Is It True That 3rd Party Games Can't Sell on the Wii? Figures say No.

[Grampy]

I think it may be time to acknowledge that the caveat that 3^rd party games do not sell on the Wii is not really a fact. Despite the fact that the industry was totally unprepared for the Wii’s success and is only now really catching up, quality games have not done that poorly. The shovelware has done just as good as it deserves.

Accepting the benchmark that a million sales constitute a hit and relying on Metacritic data of actual and projected sales (all but one being on track or above to reach target)

Guitar Hero III                                                   2.98M
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles                      2.37M
Lego Indiana Jones                                          2.16M
Madden NFL 09                                                1.24M
Resident Evil 4                                                  1.54M
Resident Evil Umbrella                                      1.23M
Rock Band                                                          2.89M
Lego Star Wars                                                  1.22M
My Sims                                                              1.04M
Future Big Hit
Spore                                                                    2.92M

We have not seen anything like the future of 3^rd party software now that market realities and development costs of 25% - 50% on the Wii have become clear to developers. But the games above won’t have their developers crying in their beer