E3 2011: Rage studio left uncertain of core appeal in the wake of massive new console excitement
id Software creative developer Tim Willits has voiced concerns over the potential audience for a core shooter on the Nintendo Wii U.
Speaking to Eurogamer at E3, the Rage dev took a contradictory position to that of a spate of core third-party studios that have announced titles for the console in the past two days.
"The Nintendo market is a tough market for us to get into. A lot of first party games, a lot of licensed games – those are the ones that have done the best on that platform,” he said.
“I'd love it if we can get a hardcore FPS community going and build on it, but it's tough. I think we should keep our toes where we know best.”
Willits went on to warn against Sony and Xbox feeling the need to replicate the new Nintendo hardware release any time soon.
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"Stability in the consoles is good. If they want to stack another year or two on this generation I'd be more than happy. I know somebody is working on it somewhere but I don't want to hear about it,” he said.
"It allows us to focus on the game. You get a technology locked down then you can focus on the design. If you spend too long working on the tech it's so much more difficult. When you know what the platform does you can focus on what is fun."
Regarding the core audiences, what percentage of their audience own Nintendo consoles, or will purchase the Wii-U?
Looking purely at the sales of existing core shooters on the Wii will not give good enough indication of what will happen on the Wii-U given that the conditions are different.
The Wii-U now has an adequate controller and HD graphics on par with the XBox 360 and PS3.
The buying behaviour of core games was likely a result of the above factors.
In fact you can create great FPS experiences with the Wii-U, since the screen provides a form of locality for shooting aim when combined with the Wii-U controller attached to a gun bracket.
Having said that, if id-Software won't make the first step, I'm sure someone else will provide one for the market - so it could be their loss.
Well I know exactly what I would have done if I were in a position to develop a title for the Wii-U :)
* by screen locality, I am referring to the TV (as was shown in the Wii-U trailer).
Really iD not wiiu support? What if the wiiu enables better megatextures support? It has 25 gig disk and fast sd ram along with having more ram. The port can come from the xbox360 version with enhancements.
Technically it's to only fps console that can allow true map making potential. If iD was smart they would port the engine over first let people buy or try it and then release doom4 on all consoles except the wii.
From years of dealing with the shooter community you know we go for anything that can play our games. Some even wanted your games on Mac. To believe that wiiu players with better tech based on current hd console don't want a id shooter then you've been brain washed by pr.
Next quakecon there better be wiiu Id games or at least the engine. I'm mean come on epic mega games is porting.
I'm sure John would love the idea. Try making quake live for it and see what happens you can even put ads on the touch screen lol. We want a quake 3 sequel not quake 4. We want quake 3 or quake 2 on the wiiu!
Its obivious Id can't make another quake 3. Just look at quake 4 it was slower had visual gimmicks and the maps sucked. John did his job, gave us cool tech yet the art team is more about making art than games. The wii u is a gamers console not an art buff console. Id needs new blood boiling blood that knows excitement.
