By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Sales Discussion - How well do the Conduit and Madworld have to do to send a message?

The latest Nintendo Voice chat podcast vocalized something I think alot of us have been thinking as the release of Mad World and the Conduit rapidly approach. These two games are of incredible importance to the wii's future. They are both games targetted at the core crowd, built from the ground up by teams of great promise, with high budgets (for wii games anway), with a considerable amount of internet buzz around them. These are the core games core gamers with wii's have been waiting for.

Third parties and publishers DO pay attention to the sales of other games. Call them stupid, call them ignorant, call them whatever you want but the marketing teams at publishers don't care about good games, they care about games that sell. They care about low risk high reward propositions. They do use games that sell poorly to a particular demographic as an excuse not to publish like games. They don't care if there was one or two successes if they are amidst a pile of failures and they don't care if those failures were crappy games. They are only looking at dollar signs and bottom lines. People that work for development companies will tell you this is so. This is why the wii gets 100 party games for every decent Tenchu 4. Low risk, high reward. It's why Winter was passed up, it's why the conduit initially couldn't find a publisher until IGN broke the story and built some buzz. Other companies are looking at these Sega published games to see how the market reacts. If one or both of them do poorly it could signal to third parties and publishers to continue the 100-1 ratio of petz to Fragile, it will signal to Sega to publish less risky games. If one or both succeed it could give them all the confidence to start developing and publishing games that are actually interesting and appeal to the traditional gamer.

 

Now the big question is, what is success for these games? What would send a signal that there is a sizable core audience on wii starved for exciting experiences?

Personally, I'm going to go with the arbitrary big round number. I think if they can both become million sellers quickly then they will be deemed successes for the core gamer. Notice the caveat there, quickly. They can't cross the million mark sometime next year and end up on a list under Mysims 3 that reached a million two months after release. If the conduit can manage to be a very multiplayer centric game that gets good word of mouth for fun online play I think it can easily cross that and hopefully reach 2 million. Online play extends legs drastically and if it could become the wii's COD4/Halo 3/inevitably Killzone 2, it's "go to" online game of note, then it could be a great success. But I think in order to even peak publishers interest these games will have to be million sellers and brisk ones at that.

 

What does the community think?



You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.

Around the Network

im thinking that they have to get about 5-6 million by the first year



Madworld? I don't know. I'd be shocked if it goes platinum, if it goes gold it's doing better than I expect it to.

Conduit: Platinum would certainly be noticed, and turn heads because the game was probably alot cheaper than it's HD equivalents.

Double Platinum will ensure a more than reasonable amount of "hardcore" (although, I don't think the term really applies I'm sure you understand my use of it) support in the years to come.

Triple or more and "hardcore" support will surge to the Wii, because that would be incredible profit for it's budget these days.



A game I'm developing with some friends:

www.xnagg.com/zombieasteroids/publish.htm

It is largely a technical exercise but feedback is appreciated.

1 million each.



@soriku

point is they need to make a bestselling game now

first of all THEY HAVE TO BE MARKETED!

then there is hope of sales as no-one outside of us hardcore gamers know much about these games



All hail the KING, Andrespetmonkey

Around the Network

The sales have to be big enough that they demonstrate that there is an audience for these kinds of games ... I suspect that sales of 750,000 to 1.5 Million would probably be a very good sign to most publishers.



Soriku said:
dsister44 said:
im thinking that they have to get about 5-6 million by the first year

 

Umm...yeah, no.

Conduit needs to get to 1 mil+ fast. Mad World IDK...originally Clover hasn't made any best selling games.

 

 

y make a expensive game that sells only a million when u can make a bunch of crap mini games 4 cheap and get 5-6million sells



I think Sega will advertise these games reasonable well. They are serious about bringing "core" titles to the wii. They know they are taking a gamble with these two games and I really don't think they will half ass it. I don't think that means they will be spending 3 million a piece in advertising dollars but I think they will actually have something out there for it.



You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.

If things are to change for the Wii as far as 3rd party support goes...i think that madworld has to do at least 1 million and the Conduit at least 2 million.

And that's being generous. I honostly don't think that the Wii will get the 3rd party support that it deserves. Ever. That much is clear after these 2 years.



If i lose access to this profile as well....I'm done with this site.....You've been warned!!.....whoever you are...

Happy Wii60 user. Me and my family are a perfect example of where hardcore meets casual and together mutate into something awesome.

dsister44 said:
Soriku said:
dsister44 said:
im thinking that they have to get about 5-6 million by the first year

 

Umm...yeah, no.

Conduit needs to get to 1 mil+ fast. Mad World IDK...originally Clover hasn't made any best selling games.

 

 

y make a expensive game that sells only a million when u can make a bunch of crap mini games 4 cheap and get 5-6million sells

Why spend $100 Million to make Grand Theft Auto 4 when you can make 100+ bewjewled clones?

The answer to your question is that the market for mini games on the Wii is pretty close to being fully saturated, and further investment towards those games is unlikely to provide a healthy return.