Ganoncrotch said:
The real way to show that the "core gamers" left the wii over it's lifespan can easily be done on the game database of this site, check out Call of Duty games on both the Wii and Xbox360
Wii call of duty sorted by global sales
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?page=1&results=200&name=call%20of%20duty&platform=Wii&minSales=0&publisher=&genre=&sort=GL
COD 3 (2006) 2.25m
COD W@W (2008) 1.96m
COD MW (2009) 1.52m
COD Black OPs (2010) 1.39m
COD MW3 (2011) 0.87m
Decline each year of the "core gamer" buying CoD on the system
X360 Call of duty sorted by global sales
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=call+of+duty&publisher=&platform=X360&genre=&minSales=0&results=200
On the X360 the scale is the other way around, (with the exception of the legacy ports of the PS4/X1 Black ops 3 and Ghosts) the lowest game sales were experienced by the earlier titles, growing year on year, not only is the number of "Core gamers" staying the same but it increases as the generation goes on. Not to mention that from Activisions point of view the system was also more worthy of Core games since there is 11 CoD titles on the X360 compared to the 5 titles bought to the Wii.
Fifa looks more or less the same, the Wii games released earlier are on the top of the list for Global sales whereas the later year titles are all at the end, on the X360 it's the earlier games which make up the lowest number of sales and the top selling titles being the later games.
Wii Fifa
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?page=1&results=200&name=fifa&platform=Wii&minSales=0&publisher=&genre=&sort=GL
Xbox360 Fifa
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=fifa&publisher=&platform=X360&genre=&minSales=0&results=200
I personally am not a giant fan of the term Core gamer nor the rating of one type of currency spent on gaming to be worth more magically because that title is an FPS game rather than on a fun multiplayer game... but that said, CoD and Fifa are I think the peak of the Core Gamer type genres and those do show a decline on the Wii over the years and an increase on the HDtwins year on year.
Also going to just point out here that while the Wii Fifa games which are lower on sales are Fifa 12/13/14 and 15 and obviously the Wii-U launched in 2012 so that make sense.... Except Fifa launches 1 year ahead and even Fifa 13 was out a few months before the Wii-U launched in 2012.
As for the OP idea, I think not only did the Wii launching in the package that it did make it as successful as it did, but you have to remember that the Wii processor is just an upgrade on the GC's Gekko, Nintendo absolutely made the biggest profit they possibly could from the Wii in the way that they launched it, not only did the thing sell like hotcakes because it was a relatively cheap super family friendly machine, but also it helped them to recoup some of the massive losses they had from the GC by finding a home for some of the design and architecture which that system made use of unsuccessfully (financially). |
Well, at least someone is using some actual data.
I don't think there's an argument that the Wii was a success among hardcore gamers. But this is far different than saying that people as a whole got bored with the Wii library.
Even with the Kinect and the Move trying to steal its thunder, Just Dance saw a rise in sales year to year up to the release of the Wii U. Wii SKUs for Skylanders always outsold any other SKU, even up until the release of trap team. Disney Infinity is another example of a franchise that did better on the Wii than other consoles. Sonic games also did consistently better on Wii, with Sonic Unleashed selling best on the Wii, and Sonic Colors outselling either SKU of Generations (even though Generations was better IMO). We also see things like UDraw being successful on the Wii, and then being financial suicide on the 360 and PS3, Epic Mickey on Wii selling better than both HD Skus combined, and other examples.
So, yeah Nintendo didn't do as well among the COD type of gamer (which I refuse to call core gamers) but there are other areas where Wii performed better.
And in terms of first party software, Nintendo had enormously lasting success. Even in 2012, Wii Fit was still selling over a million copies. New Super Mario Bros sold nearly 2. Mario Galaxy was about 800K. Brawl was stilling 500K. Wii Sports, Resort, Mario Party, Just Dance 3 all sold over 2 million. Zumba 1/2 each sold over one and a half.
In 2012, there were 12 games between 1 and 6 years old that were still on the yearly top 100 for the Wii . In 2013, some titles (Wii Sports, Mario Kart, Resort) were still selling over a million.
The fact that these games were still selling so well, (it's pretty much undeard of for a 7 year old game to be selling more than a million copies... aside from Nintendo DS and Wii games and a few games like Minecraft I can't think of any others) indicates that there was still a good deal of interest in purchasing Wii games, and if more games were still being released, people would have bought them.
So yeah, cod gamers weren't too interested in the Wii, but this was never its strength anyway. In the areas where the Wii was strong, it continued doing pretty well up to and even a little after the Wii U releasae.
