According to the analysts at U.K.-based Screen Digest, Nintendo’s current success with the Wii means great things for the company during the important holiday quarter, and further realignment towards the Wii at the publisher level is set to continue as it has throughout 2007.
86 titles are scheduled for release on the Wii in Q4, compared with 47 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and just 38 for the PS3. Furthermore, a quarter of the Wii releases are exclusive to the platform, compared with eight for the Xbox 360 and five for PS3. Screen Digest sees Nintendo’s success and external support for Wii only accelerating, primarily thanks to the quickly growing installed base and lower cost of development on the platform. The firm “expects that the number of games available for Wii will surpass Xbox 360’s library in early 2008 at current release rates.”
Hardly a surprise, I know, but it does give some finality to it all as we approach the holiday. Eighty-six titles in Q4? A quarter of those are exclusives? Are we sure this is a Nintendo system? A lot of those titles will be junk, but as Blake has pointed out here at Infendo before, that’s the exact same dynamic that exists for the PS2. More games equals more crap, but it also means more great games too.