Id Software Games Probably Not Coming to Wii U, Vita or 3DS

Ever since I made the post about Developers/Publishers existing in some sort of paradoxical world wherein the only sane business model seems to be to do nothing at all because of risks (since absolutely nothing has an audience until it has an audience, and developing for something without an audience is bad according to them), I just sort of sat back and waited for the next big example of someone calling it into the light.  Or -a- big example, since I have probably already missed one prior to this one.  Turns out I didn't have to wait very long thanks to John Carmack who just had a Keynote speech at this year's QuakeCon.  He had some choice things to say about pretty much everything in the industry today, which Joystiq has collected (though likely not in full, so grain of salt, etc.) and, obviously, some of the things were about the Wii U and Vita specifically, both of which have obviously been identified at this point as "risky" because of the Catch-22 surrounding them.

"I always thought that the Wii U and Vita would be great targets for Doom 3: BFG Edition," Carmack explained. "We should be able to bring that over directly, but [the platforms have] generated nothing for us on the publishing side of things, because they're somewhat marginalized platforms."

"Clearly there's a difference on the handheld platforms," Carmack continued. "While the 3DS is doing okay, the Vita's really not doing particularly well."

"A lot of that has to come from the fact that [...] everybody is carrying a pretty good gaming platform already, and selling a new one to them is a little bit of a harder sell," Carmack said, referring to the widespread adoption of smartphones.

"I'd love to be able to develop on the 3DS and some of the other small platforms," Carmack said. "I'd like to see the games show up on the Vita or the Wii U, just to play with some of the characteristics they've got there, but it's extremely unlikely to happen. There's a finite amount of time and only so many things we can focus on."

At best here, we have a case of John Carmack simply talking out of both sides of his mouth, saying "Oh these things are really neat and great, but nobody likes them so we're not going to bother" and at worst, he's simply parroting the same damaging rhetoric that's already been attached to the Wii U specifically (and to some extent the Vita) which is only making it out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.  "Nothing sells on it because nobody has it because there's nothing on it because nothing sells on it"  It gets less and less convincing every time you hear it because it only allows you to draw from the obvious absurdity that it exists on because it amounts to one big finger-pointing match which, as we know, is far from the height of maturity.  "They're not doing it, so we're not either!"  There's a point where it goes from being understandable to straight-up shifting the blame.

What draws particular attention to this as a blame-shifting exercise is the part of the quote where he infers it would be a very, very basic port job to see Doom 3 (Almost guaranteed the BFG Edition) on the Vita and Wii U from a structure angle, with then a little bit of extra thought to utilize the exclusive features of the devices themselves.  Which seems to infer that it's a very, very low-cost, low-risk situation, otherwise why would he say it would be easy and is something that he wants to do in theory?  Low-Cost, Low-Risk situations are exactly what you want to do in situations like this because it creates a steady platform for you to draw consumers to your particular brand that you can then support with future products.  That whole "If you build it, they will come" situation, basically.  The closing line of that spiel, saying that there's only so much time and so many things they can work on does make perfect sense clearly, but if that's the case then why again is he saying some of the other things he says?  "We'd love to support this platform, but we're currently stretched thin on our own projects" makes sense, but "We'd love to support this platform, but nobody else is so what's the point and OH YEAH, we're kind of busy as it is" doesn't.  It's redundant and unnecessary.

That's rather tame in relation to the other rather dumb thing that he's going on about, in bringing up the whole Cellphone situation, because it's yet another thing that everyone -says- without it being the least bit true.  I consider myself a pretty tech-centric guy in that I like all the new shinies as they come out, if sometimes only enough to find out what they're about before I'm not interested anymore, but my cellphone does not reflect this in the least.  I'm nowhere near alone in this.  I have a basic flip phone that can do standard phone things because it's a phone and that's all I want it to be.  Being just a phone serves it pretty well considering I can go a week and a half or so without even thinking about charging it, and I'm not shackled to some idiotic Data and Messaging plan that allows me the privilege to use my device for its intended purpose for a ridiculous sum of money every month.  Yet, I do enjoy handheld gaming which is why I buy handheld gaming devices.  As in devices specifically designed to be gaming things that are also handheld.  Crazy idea, I know.

This all goes without pointing out that everyone shouting that the cellphone gaming space is awesome so let's all jump head-first into it is creating a situation where that's not the truth of the matter at all.  The resulting bloat, combined with the rather inefficient methods of sorting and visibility on the platform-holders parts lead to hundreds of developers releasing a game and not seeing anywhere near enough money to break even, let alone make a profit.  Which is only one of the myriad of problems with the mobile space, of which we've already expounded on several times in the past, so I don't really even need to go into further detail here about it.  Really, this whole little thing is just kind of some weird meta-reflection of what an unhealthy majority of the industry seems to be thinking at the moment and it's rather unfortunate.  While I don't think Doom 3 on the Wii U or Vita is going to make a difference of any sort, it's just the principle of the matter.  Just another person in the industry shouting all the wrong things at the wrong time.

I would've played Doom 3 on the Vita, but oh well, guess I'll just have to settle for Killzone:  Mercenary, and clearly I am on the losing end of this scenario, clearly

Developers/Publishers Aren't as Smart as You Think They Are

If you pay attention to release announcements, like yesterday's Strider announcement, you tend to see two things that are almost always left out:  Wii U and Vita.  The 3DS misses a lot as well, but that's...kind of a different beast in that the 3DS is likely the weakest machine out there at the moment.  Which isn't a knock against it, it's just that it's fairly impossible to get some games to fit within its confines.  Watch_Dogs, for instance, simply wouldn't go on the device in the same form as it could go on the PS3, the Wii U or anything else.  It's not an unfair statement to make, is my point.  Regardless, that they're -not- on the Wii U or the Vita is always something of an anomaly, given that both platforms can more than likely stomach the game you're trying to hand out, especially if it's on the PS3 and possibly PC, given that it's been said it's an easy port from the former, and I imagine a lot of the PC Indies have found it rather simple to get their game on the Vita, and I've yet to hear of a screaming technical error from any game yet.

Whenever a question is posed, "Why isn't this game on the Wii U/Vita", someone will always (usually in a snarky fashion) state it's "Because those systems don't have anyone buying them."  Okay, so then the question becomes "Why isn't anyone buying them?" (by the way, people are buying them, obviously) and the answer is then, still snarkily, "Because they have no games."  Well, yes, they do have games, but okay, not quite as many as the other systems that have been around for seven years (or almost three for the 3DS), so yes, totally fair.  Totally.  Still, this is a lead-in question as well - "Why do they have no games?"  "Because they don't sell any systems."

Right.

So the way to get a system to sell is for it to already have a fantastic library of games on it already?  Games made for it, I assume is the qualifier, since, you know, the Wii U has the Wii library (of which I'm told has a few gems) and the Vita has a good percentage of the PSP library which has quite a fantastic line-up as well.  Regardless, I'm sure you can all see the logical inconsistency here.  I have faith in you all, you're smart people.

However, the answer to that is that it's simply 'unprofitable', and in today's environment, 'unprofitable' means 'doomed', either in the over-reactive presumptuous way, or the....actual, literal way, which is a fairly sad state of affairs.  That fault lies nowhere but on the developers and publishers for creating the environment to begin with.  We didn't force them to make grandiose teams of developers to work on possibly out-of-this-world-great games or potential over-polished garbage (or, hell, even under-polished garbage as we have seen), certainly.  We assisted in fostering it by buying the games, one could argue, but what are we going to do, not buy games because their developers/publishers were fiscally irresponsible in making them?  Of course not because that's silly.

The harsh truth is simply that you're going to have to eat a loss at some point.  Sorry, but that's just the truth of it.  You have to get games onto a platform to inspire purchases of it so you can put more games on it and eventually recoup from not only late purchases of that original game, but people who have finally picked up the console for the games who are grabbing yours up.  That's simply how it works.  Don't pretend the PS4 and the XBone are anomalies in this, considering the success both consoles seem to be having not only in pre-orders, but game announcements.  Think back on the announced lists and try to present a game that's 1.) Third-Party and 2.) Not also coming out for PS3/360 as a fall-back, ensuring that the PS4/XBone version is just an up-port.  Or perhaps a lateral port of the PC version.  I mean, go ahead, I'll wait, I'm pretty sure you're not going to find a lot.  (I'm gonna cut you off and go out on a limb here and suggest that Sunset Overdrive is a Second-Party thing, like Resistance for Sony has been.)

So it's not even as if they're giving the PS4/XBone 'proper' focus, either.  It's going to be up/side ports for a long time while Sony and Microsoft struggle to keep their First and Second parties making the system enticing enough for you to deem it worthy of a purchase if you're not sold on it already.  Neither of them will have very much trouble in this, of course - Sony has been working very hard at making the PS4 attractive from every angle and have succeeded almost uniformly, while Microsoft has gained back a lot of goodwill from the 180, specifically from the people who went "Well, I -want- Halo, but I don't want bullshit" since said bullshit is (possibly) gone.  The mandatory Kinect isn't near enough of a deal-breaker for most people (unless its requirement requires some funky layouts and/or won't allow a person to simply turn it around to keep the camera off of them, as they'd rather not deal with it) and you simply cannot fault Sony for much at this point, in terms of the PS4 itself.

Still, this is playing both sides of the fence, and eventually somebody is going to lose out on that end.  You're going to need other sources of revenue than the Large McHuge Super-AAA havens that people make the PS4/XBone out to be (as they made the PS3/360 out to be) and the time to get in on this is now.  Or rather, it was half a year ago at least, but you can still get in on it.  You especially want to jump in on Vita development, since the parity between the PS4 and the Vita is going to put the device in a lot of hands, and if it's there, people will buy your games.  Nintendo is probably going to get their act together on displaying the Wii U as a device that you want for reasons as well (if we know Nintendo, part of it'll likely be a price cut right around November to 'devalue' the PS4/XBone out of the gate), and to continue to ignore them isn't going to do you any favors.  People -will- play non-Nintendo First-Party games on a Wii U if you give them to us, it's just in your court to make that leap.  Since you're just hurting yourselves by not making the effort everywhere you could be focusing.

the cyclical bullshit is just so damn annoying