Excellent post. noname2200

Thank you. In answer to your question on using projected figures my rationale was this.

1) Because many good Wii 3rd party games have been released recently and have not had the time to show where they are going, I thought projections were useful as long as they came from a reputable site which tracks the games and adjusts according to actual performance.

2) In the time I've been on this site people seem more often to deal in sales numbers, not revenue

3) I thought numbers were simpler than dealing with relative costs, but you have done a masterful job.

4) I was responding to the constant refrain that NO 3rd party software can do well on the Wii so I mainly wanted to disprove this assumption, not necessarily to do competitive comparisons

5) Probably most important, I'm new and in my naiveté may simply have made the wrong choice. My bad.

But then there wouldn't be an argument if these games' success were acknowledged.

It seems like an evolution of the 3rd party argument to me. We have gone from 3rd party games not selling, to the wrong 3rd party games are selling. The baffling part being that there was no "wrong" 3rd party game before this generation.

I've seen two variations of it. The first I like to call the "1 million debacle." Despite the fact that both of these games are quite obviously successful, there are those that don't accept this because it did not reach 1 million sales. For a sales site it surprises me how few people seem to understand that the 1 million benchmark is not needed for success or profit.

The second variation is the "I sold more than you!" argument. The detractor will acknowledge that the game is successful in its own right, but they absolutely must find a way to diminish this success for their argument, so they will find a game that sold more than it and wave it around as if it nullified or canceled out the game in question. It doesn't.

What I find most fascinating are the villains, however. Carnival Games and Mario Party 8.

I had never heard of Carnival Games before I came to this forum. No one I know seems to know anything about the game. And yet it is constantly cited on this site to be the bane of everyone's existence. I don't really see it get attacked on other sites, even when they talk about Wii shovelware, and yet this game is only second to Wii Fit when it comes to 'destroying the industry' around these forums. The majority of the people fixated on the game as a source of evil have never even played it. How odd.

Mario Party 8 baffles me moreso than Carnival Games, however. This is the 8th Mario Party after all, and yet it is constantly cited as some sort of debacle. What happened with this game? What went wrong? ...did anythign actually go wrong? I can't really find anything about this Mario Party that makes it so different from the others to be contantly in the crosshairs, and I can never seem to get an explanation as to why this Mario game in particular is expected not to sell for "not being stellar enough." I thought people had come to the realization that Mario sells, yet Mario Party 8 is always said to be that terrible game that shouldn't. Why?

I did a comparison of New IP's non 1st party on both HD consoles (Mainly the Xbox360) and the Wii.

HD consoles - $160,000,000 revenue at the shops
Wii - $40,000,000 revenue.

Thats an average of the top 10 new IP non 1st party games on either system. Thats as apples to apples and the most relevant I could make the comparison.

Until I can see otherwise im going to have to assume that a completely new IP will struggle on the Wii in comparison to a 360/PS3 multiplatform.

Until then, its either ports of established properties or Nintendo 1st party games.

I would draw a distinction between predictions made before data is trackable and projections which are based on real trends and numbers and adjusted as data indicates a need. It's not a alien concept, it's done on this site all the time, it's pretty much a stock in trade. Whenever they take a total sales graph and use the extension of the trend to estimate total console sales by the end of 2008, or when the Wii will pass the Xbox360, that's the exact same sort of projection.

So you're saying that Bioshock is an "apples to apples" comparison to Red Steel?

I call Bullshit on that one! Bioshock had a massive marketing campaign and was dramatically better than Red-Steel, and was released after the XBox 360 had been on the market for 2 years.

Projecting spore sales are the same as projecting when the wii will outsell the 360?  What?

Which is why I carefully segregated it and labeled it as such. I do not think it is as reliable as data such as RE 4where the game is close to reaching the projected lifetime total.

Well then you think Rock Band and Lego Indiana projs are as reliable as say RE 4 or GH III projs? Why don't you just make all the unreleased games.

Honestly I'm just getting sick and tired of that argument - 3rd parties don't give support which then leads into - "Well when they do give support the sell like ass" and it's always the examples of Zack and Wiki and No More Heroes with complete neglect for the ones that did sell, regardless of acknowledging at the friggin least that the ones that did sell did so because people knew that they even existed hell theres more to it than just the sales numbers, Suda didn't jump around happy because he broke even - he cracked open the cheapest bottle of wine cola because he made money.

For now Nintendo makes the most money because guess what they bet on Nintendo's Wii... jeez I wonder why.

R&D takes a while give it some time and we can see great games on all 3 platforms.