I think Madden has reemphasized a valid concern about the Wii console. The concern that many have brought up. Perhaps the Wii audience is just not interested in mature games. Looking at the sales of other mature or conventional games on the system you would not be surprised by the sales of Madden on the Wii.

The sales of Madden actually make you question the legs of the console. Yes the Wii is geared towards expanding the market however. The console has not attracted main stream gamers or at the very least not enough to create market impact. The slow adoption of the console might be covered up by the unconventional or the new gamer joining the greater community. The question is how deep is that barrel. Can Nintendo dredge up twenty million more non gamers? I think at some point sooner rather then later the new breed market will have to start drying up.

Regardless of the outcome the poor sales of Madden on the Wii actually hurts the console in the eyes of developers. Just one more piece of evidence that the console is only for casual, young, or new players. That means the console will get fewer mature complex games. This could lead to a polar offering on the console.

I really wouldn't count Wii Madden as unimpressive outside of the debut yet. Despite abysmal sales for the first week (beyond abysmal, FYI). It seems that it did suffer from undershipping. It'll take 2-3 weeks to see exactly where M08 on Wii ends up.

Either way, if true, it shows who are buying Wiis, and who aren't. The typical consumer that bought 40 million PS2s in the US either aren't buying Wiis, or they have Wiis and X360s.

Also, this might send a message to the largest 3rd party in the world that they might actually be wrong by saying "we backed the wrong horse". Boogie did very tepidly it's first and second weeks (had a 40% 2nd week drop. Good but far from what's needed for an uber-seller). But again, time will tell.

RE4, a game released for GC, PS2 and PC as well, says hello...

How can you expect good sales of mature or conventional games when the quality of the few there are is horrible? 

We have a winner!

I think poor sales of Madden is a signal that Wii owners don't want to play Madden, or that the Wii version is not enough of an improvement over the Wii version of Madden 07.  Madden is not a mature, complex game, especially the Wii version from what reviews are saying.

Madden is hardly mature. ;>

really nice post john..as always

and i couldn't agree more, people need to open their eyes more..way more.

I can expect decent sales, because there is little to nothing else for the consoles consumer at the table. Eventually if a gamer has any lust for mature or complex content they will have to make the choice of which is the lesser of two evils. Resident Evil might be a fine port. However for probably being the best mature game on the console the sales are actually pretty flat. Match it against a Mario Party, or a Paper Mario.

I would call Madden mature compared to the other offerings on the console. I would also point out that Madden seems to sell regardless of quality. Usually a guaranteed million seller on a console. Except on the Wii console last years offering did not even break four hundred thousand. That and it arrived with a holiday console launch. I did not expect this game to do well, but it is looking on track to under perform last years Madden.

I suppose we will find out how anorexic the Wii community is when Metroid makes the scene. However for a Madden to perform this poorly has to give everyone a moment of pause. Less then one in a hundred North American Wii owners bought this game in its first week. That is insanely pathetic.

Anyone catch this?

"Interestingly, Fontaine also made it a point to talk about the sales of Madden on GameCube. "As an amazing aside, last week we sold almost 6,000 copies of Madden 08 on Cube; GameStop may have been the only company in the U.S. to have even purchased it for that platform – not that we're expecting a comeback of the Cube but it does indicate trailing systems still have a following and over time the only retailer likely to carry the software for these systems will be GameStop," he said"

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17237

If Gamestop is the only store that carried GC Madden, makes you wonder how many stores carried Wii Madden.