It turns out that it’s cheaper to develop games for hardware that’s little more than two Gamecubes taped together (does anyone even remember that slur for the Wii any more?). Seriously though, according to gamesindustry.biz, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata recently said in a conference call that Nintendo is being courted by third parties as they try to develop affordable games in tough economic times. Said Iwata, “Some are reportedly saying that they bet on the wrong horse or that they need to change course.” Nintendo has always been the primary supporter of its own hardware, especially during the N64 and Gamecube generations when third parties flocked en masse to Sony’s consoles.

Although the console has been criticized for a glut of poor-quality bargain bin games, Iwata was optimistic about future support, saying, “Overall, we recognise that our relationships with the software manufacturers are shaping up better than before. So, in the mid-term, we believe that more attractive titles will be launched by them for our platforms.”

A rising tide may lift all boats, but a falling tide won’t sink Nintendo.

World of Goo is one of those bite-sized games you can consume before it gets stale. The tower-building puzzle gameplay offers a level of accessibility that should appeal to casual gamers and deep innovative puzzles that should appeal to just about everyone. There’s not too much incentive to replay the game, but at $20, you get what you pay for and more.

Console sales have long been a painful exercise where the manufacturer takes a monetary hit on every unit sold. They then cross their fingers and hope to make up the difference on first party software titles and licensing fees–not a bad bet considering the low cost of printing and distributing games and the high cost at the point of sale.

The gaming press has long portrayed Nintendo as the exception to this rule, but only just recently has Forbes placed its money at its media mouth and estimated the Wii’s console profit margin at $6. Given that the Wii has a comparable market penetration to Sony’s Playstation 3 and about half that of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Nintendo must be sitting pretty on that profit margin.

This news comes at about the same time as a gamesindustry.biz observation that the Wii is the hottest thing on Ebay since the terms of use made it illegal to sell and ship fire. The console is currently asking $100 over its MSRP on the popular auctioneering site. It’s almost as though Nintendo is stepping on its own long tail by starving the American market so close to the holiday sales season.

Not content to mine old content from two or more generations ago, Nintendo has added part of the Gamecube’s lineup to the list of games that will give your wallet Déjà vu. It sounds ridiculous to buy $10 Ebay games at retail, especially since the Wii is already backward compatible with the Gamecube, but Nintendo is justifying the purchase by retrofitting the games with gestural controls. With that in mind, most of the list makes sense:

• Chibi Robo
• Mario Tennis
• Metroid Prime
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
• Pikmin
• Pikmin 2

When the Wii first announced, many gamers’ first thoughts were of how to improve existing games with motion controls. If the Nintendo sees success with these games at the expected $35 mark, your fanboy dreams may just come true.

The Shack is reporting that SquareEnix’s next entry into the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles series is picking up the ball that the first game dropped.

Fans of the original game (and bitter near-fans who never got to play) will recall that Crystal Chronicles was a part of the Gamecube’s big push for inter-system connectivity. The game could support up to four players, each connecting a Game Boy Advance to the Gamecube as a controller. The small screen provided unique information to each player as a means of facilitating social interaction while gaming. Unfortunately, the combined price of four handhelds, a console, the necessary cables, and the game ultimately represented an insurmountable barrier for many gamers, Crystal Chronicles was less than a stellar hit.

The new Crystal Chronicles, Echoes of time, will be released as identical games both for the Wii and DS. So, instead of requiring a handheld to control the game in multiplayer mode, players will have the option of playing the full game with whatever platform is available. Since the Wii’s gestural controls are analogous to the DS’s touch controls, the two versions of the game are expected to control similarly. Detractors who have historically said that the Wii is little more than two Gamecubes taped together will probably take the DS-limited graphics as free ammunition, but everyone who doesn’t have a heart of flint should appreciate the flexibility afforded to players.

Now if only they’d figured this out an entire console generation ago.

In what is apparently an effort to put the point back into point and click adventure games, the first season of episodes from the Sam and Max games will be hitting the Wii on October 7. The series has been available on the PC for some time now and it’s a bit more expensive on [...]

Actually, Gamasutra reports that the Wii has become the top-selling console in the US. While its lifetime sales totals don’t rival those of the PS2 or the DS, Wii Fit and other parts of Nintendo’s policy of expanding the gaming user base appear to be paying off. Since each console is sold at a profit, even the low casual gamer attach rate shouldn’t impair Nintendo’s revenue flow.

If the long tail operates as advertised and casual gamers keep buying occasional games over the console’s lifetime, Nintendo may be in for a sustainable firehose that sprays cash.

Activision has announced Wee 1st, a new brand intended for its Wii-targeted development.

Nintendo has historically had difficulty forming reliable relationships with third-party developers due to unfamiliar hardware and draconian business policies. However, the new brand’s starting lineup clearly isn’t targeted at core gamers, a sign that third parties may be growing more comfortable with the Wii’s target demographic and design sensibilities. Whether or not this will lead to the software explosion the DS enjoyed about a year after its launch remains to be seen, however. Place your bets for what will happen for the fourth quarter of 2008.

Jeremy Parish (1up, Gamespite) has posted an editorial exploring the possible positive impact of Wiiware title Mega Man 9. The upcoming title will adopt the same graphical and design sensibilities that drove the NES era Mega Man games, a multi-generation step backwards for the franchise. While this kind of regression isn’t unheard of (SquareEnix has been mining their retro properties for years), the meeting of new content with old design is a bold step in the often stagnant medium.

Pokémon Snap is a pure example of the rare photography sim genre. Players not averse to the Pokémon brand will find the game dated and overly simple, but strangely fresh despite it all. It’s a pleasant change of pace, though the game has little staying power.