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The Mature Wii Game... A Dying Breed?
It's been some time since we've had a special feature of any description but now here's Chris with his thoughts on the Wii and it's dwindling Mature game offerings.
For as long as I can remember, Nintendo has always carried this air of 'childishness' about them. Even going back to the days of the NES and SNES, they were primarily seen as a kiddie company, with games such as Kirby series not helping to dissolve that image. Don't get me wrong, the Kirby series has produced some fantastic games, with the original NES adventure being an all time great and Kirby Canvas Curse being one of the best and most innovative platformers not only to be released on the DS but on any console. It's just that it harboured such an image that many gamers simply dismissed it and Nintendo because it looked childish.
But the problem extends further than that. Under the control of the Yamauchi family, many mature games that made an appearance on Nintendo's consoles over the early years were heavily censored. We only have to look to Mortal Kombat on the SNES and compared it to its counterpart on the Sega Megadrive (or Genesis for you American gamers). That version retained the blood and gore that has made the Mortal Kombat series so visceral over the last decade or so yet when it came to playing it on the SNES, the blood and gore and been all but replaced or removed as it didn't fall in line with Nintendo's stance on video games. The Castlevania series acts as another example, with Castlevania 4 suffering the same fate, yet in this case the subsequent Megadrive release of Castlevania: Bloodlines was also censored in the majority of markets around the world.
This censorship hasn't helped Nintendo and the image that they exude. While they have had mature content on their consoles, and even attempted to make some of their own franchises mature by bringing in darker tones and a tenser atmosphere, seen in the likes of Majora's Mask, it is this censorship that has turned people away in favour of games on the competing consoles. But more recent years have shown Nintendo is aware of an older market who perhaps doesn't constantly want to be piloting another Link through another Hyrule or playing another Mario game. They opened up to the want for mature content and you only have to look at the likes of Conker's Bad Fur Day to see this. Produced by Rare, at the time this was one of, if not the, the most crude and offensive game to land on any console. Yet, initially commissioning the game, Nintendo did backtrack on it and distanced themselves from the mature content contained on the cartridge, even after censorship. But then, it was one of the most offensive games at the time, taking toilet humour to another level. It's this title that remains a fan favourite with many Nintendo console owning gamers even to this day, with Rare now trudging out titles slowly for Microsoft. Indeed, many of the games already mentioned here that are of the mature discipline have been big sellers on the Nintendo consoles so there has definitely been an audience waiting and wanting these games. But looking to today's market and today's current Wii owners, you have to wonder whether they've jumped ship and abandoned the Wii's attempts at catering for the mature gamer even though Nintendo have been very vocal in their support of this sector of the market, highlighting many of the games to be released.
From the offset, the Wii has had access to what you could call 'mature' games. Call of Duty 3 and Red Steel represented two early games that showed that the Wii was going to cater to gamers of all sorts, regardless of the controller. Both of these went on to be greeted with commercial success; Call of Duty 3 presumably because of the name of an established franchise; Red Steel given the benefit of the doubt as a fledgling intellectual property on a console that many thought would be the Dreamcast of this generation. They sold and over the course of the next year or so, so did other mature games. The re-re-release of Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, dubbed the definitive version of the game by just about everyone who has played it, continued to show that mature games had a home on the Wii and would be met with open arms. Moving further down the line, No More Heroes made an appearance. It may not have been a multi-million selling game, but it sold well enough in the Western markets that a sequel is just around the corner which will put us once again in the shoes of Travis Touchdown around the city of Santa Destroy. The problem here is that, bar Red Steel and No More Heroes, the initial big selling mature titles were based on established franchises and so fans instantly knew what to expect. As said, Red Steel perhaps received the benefit of the doubt at launch yet even though it was a new franchise, it's now sold millions of copies worldwide to this date. It's looking back on these games and looking to what has been released more recently that we see a stark shift away from gamers buying the mature games on the Wii.
This initial period of release for some big mature titles was followed by an onslaught of casual games. Indeed, while it took awhile for the notion to set in, the casual gaming market almost appeared out of nowhere and suddenly your Call of Duties and your Resident Evils were being replaced by mini-game collections and quick cash-ins that the unsuspecting public would know nothing about. This down period, although peppered with some of Nintendo's big hitters such as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Super Mario Galaxy and others, undoubtedly turned mature gamers away to the other consoles who were looking for something a bit more mature than what they were getting. Granted, Capcom has continued to bring the Resident Evil series to the console but not in the way many had hoped. With little in the way of mature content, it would seem that the aged gamers have moved on and this in turn would explain today's poor sales for the more recent attempts to justify the release of mature content on the console.
SEGA has been a big supporter of the Wii in just about every major category, and as of late their Big 3 announcement to give Wii owners this year 3 mature titles that everyone would love sounded fantastic. On paper, it was all set to go well with great previews and hands-on articles from many publications, online and off. Reviews were equally gracious towards all three and so it was up to the gamers to show SEGA was right to move resources into place to bring these games to the console. The end result... average to poor sales all round. House of the Dead: Overkill was the first to market and in Europe, the title sold as well as the compilation of 2 and 3 that had been released awhile beforehand but in the US, the title failed to match the sales generated across the pond. MadWorld was next up to the plate and in a reverse of fortunes, sold better in the US than in Europe, but ultimately getting nowhere near the sales expectations of the company and quickly becoming doomed to the bargain bin. The final game from SEGA's Big 3 was The Conduit. A heavy online advertising campaign had been hyping this up for several months prior to release and in the end, it sold better than both of the other games, generating over 200,000 units for sales worldwide in its first month or so. SEGA have been quick to say that they've been happy with the sales of these games, with only those of MadWorld proving disappointing, and have committed to the continuing support of the console with more mature games in the future. So they clearly see a market wanting these games, and there clearly is one going by the number of people who were quick to jump on n-Space's cancelled Wii horror game Winter. But no matter how you look at the sales figures, compared to the early titles on the console, they ended up with disappointing figures in comparison. Even more recently, EA brought the acclaimed Dead Space franchise to the Wii, again not as many would have hoped. Yet while the game is perhaps the most cinematic on the console, providing an air of immersion we've yet to see elsewhere other than in the Wii release of the original Metroid Prime title, sales figures so far have proven dire. So what is going wrong? Developers can see a space in the market craving these titles and there is clearly a large group asking for them yet they don't seem to be able to sell.
There are similarities in the failings of these mature games. These similarities come down to both the failings of the publishers and the gamers. Firstly, many of these titles were hyped up as being games which could happily exist on the other home consoles; ones which gamers would go out and buy and so they were seen as bringing a little bit of what had made those consoles so alluring to the Wii. Yet, unlike the titles on the other consoles, advertising was minimal. Focused on the online area, as the developers must have thought this is where the gamers they were looking for were hiding, advertising spanned many sites but unless you have an affiliation with the many gaming sites that make up the World Wide Web then you'll have missed out. The big advertising push that SEGA had promised never surfaced for its games and the same happened with Dead Space, with EA not only hoping that the online advertising would be enough but the name and acclaim of the original being enough of a lure to hook gamers but the couple thousand copies sold in the US would beg to differ. The failings of the more recent mature games at market seem to be the fault of the publishers who're quick to say one thing yet do another. It's a sad state of affairs when the big companies all but sneak their titles into store when if they had only advertised more efficiently, the sales figures would have perhaps been much better but the lack of advertising has left them out of pocket and has shown that they themselves were unsure about the games they were releasing to the market. All the games mentioned here, from both SEGA and EA, were fantastic so there should have been no excuse for not advertising them. But that then brings us to the failings of the gamers.
As fantastic titles, there's no reason they shouldn't have sold and while the publishers can be caught out for saying one thing and doing another, gamers are more often than not in the same boat. Too often, forums will be filled with Wii gamers yearning, moaning for something more mature to play but when it comes, they'll rarely all live up to their words and put their hands in their pockets for the games. Why might this be? Well there is any number of reasons but the most obvious must be the culprit. The constant onslaught of casual titles that seem to be clogging up the shelves are the ones that seem to be selling and so stores and publishers are pushing these titles more on the console. With the dry period of releases that came earlier in the Wii's life cycle that was propped up with these titles, no doubt many of the so called mature gamers sought gaming refuge elsewhere, either buying a second console or selling on their Wiis. While some may still hold on to their Wiis and will look for the more mature games, it's unlikely that they'd spend the 40/$60 on a mature game on the Wii when you could spend the same on similar title on the other consoles and get a better experience. Yet, it makes a mockery of the industry because they are so quick to moan about their Wiis gathering dust yet don't bother to pick up the games that they themselves would go out and buy similar iterations of on the other consoles when they appear.
Gamers and Publishers have to hold their hands up in shame for the failings of these mature games, but so to do the stores that sell these games. These days, as has been said, unless it's one of the now hundreds of 'casual' games littering the place, stores are becoming less and less interested in taking a chance in stocking the mature games on the Wii, or even the more outlandish ones as can be seen in the ridiculous stunt by UK retailers who'll only be offering up Muramasa: The Demon Blade as an online only purchase but will happily stock the game in a pre-owned state should someone trade it in. I've personally had to rake through the mass produced pulp to find many games on the Wii only to find that they've either only got one copy or none at all. Why have one policy for one console and not for the others? The stores are happy to shun these games on the Wii but are happy enough to allow similar ones to adorn the shelves for the other consoles. Ok, in the end, the mature games are selling more on the other consoles but that doesn't mean that there aren't Wii owners who want something a bit more adult to play so don't restrict their choices for which console it has to be on. Its madness and in the coming months into next year, with the advent of the motion controllers from Nintendo's competitors, it's likely to get worse as more space is put aside for casual games and less for mature, although the shift will be less evident on the other consoles.
So, are mature games really a dying breed on the Wii? No, it's just a title but it's becoming more and more likely that this will be the eventual outcome. Publishers, gamers and store heads need to really look at themselves because, in an attempt to broaden the market, they're actually shrinking and restricting the choice of not only those long standing gamers but even those of the new ones. Publishers need to learn that simply opting to advertise their mature Wii games online isn't going to suffice because only a very small portion of the gaming community, or those that call themselves gamers in any form, keep up to date with gaming websites and publications so they will not see these advertisements. At least making an attempt to advertise the game in the real world, away from the PC, is better than not advertising and leaving your game to die the lonely death. Nintendo themselves have been guilty of this with Disaster: Day of Crisis and even though they need to show their support for the casual gamer, they still need to show support for their other, more niche games. Gamers either need to keep quite or actual live up to their word when it comes to these games on the console. Don't go saying one thing, such as "Oh, looks great. I'll pick it up for sure", and then don't do it. It's a practise that will undoubtedly never die but before you start moaning about the lack of mature games, or good games for that matter on the Wii which is an argument that has been going on nonstop for years now, perhaps you should open your eyes. And store heads, they just need to stop the narrowing of the market in stores and give gamers the choice of these games. What does the future hold for mature games on the console? Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles is out in a few weeks and looks set to do as well as the original and beyond that there's No More Heroes 2 which, from the footage so far, looks to have improved upon the first game in every conceivable way. High Voltage Software will also be continuing their support of the mature gamer next, which year should see the release of both The Grinder, a young pretender to the Left 4 Dead crown, and Gladiator A.D. The immediate future does look bright but beyond that, there appears to be nothing. Only time will tell whether developers are fighting a losing battle on the console or not, and I'm hoping that it proves not to be the case.
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It's a bit of a long read and for that I do apologise sincerely. If you do read it all though, 1) well done and 2) I hope you enjoyed it.
I think you could of mentioned how all those gorey titles you pointed out which Nintendo has made (Disaster: Day of Crisis for example) will never see the light of day in America. Kind of ironic ay?
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