For the past year, every time Capcom showed either Resident Evil 5 or Street Fighter 4, we were asked the same question:
"Is this game coming out for the Wii?"
However, the moment we announce that one of our newest major franchises, Dead Rising, is on its way to the Wii, we've been met with some negativity from some hardcore gaming sites. We've been forced to take a step back and reevaluate our strategies. Is it confusion on the part of those clamoring for Wii games? Have we really been working hard on a game no one wants? Or is there something else going on, something that hasn't happened in our industry before?
Whenever a game gets brought from one console to another -- whether it's a port or, in the case of Dead Rising: Chop till You Drop (DR:CTYD), a complete reworking of the original -- the Internet gets riled up. In their thinking, they feel that any other version is a "betrayal." There are also those that get angry at new versions of a title because they think it's just another way for the publishers to make money.
This has been the case since the dawn of the game industry. Older gamers might remember Intellivision commercials of the early '80s that featured George Plimpton (of the Paris Review) comparing Intellivision games to their Atari 2600 counterparts. While some of his comments on the amazing graphics of the Intellivision are humorous today, the content is much the same as any modern-day graphical comparison. In that console generation and every generation since, graphical comparisons have been commonplace between the major consoles.
However, this generation has added a new twist. This is the first generation where the best selling system is, in terms of graphics, much less powerful that the other two. Did you know that the Nintendo Wii is not as powerful as the Xbox 360? One would assume this was common knowledge among gamers, especially the hardcore players. However, the moment you say it out loud, the Internet descends en masse to shut you down.
The Wii is the best selling console of this generation. On par with the PS2 of last generation, it is the primary system that the mass market is buying and playing today. It has not only tapped into the existing game market, but has also expanded the market to casual gamers who haven't bought a game system since the days of the Atari 2600, or ever. Even the mass media has countless stories of the Nintendo Wii being popular in nursing homes, an audience that never has played any sort of video game. How Nintendo accomplished this is quite remarkable.
The Wii is a different system with a much different focus. Where the 360 and PS3 focused on graphics and processor power, the Wii's focus is accessibility and control. Dead Rising on the 360 took advantage of the 360's hardware prowess and presented a beautiful game with tons of highly detailed undead shuffling slowly toward you. DR:CTYD adopts the same underlying premise, but the game itself has been completely reworked to take advantage of the Wii.
Let's get this out of the way: Will DR:CTYD look as beautiful on the Wii as Dead Rising did on the Xbox 360? No. Will it have the same number of zombies on screen at the same time? No. Does that mean we should deny Wii gamers the joy that 360 owners had in surviving three days in a zombie-infested mall? The answer is, obviously, no.
Completely rebuilt from the ground up, DR:CTYD was not designed for side-by-side graphics comparisons with the 360; it was designed to be a fun Wii game. With a brand-new engine created for the Wii, we've changed just about everything but the overall story. The save system, the weapons, the point of view and even the mission design have all been touched in order to make them ideal for the Wii audience. Fans of the original may like some of the changes and may not like some of the others, but we believe that we are creating a fun game for an entirely new audience made up of numerous Wii fans.
Reader Comments (30)
I played and liked Dead Rising on the X-Box 360 and liked it, but I was counting on a sequel not this garbage.. I haven't even played it but I can tell, even if a few small things are more fun and amusing, it would not only be a waste of money and time, especially if you already played the first one, but also a waste of another zombie game.. I mean seriously, what were they thinking?
how you fell all you idiots saying that WHY capcom doesn't work in another game instead porting to wii, NOW that DEAD RISING 2 has been confirmed, DON'T YA think that capcom is doing work and work with wii pc and xbox 360 and you just comaplain about it, bunch of idiots... i haven't played dead rising on xbox now that i got an elite, im just waiting to play it on wii, the xbox, so let them be...
Colin is gonna be on the Game Revolution Inner Party Podcast tomorrow to defend his opinion. Apparently you can leave questions and comments for him here: http://www.gamerevolution.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11801 and scope the podcast here when it goes live: http://www.gamerevolution.com/static/index.php?section=podcast&page=index
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition was awesome (great graphics, 3 control options, etc...) so it's no surprise people are asking for RE5. The problem is Capcom didn't have a Wii team on that game from Day 1 giving it equal resources as it's giving the other platforms. Dead Rising on Wii doesn't change that. I would be willing to give Dead Rising a chance if it looked like it got the same effort other high profile games have gotten, but it seems like an afterthought meant to cash in on the Wii's success (hopefully RE5 on Wii will be near-identical to the 360/PS3 versions minus some graphical details and not some rush job). Dead Rising looks like crap. Playing to the Wii's strengths doesn't mean the game should look like *ss. Plenty of GCN and XBox games from last generation still look pretty stunning and the Wii is more powerful. Also, $40 is ridiculous. It should be $20 considering it's an old game with a remarkably small budget (or at least it looks that way). Want Wii fans to give Capcom games a chance (and I'm sorry Zack and Wiki bombed it deserved to sell more) - then have Wii versions day and date with the other versions and with the same budget/resources 360/PS3 with everything post after RE5 and SF4. Bionic Commando will tell a lot about how serious Capcom is about selling their franchises on Wii. Activision and Ubisoft found success with Call of Duty and Shaun White on Wii - but they weren't shoddy versions showing up 2 years late.
You should be listening to the fans then: Give wii owners RE5 and SFIV, not a game no one wants.
I applaud you for coming out and saying this because normally I get behind creators whole heartedly when they are honest. However I can't stand behind you because the reasons why I don't like the Wii version coming out are different from the stuff you are listing. My reason is that I haven't heard a peep about Dead rising 2 yet. Instead of making a game that the hardcore want, that would stop the *****ing and whining, and sell well, your making a game that is not as good as the original. If we had seen a Dead Rising 2 trailer or something by now I think people wouldn't be complaining as much.
Wii is not on par with PS2 ... it's 12 times powerful. It's just you lazy ass programmers who either can't or don't want to program propertly. *sigh* Learn you ******** mother****ing TEV. Oh, righ... i forgot. "Some effects are impossible on it" you say... well, i guess The Conduit is cheating for using those supposedly impossible effects ingame ? To put it simply, I won't buy your game version on the Wii, and I won't download it because it's a piece of lazy ass poor port job.
Colin, I appreciate the two-page rant, but you missed the point colossally. People aren't miffed that the game is coming out on the Wii, nor are they annoyed that the game is targeted to more casual players. Critics and many onlookers are annoyed that Capcom are doing such a slipshod job of this port. You say that the question isn't about the quality of the game, but whether the game should be made... so instead of addressing people's concerns you throw us an unrelated question that isn't even the focus of the negativity. Whether the game should be made or not is irrelevant. Nobody's complaining about that. You're countering points that no-one has argued.
obviously not green-kun, they're just using the Wii as a stepping stone, they plan to sell it to those casuals and then say "do you want DR2? buy THIS!" That's how Capcom rolls, they troll your platform on your platform. DR2 Wii? perhaps in two years and it'll most likely look worse than the first one on the wii (again, that's how they roll).
Hmm so does this mean Dead Rising 2 is going to come to the Wii? I mean if you're going to put this up on the Wii are you going to continue on with the series?