Publishers' reluctance to get an early start on Wii game production could cost them (and their investors) in the short-term.
Investment commentary site TheStreet.com recently took a look how things were shaking up in the videogame industry. The site posted an article explaining why third party publishers and the investors that hold stock in those publishers may not be making money on Nintendo's Wii console come this holiday, despite the positive buzz coming from the system at E3.
It seems that Nintendo's E3 showing was so good, it caught publishers, investors and analysts by surprise. Everyone had come to expect the next-gen top spot to be contested by Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360, with Nintendo bringing up the rear. However, a ho-hum showing by Sony and Nintendo's emergence as a legitimate contender for mainstream marketshare has changed a lot of people's tunes.
The commentary by TheStreet suggests that the only third-party publisher that will profit off of Wii games in the opening months of the console's existance is Ubisoft, who has been supportive of Wii almost since day one. Red Steel will be a Wii launch title, and the Wii version of the new Rayman has also been in development for a while.
While Electronic Arts did have a Wii-specific version of Madden planned from the start, it was the only major game in the works from the publisher until the company revealed that five more games from their stable of sports and action games would also come to the system. Midway was also cited as not having much in the works for Wii until recently, though they attributed that to not having as much information about the console's business model until around E3.
Now that Nintendo's vision with their new home game console is better understood, analysts that initially wrote off Nintendo's chances are re-evaluating the situation. David Cole, an industry analyst with DFC Intelligence, sums it up as such: "The Wii has very strong potential to be the first-place platform."
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