With NPD data for December showing sales in USA alone at 1.3 million, it looks like this game may have already sold 2 million copies worldwide in less than 2 months. Its success may seem to buck the trend of what usually happens to 'traditional' third party games on the Wii, but I think this may be for a variety of reasons that other third parties might do well to consider:
- It genuinely is a of a genre that has traditionally been popular with gamers, rather than one that is traditional but which has always been quite niche (e.g. light gun games such as Dead Space: Extraction)
- Its development budget probably came closer to the budgets of 'blockbuster' HD games than third party Wii games usually bother with
- It received decent TV marketing, which is often something publishers of traditional third party games on the Wii don't seem to think is important (e.g. Red Steel 2)
I think if more third parties developing for the Wii ticked the above boxes (so to speak), far more traditional third party games on the Wii would see success. Can people think of many examples of third party games which have done this but which have failed regardless?
