Why can't third-party publishers make money on the Wii, when it's such a popular console?
CinemaBlend's Jonathan Stulce argues in an editorial that gamers have no one to blame but themselves. The crux of his argument is the commercial failure of Capcom's widely-praised Zack & Wiki:
The downside to not owning Zack and Wiki is more than just missing out on a great game, it might just hurt the Wii's future library. Developers and Publishers are keeping a watchful eye on the success of Zack's first venture. If the game sells well, more companies can take faith in the idea that Wii customers include people who will enjoy a full length game. If sales don't pick up enough steam to be considered a successful entry into the game market, developers around the world will know to stick to their current formula; The Mini Game Madness Collection.
Now, I'm not sure gamers are exactly to blame for Zack & Wiki not selling better...
My opinion on Zack & Wiki's lack of success? Honestly, I think this game was badly overhyped by hardcore gamers who overlooked a crucial flaw in the gameplay: just how frequently, and sometimes unavoidably, you die. Sequences based on reflexes just have no place in what is otherwise a classic adventure game. It was a design tenet of LucasArts after Maniac Mansion that no good adventure game is going to kill players for having the audacity to want to explore their game world. Hell, even dying in Maniac Mansion took effort!
In Zack & Wiki, you'll die because you didn't understand what a particular point in a puzzle wanted you to do-- and if you forgot to stock up on Platinum Tickets, you'll have to restart a level that may be very long. You'll die because your sensor bar lost track of where your pointer should be when a puzzle sequence ended, leaving you unable to hit a particular switch before enemies swarm in to kill you. You'll die because you misunderstand exactly how the movement system works (the in-game tutorial doesn't explain it to you very well). Sometimes you'll just die constantly because there's no other way to figure out the puzzle.
Constant death is to be expected and relished in a platformer, but in an adventure game it's no fun at all. It feels like a punishment for not being able to read the level designer's minds, and the fact is that Zack & Wiki puzzles aren't always intuitive or even fundamentally sensible. You feel great when you figure them out, but it can be a long hard road to get there. While Zack & Wiki is a good game, I've shown it to a lot of friends who were immediately turned off by the tedium the constant parade of death brings into the gameplay. Some of them were adventure game purists who were pissed that Capcom actually built death into the game's puzzles so extensively.
Don't get me wrong, I love Zack & Wiki. I ended up reviewing it and gave it a 4.5/5 score, citing the constant parade of the deaths as the only real flaw. What is just a single flaw to a hardcore Wii fan like me, though, is going to be a deal-breaker for people with less time to spend being humiliated by a game. I'd bet that the parade of death was a massive deal-breaker for the audience of casual gamers and kids who should have been able to have all kinds of fun with Zack & Wiki. It's not a gamer's fault when he or she doesn't buy something that isn't their idea of fun, it's Capcom's fault for building an out-of-place and frustrating mechanic into the core of otherwise inspired gameplay. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to fail in a theoretical Zack & Wiki 2... but a lot less death would be much appreciated.
