which HOTD is a niche in a niche then again mileage may vary by brand, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is 1.2M so far . So as I said above its tricky to sale a mature theme game on the WII but not imposable. But the trouble is here's what the industry sees tho and this is why the WII and even PC is treated like sloppy seconds. RE5 on ps360 about 5.5M total or 2.2M each. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare PS360: 7M(360) 4M (ps3) makes for 12M copies sold Call of Duty world at war A respectable 1.2M on the WII but 5.7 on the 360 and 3.4 on the PS3, Just with the PS3 and 360 alone you have nearly 10Milloin copies, whats the WII good for if you develop mainstream stuff for basically a single hardware stratagem that incorporates 360 and PS3 with some leftovers for the PC and less(more or less) for the WII? Its not so much the WII(or PC) or its consumers(or PC)are bad there's just not enough brain sucking zombies in that section(is a PC gamer >>) so the industry is not very focused on it. An industry runs on a mix of profit(real vaule) and trends(fake value) sometimes fake wins out more...but then again I am jaded gamer who favors the PC because of something as simple as button mapping...of which there has been shocking less of... that I might be ranting to much =>>= | |
I hope you don't think I'm trying to weasel my way out, but I edited my post to say "you are right" a minute after I initially posted it. The pm got sent to your inbox without that addition though... My frustration is seeing amazing exclusives being sent on the Wii when the specific audience they target is the kind you expect to see on the 360/PS3. Not to say the audience is completely non-existent for Wii owners. But that there are larger numbers of these target audiences on the other consoles. Taking into consideration that a lot of Wii owners also own another console is further evidence I believe that they like the Wii, but feel the need to purchase the other console for the sake of satisfying other games their palate may enjoy. That they feel the Wii possess a selection of games very different from those on the 360/PS3.
So your right about non-franchise games all around. I still feel though that if a developer were making his first game on a console, and if that game was targeted towards what has become known as the "core" gamer, then he would do better to release on one of the other two consoles. I'm know I'm still speculating though. I mean it makes sense to me, but maybe games like Conduit will be successful because there aren't that many FPS games it has to compete against on the Wii. | |
Impressive reading comprehension. "...who have worked on just about every Call of Duty title in every capacity from QA to production..." You don't know those guys or what they did or didn't do. Does your job title some up every one of your achievements? How about show some respect and gratitude for some guys that are trying something new and creating jobs in your industry. | |
Sorry, I didn't notice that, and no I don't think you are trying to weasel out, my bad. While I play and love The Conduit, the reason why I think that this game won't sell incredibly well is because it doesn't look amazing. It's a great game in my opinion, and it looks great from a technical standpoint, but it's not an established franchise and it won't reel in a million consumers by the end of the year, I don't want to use the word generic, because only the initial concept is really generic in my opinion, it does end up being deeper than that.
I consider it to be quite simple. At the end of the day, established franchises sell by the truckload. I hate that Capcom are releasing another god-damned rail shooter, because if they release a spin off of RE5 with the RE4 engine, they could sell a mil and a half easy. The same goes for a lot of other companies. Like you said, the games that people expected to sell were niche games, they wouldn't have sold a great deal more on any console. People complained about MadWorld's black and white style, and HoTd: Overkill is a rail shooter, it's not as big as RE is (at least, not any more) and No More Heroes, despite me and others thinking it was an insanity soaked masterpiece, it still had it's flaws. Established franchises rule the roost, but some need to start up first in order to gain some ground. | |
Didn't the Wii have a year as an average console, before that whole thing about 'casual' gamers? I still don't see what your problem is. Perhaps I just don't take to heart what the media dubs me as much as you do. | |
Did I miss something, or did Bryan's last name change from Jury to Jones halfway through this article? | |
Your missing the point...the names don't matter...there is no denying that there are different expectations/audiences to target depending on which console you sell your games on. To put it more plainly, consider the bestselling list of xbox 360 games...few unique games, but not that different from the list for ps3 games right? I mean there are different titles, but they are similar games right? FPS, hack/slash, horror.... Now lets look at the list for the Wii. Different right? I'm not saying the 360/ps3 selection is better than the Wii's, I'm just saying they are different. And they are not different just because developers don't give the Wii the same respect they do with other consoles. Look at the example ZippyDSMlee gave with respect to Call of Duty:World at War. Why do the numbers differ so much? It can't just be an issue with graphics... Shouldn't the Wii's unit sales be higher considering how many more consoles Nintendo has sold compared to Sony and Microsoft? Despite the audience displaying itself in much larger numbers across the 360/ps3 demographic, these developers have decided to "experiment" by releasing games that people like me would enjoy, but cannot play because it is a Wii exclusive. Not a big deal of course...until they truly break my heart. Explain to me why this Silent Hill will do better on a Wii than on the 360, or more importantly on the ps3, where the demographics show, this is where the fans are? | |
The whole time I was reading this, I was thinking, "What if this had Alone in the Dark's fire?" Would that not be awesome? Because, ah, that picture wasn't too impressive. Still, very cool and I wish them luck. Though I'm afraid I won't be buying it as I have no Wii. | |
First, I doubt it's the type of game so much as the exclusivity. Suppose a person owns both an 360/PS3 and a Wii (it's surprisingly more realistic than most would believe.) Do you really expect them to choose the Wii version of Call of Duty 5? The price difference is almost insubstantial, and the learned buyer would know the series (perhaps from a similar console predecessor) and the multiplayer capabilities and ease. (A bit of a personal gripe here. The friend codes are a tedious and detrimental system. I also have issues with the connectability itself, as it denies me the ability to update the damn system.) Besides, as you point out, common thought of the Wii will inevitably lead to a bias (as is human nature) and failure of a strong backing community for a game. And thus it snowballs. Drop the biases, screw the media, and just go enjoy some freaking games. | |
I take issue with any developer that lies and takes credit for someone else's work. | |
From the screenshot and the concept, as much as I admire their .. enthusiasm, It doesn't look/sound fun. | |
First I saw firefigting, and I was like :o | |
You didn't miss something, we did. Not sure what exactly happened there (Jones, really? o_O),but it's been corrected. | |
I think more than other form of media "franchises/brand" is the most IQ destroying thing in gaming, once the cashin's hit after the first 200M titles sale its like the holy grail for inane zombies. Just really how low can they go? I think Mad world/HOTD would have sold at the most 5 times as many copies if it was on all the consoles and PC but it may hover around 1M sold and that's at best, at worst you get maybe 500K sold by now. Why because its a niche type of game that may or may not ride the waves of consumer interest, in these days its foolish to launch a title on a single system unless you are getting kick backs from the console maker to help them sale their console. Consumers still randomly consume, sometimes you can bet and win sometimes not so much.
It comes down to demographics, as I haphazardly explained I "think" (such as a undead gaming nazi can) that the WII is broken into 3 groups. 30% are dead in the water they are returned or collecting dust. Another 30-50% are "casuals" which I think dose not describe them well enough, I believe your average halo/res/graphics fan boy is causal because they don't have a clue as it is to what they are consuming and the effects it has on the industry. But I regress , let me rethink this out "non gamers" make up 20-30% of WII unit numbers with the 20-30% I mentioned before not being used, yes I lowered it on retrospect. So that's 40-60% that are dead in the water or just dead in the head(as far as consistent game purchases go). That means only half of all WII owners are some kind of gamer, if you only have 20 or so million gamers amongst WII fans you are not going to have a huge boon in niche game sales, you might however gain the attention of franchises/brands thus explaining why COD:WAW WII edition sold 1.21M copies and 1.19 copies of COD3 over a 2-3 year period. Basically it comes down to who buys what on the PS3/360 you have a solid mix of generic and real gamers who are deciated consumers of games, the wii might have more out there but its more de-fragmented and un focused as a general demographic. | |
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Former Call of Duty Devs Fight Fires, Not Wars
Bryan Jury and Nathaniel McClure had it made working on the Call of Duty series. So why'd they jump ship from one of the top FPS franchises around to make a game where you battle fires with water instead of Nazis with rifles?
Anyone who's played a Call of Duty game has probably killed his or her fair share of Nazis. But anyone who's had a hand making a Call of Duty game can likely put that kill count to shame. And, believe it or not, while you might not ever get tired of blowing evil Germans to smithereens, some people do.
That's how Bryan Jury and Nathaniel McClure, two developers who have worked on just about every Call of Duty title in every capacity from QA to production, felt when they jumped ship from the mega franchise to start their own company, Epicenter Studios. Together, these two ex-FPS creators are creating a very different type of first-person game.
"Through our time on Call of Duty, we had both killed hundreds of thousands of Nazis, and the thought of creating a game where the objective isn't to kill people, but rather help them, felt like a very refreshing and challenging thing to undertake," Jury told The Escapist.
The product of that desire, Real Heroes: Firefighter on the Wii, is a first-person game that has "all the action and intensity of a Call of Duty title," but puts it in a non-violent context. Players fight fires and save lives by aiming hoses, swinging axes and, yes, using the Jaws of Life with the Wii Remote.
Just because a fire isn't trying to blow your brains out doesn't mean it's not as lethal an enemy as a Nazi, however. In fact, as Jury explains it, fire's a much more devious foe to face, and, therefore, to design and replicate accurately than your average goosestepper. "Enemies in most first-person shooters are a rather predictable group," Jury said. "With Real Heroes: Firefighter, our enemy is something entirely different, and in many ways, very experimental."
Nazis can be designed to pop out at pre-ordained times. Fire, on the other hand, is an unpredictable force of nature. Epicenter's proprietary "thinking fire" technology, Jury thinks, renders that unpredictability perfectly: "It is a cunning enemy: if you leave just a small flame burning so you can concentrate on another section of the fire, by the time you've returned to that flame, it might be twice the size it originally was. You just never know what it might do...but you'll know enough that you can never turn your back on it."
In moving from the Call of Duty series to the Wii, Jury and McClure themselves may have turned their backs on an elusive audience: the core gamer. "I do believe that the majority of the Wii's catalog is filled with games that 'core' gamers wouldn't be interested in," Jury said, citing the Wii's lackluster graphics technology and developers' frequent misuse of the Wii Remote as problems.
With "thinking fire" for some literal graphical fireworks and a Metroid Prime 3 inspired motion control scheme that Jury says revolves around the gameplay and not the other way around, Real Heroes might have the stuff to get core gamers' attention. "I firmly believe that if you make a good game, the gamers will come," Jury said.
Of course, as impressive as "thinking fire" might be, technology is no match for real-life experience. So has anyone at Epicenter actually lived out their Backdraft fantasies in the real world? "Personally, I don't think I had ever considered becoming a firefighter, mostly because I don't think I'm remotely capable of the physical requirements of the job," Jury revealed. "Nathaniel is a much bigger guy, and I told him we need to send him through the Fire Academy to see if he can hack it. For authenticity's sake, of course."
Real Heroes: Firefighter will hit the Wii on August 4.
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