SEGA Says Wii Third Parties Should Shape Up
Air Raid
By Colin Campbell
Sega's vice president of marketing Scott Steinberg says third parties
should work harder to get on board with Nintendo's Wii, adding that
there's no excuse for missing the boat.
Earlier this week analysts reported that even a massively successful
Wii launch will do little to boost the fortunes of third parties, which
have been slow to recognize the potential of Nintendo's machine.
Steinberg retorts that Sega has been "on the Wii bandwagon from day
one" pointing out that the firm is preparing Super Monkey Ball Banana
Blitz for launch and Sonic Wildfire for Q1 2007.
He told Next Generation, "The pundits are missing the point when it
comes to the Wii's strategy - not every third party is late to the
launch.
"It's true that a lot of third parties have been flat footed when it
comes to having games ready for the launch window, but Sega is
certainly not one of them."
He added, "Some third parties have shown a lack of imagination when
dealing with this new platform. The way the Wii is being built you have
to design for it. Ports and upgrades are no good. That thinking takes a
little bit of creativity and not every publisher has the necessary
creative people available."
He said talk of Nintendo's less-than-stellar record with third parties
is a poor excuse. "I can say without any hesitation that we have a
great relationship with Nintendo. The American companies don't do a
good enough job of wooing Nintendo.
"Sega has become a lot closer to Nintendo, which is ironic given the
history of the two companies, but that proximity has given us a great
view of how they wanted to get out of the polygon race and stop
battling the technology companies and instead find a very comfortable
position in family-friendly fun games like Super Monkey Ball."
Sega showed both Super Monkey and Sonic Wildfire as playable demos at
E3, "We had a Wii room for journalists and analysts and it was the best
way to try playable Wii games without getting in the colossal Nintendo
line. Those games are built purposely for Wii, That's what makes the
Sega story unique - we have family-friendly games with a great Nintendo
pedigree - we are one of the few companies that can say we had a great
run with GameCube."
He says some third parties lacked the imagination to see Wii's
potential, until it was too late to capitalize on the launch. "We are
all heavily influenced by the propaganda machines of the hardware
companies and you could argue that Nintendo didn't kick into gear until
E3 2006, when they seemed to go from zero to 60 in one day. They were
being beaten up by pundits one day and lauded the next. The industry
realized they had been ignoring Nintendo which was a massive error."
He added that some publishers made the mistake of projecting the past
onto the future. "If you were applying a GameCube to Xbox to PS2 ratio
to Wii, then you might have ignored Wii," he says. "But Nintendo's core
competency is creating games and they have a platform here that allows
publishers and developers to get creative in ways that are different
from the other platforms. It's a real sea change."
Steinberg believes Nintendo could "really close the gap in a big way"
on Sony in the next generation. "There is a feature creep going on in
the platform wars so it's refreshing to see someone do something
different. It's refreshing to see someone take themselves out and
operate in a different paradigm."