Sega: Third-parties should shape up to Wii

July 21st, 2006, 22:23 Posted By: wraggster

Sega's VP Scott Steinberg has stepped in to remind everyone that his company's been behind Wii since day one - following recent analyst reports that many third-parties are likely to miss out on the potential success of Nintendo's Wii this Christmas, having underestimated the buzz surrounding the console following this year's E3.

"It's true that a lot of third parties have been flat footed when it comes to having games ready for the launch window," Steinberg explained, speaking to Next-gen.biz, "but Sega is certainly not one of them. 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."

On the subject of Sega's relationship with Nintendo and the reason why the company chose to support Wii, Steinberg revealed, "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. [...]

"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."

Steinburg acknowledged that, given the relative lack of success enjoyed by the 'Cube, it was unsurprising some companies were skeptical about Wii. However, he noted, "If you were applying a GameCube to Xbox to PS2 ratio to Wii, then you might have ignored Wii. 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."

According to Steinberg, it's easy for publishers to fall under the spell of PR when considering which platforms to support.

"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."

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