Forbes states the obvious over lack of Wii GTA

by Chris Greenhough { May 5th 2008 at 3:00PM }

Forbes writer Brian Caulfield recently had a remarkable epiphany: because Grand Theft Auto IV won't be appearing on the Wii, any success it enjoys may not be positive news for the Wii.

Okay, we apologize for the sarcastic tone, but seriously, could Caulfield's observation be any more ... obvious? "[Grand Theft Auto IV] is a bust for Nintendo because not a single copy of the game will be played on the Wii," writes Caulfield with razor-sharp insight, before he loses focus entirely and starts galloping off on tangents, discussing the PlayStation 3's in-built Blu-ray player and the Xbox 360's online service.

His eventual point? That Grand Theft Auto IV would be difficult to port to the Wii (note: the fact that the Wii's biggest sellers won't be ported any time soon is ignored), and that this could benefit Nintendo's competition. Brian, color us gobsmacked.

[Via Joystiq]

Tags: business, grand-theft-auto, gta, gta-iv, rockstar

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

B @ May 5th 2008 3:08PM

So let's look at some recent sales from amazon top sellers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/ref=pd_ts_vg_nav

So it appears that the top 3 sellers are nintendo products, and the 4th and 5th best selling items are GTA4. (updated hourly, but been the same for almost 3 days.)

Did he address any of the freezing issues plaguing GTA4?
GTA4 = Wii killer

Sinnix @ May 5th 2008 3:18PM

Amazon doesn't necessarily represent the purchasing habits of the entire world though (let alone North America). We won't really know the answer until the sales figures (like NPD and whatever other countries use) are published.

Aside from that, it makes total sense that Amazon is skewed towards the Wii, as it is a more mainstream shopping location. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if EBGames.com had GTA4 in the top two spots with Mario Kart in third.

Do I think that GTA4's lack of appearance on the Wii will *hurt* it? No, that's ridiculous for the same reason that I stated above. People that love Wii don't typically care about games like Grand Theft Auto and if they did they most likely already own a platform to play it on.

Peter @ May 5th 2008 3:31PM

Exactly - anyone who wants to play GTA will have a setup on which to play GTA. I think most people who are buying a Wii are not doing so for the purpose of playing games in the same vein as GTA.

TheOverlord#2 can has Mario Karts?(MK:2578-3517-9859) @ May 5th 2008 6:01PM

Or they aren't able to afford a 360 yet, like me. D:

Orion @ May 5th 2008 3:22PM

sooooo the ps3 and 360 dont get any top selling titles that are only for the wii, but now that ps3 and 360 have a title we dont have it's apprarently the end of the world for wii? bull.

I'm sorry, but every system has exclusives. and it's not like we're starving over here, the wii is getting quite a bit of love in 1st and 3rd party support recently. GTA didn't help the original xbox sell much more systems than the gamecube, so why would this version of GTA be any different? It's one game. If the wii loses it's momentum because of GTA i'll eat my left foot.

Peter S @ May 5th 2008 3:29PM

Honestly, I don't really care for the GTA brand to start with and could care less that it won't make its way on to the Wii. Still, this does seem like kind of a strange article to write. Seems pretty obvious to me that any success enjoyed by Final Fantasy X will not be reflected on the Wii, either. Maybe I should write an article about that..... :-)

The main reason I picked up my Wii was because I could have some family-oriented games and play with my family. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but GTA isn't something I want to play with my elementary school kid.

(And as an aside - I don't really enjoy playing as the "bad guy" in most games, less so when the actions of the bad guy get more and more graphic. The new Star Wars game is intriguing, but I'll probably give it a pass just because it's not my style. I'll probably drool a little over the various Wii controls and how it's implemented, but won't pick it up for our household.)

mian @ May 5th 2008 5:26PM

I'd like to see what effect GTAIV has on people upgrading from PS2. The Wii gets a lot of PS2 ports, for good and ill.

If the PS3 really takes off, and the PS2's active install base shrinks, it'd be interesting to see how multiplatform development teams start treating the Wii. They might start making their games a little more tailored to it. Or they might start making fewer Wii games. Both of those things could be improvements.

NvM @ May 5th 2008 5:30PM

In all honesty I've been playing GTA4 alot more than my Wii.
Brawl has gotten old, and it's not like I'm going to spend $50 on Mario Kart when I have Double Dash and DS when I can get GTA4 for 10 bucks more.

SoshiKitai @ May 5th 2008 8:35PM

But... MKWii has great online capability... GREAT WORLDWIDE ONLINE capability. O_O Why-why wouldn't you want to?

...sorry, for me, the worldwide competitions are the snatch to reel me in.
...also, new courses. New courses ARE ALWAYS FUN.

--I have both MKWii and GTA4... your excuse of "I don't need MKWii, I have Double Dash and DS" is like saying "I don't need GTA4, I have San Andreas and GTA3".
Both games have a great past, but are also new and completely great NOW.

SoshiKitai @ May 5th 2008 8:36PM

I thought Forbes was supposed to sound smart, not obvious.

*shrugs* I take it as a grain of salt, the Wii doesn't really care.

Orion @ May 5th 2008 11:48PM

Yea, at the end of the day, this is an article that PS3 and 360 owners will try to use as ammo to make their consoles sound like they are doing better, while Wii owners, for the most part, judging the demographic, I don't really think give a crap about GTA.

For all of us who grew up on Sonic and Mario, Nights and Vectorman, Donkey Kong Country, Zelda and Metroid.. I just don't think GTA fits many of old Nintendo and Sega fans like myself and my friends. Not to say we don't play our playstations and xboxes.. far from... just that the games we play on them aren't the type like GTA. I didn't buy Bully, .. I didnt buy Man Hunt 2... if GTA was on Wii , I wouldn't buy that either.