Developers Retreating From Wii

Recently the company Game Developer Research published the results to a 100 page report to a survey sent to over 800 game developers in the US. Some of the results were published by PR Newswire, and they show a decline in Wii development over the last year.

According to the survey, development for the Wii dropped from 42 percent of the 800 developers, to 30 percent. This was in contrast to the PS3 and Xbox 360 who had a much higher development rate at 61 and 69 percent respectively.

Another large story of the survey is the acceptance of mobile games as a viable platform. It doubled its development, from 12 percent up to 25 percent. Perhaps Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata should be a little more worried about Apple's iPad, with the rampant growth of mobile games.

Of note, the report also found that with the market currently in decline, developers are favoring smaller sized companies, with a rise of 7 percent in developers with 50 or less employees. Large development houses with 500 employees or more saw a 2 percent decrease.

What do you make of the shift away from Wii development? Is it a good thing, as smaller developers are focusing more on individual games, and compete with less volume of titles? Or perhaps it is a bad thing, as developers are giving up on the Wii? Let us know in the comments below.