Capcom FY 2008 Financial Statement Press Release:

a. In this business segment, "Resident Evil 4 Wii edition" and "Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles" (for Wii) increased their brand recognition especially in overseas markets. Their shipment surpassed one million units, greatly exceeding our projection.

Don't they know 3rd Party Software can't sell on the Wii? This will encourage other developers and it's not even a kiddy game.

The key difference that people ignore is the installed userbase. Let me explain -

Lets say we have 2 systems, system A has 20 million units WW sold, and system B has 10 million WW.

Lets say a game comes out for both systems. In order to match sales, system B's version has to sell to 100% of the userbase to be even with system A selling the game to 50% of the userbase.

Now let's factor in development costs. System A costs 5 million dollars to make a game, System B costs 10 million dollars to make a game. For argument's sake, lets say that both systems sell their game for 10 dollars each.

System A sells to 50% of its userbase, making a gross income of 100 million dollars, minus 5 million for development, making their profit be 95 million dollars.

System B sells to 100% of its userbase, making a gross income of 100 million dollars, minus 10 million for development, making their profit be 90 million dollars.

At the end of the day, the game only has to reach about 48% of its userbase to make the same money as it would if it sold to 100% of the userbase of system B.

To simplify, a game could be a "flop" on system A and still carry a bigger profit than a "hit" game on system B. At the end of the day, it's only partially a popularity contest for a game, but moreso a means of making money. Developers don't go out and build games for the platforms a bunch of gamer geeks think is "cool". They go where the userbase is, which is why 3rd party developers are actually doing quite well on the Wii, even if their games aren't in the top 10.

We often rely on the top 10 lists, but we really should be looking at the actual money made on sales to see how well a game is doing.

Nobody here is taking userbase into account when talking about flops. Its always absolute sales numbers (million seller). The userbase only comes into account when people explain why a system flops.

UK Week 20 2008 - INDIVIDUAL FORMATS (UNITS) -

01 [360] Grand Theft Auto IV (Take 2)
02 [PS3] Grand Theft Auto IV (Take 2)
03 [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo)
04 [WII] Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo)
05 [WII] Wii Play (Nintendo)
06 [WII] Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games (Sega)
07 [NDS] Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (Nintendo)
08 [PS3] Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (Sony Computer Ent.)
09 [WII] Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 (Ubisoft)
10 [WII] Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (Konami)
11 [NDS] High School Musical 2: Work This Out! (Disney Interactive Studios)
12 [WII] Carnival: Funfair Games (Take 2)
13 [WII] Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (Sega)
14 [360] Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision)
15 [NDS] Cooking Mama 2 (505 Games)
16 [NDS] Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games (Sega)
17 [WII] Game Party (Midway)
18 [NDS] Imagine: Babies (Ubisoft)
19 [WII] Boom Blox (Electronic Arts)
20 [NDS] More Brain Training From Dr Kawashima (Nintendo)

Number of titles in the top 20 according to platform:

10 – Wii - 7 are 3rd parties
2 - PS3
2 - 360
6 – DS
0 – PSP
0 - PC

Italics - Wi
Bold Italics - Wii 3rd party.

 

3rd parties on Wii can't sell???

I think the fear/idea comes more from core game 3rd party developers then 3rd party devs in general.

All those games listed are either ports (thus relatively lower dev costs) OR games that either cater to the casual or have a core/casual userbase. That's what PS360 Fanboys/girls are going on about.

They are interesting figures though, and I do agree that the Wii is not a barren wasteland for third party devs, all I was doing was pointing out the other side of the coin.

I am a Wii owner and do agree that third party games have sold better than many people want to admit. That said, I do not think that "projections" should be put up as proof about how well they are selling. It makes it look as though you are trying to drive your point home too much. It also makes it look like you have to make up data in order to back up your statement, which is not the case. The Wii has plenty of third party games with "real" sales.

with the exception of badly reviewed party games. That M&S at the Olympics, Game Party and Carnival games, Raving rabbits etc. sell great is not news.

Kyros said: The key difference that people ignore is the installed userbase Nobody here is taking userbase into account when talking about flops. Its always absolute sales numbers (million seller). The userbase only comes into account when people explain why a system flops.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. A game flopping or not is always relative to what it can be reasonably expected to sell. For example Super Mario Galaxy or Grand Theft Auto 4 selling 5 million during their lifetime would be something of a flop, but obscure niche games reaching even a few hundred thousand isn't half bad at all.

It's pretty damn impossible to say wether a game like Zack&Wiki or No More Heroes is a flop. I mean what do you expect a game by Suda51, or a point&click adventure on a console to sell? I was hoping something like 500k for both, but to flop they'd have to do truly miniscule numbers.  

Possibly true, I do not know about the development costs for these. But of course a game that costs 1million to develop needs much less sales than a game that costs 50 million to develop.

A game is a flop if it
a) doesn't return its development costs and/or
b) sells much less than expected

but userbase doesn't really come into that does it?  I mean a game isn't more of a flop if it sells 50000 on the Wii than on the PS3 with half the userbase.

Kyros said: The key difference that people ignore is the installed userbase Nobody here is taking userbase into account when talking about flops. Its always absolute sales numbers (million seller). The userbase only comes into account when people explain why a system flops.

 

Right, they aren't taking it into account, but they should be. Userbase and marketshare are two driving factors for developers when they must decide which systems to make their games on.

 A company that sold x amount of units but made a multi-million dollar profit is not a flop to that company. Sure, a 300k game might be a mild success or even a flop to gamers, but to the company that just made 6 million in sales, and spent 2 mil in development still made a 4 mil profit. At the end of the day, that is the ONLY number that means anything.