True, and for that I apologize (I thought it seemed too low, about half of what I'd heard earlier. Now I know why). But the folks at GAF (some of whom have access to the full NPD data...) also routinely refer to it as a bomb, so don't believe for a second that it did much better out West.

If you can find even one credible source that implies that God Hand did great good decent at retail, I'll cheerfully concede this issue.

I don't anticipate making a concession speech anytime soon.

Welcome to gets-it-ville. I hope you stay for a while. You see, hitherto traditional Wii games haven't really been big-budget affairs, so studios can do quite well for themselves on a few hundred thousand sales.

"Flop" isn't the right word to describe LittleBigPlanet. But it did underperform, relative to Sony's own expectations for the title. Don't feel too bad though: Wii Music is in the exact same boat.

So what if casual games outsold God of War? Thats is not what i'm arguing. I'm arguing that almost 90% of 3rd party games released on the Wii that are not casual games don't sell well. The PS2 had a ton of 3rd party games that sold well on the console, and most were "gamer's games". Just cause the PS2 had flops, does not weaken my argument. Nearly all the 3rd party hardcore games on wii have had lackluster sells. The console is a void of garbage game with a few good Nintendo games sprinkled on top. Believe me, i would love for 3rd party games to do well on the Wii. I might actually play mine once in a while, but so far that wish has not come true.

Do you think any third-parties are looking at the sales of No More Heroes and using that in board meetings to justify making such a games over casual ones?  Seriously you may consider it a success (like Grasshopper Studioes does) but it's hardly a poster child for third-parties to make hardcore games for the Wii.

Glad to see you're up to ten percent...

And I'm still waiting for my list, SRPG. You know, the one that will prove your argument? Instead of citing examples, you're sticking to vague generalities. Why won't you play with me, SRPG?

I think that if you're a large publisher, you probably care more about the performance of large titles, rather than anything Suda51 did. Y'know, stuff like Brawl, RE4, Galaxy, CoD, UC, GH, Corruption, Sonic...stuff that's somewhat comparable to the budget you're planning. If you're an Activision or Capcom, I really doubt No More Heroes is what you're aiming for. Do you?

What list? Do you want me to list all the hardcore 3rd party games on the PS2 that did well? If i have to show you that then you seriously are a wii fanboy.

The list for Wii excluding casual games, and Nintendo games: (i'm gonna exclude sports games because they borader the line of casual and hardcore.) Just looking at this list of the top selling wii games makes me a little sick...

Resident Evil 4

RE:UC

Star Wars: TFU

CoD 3

CoD: WaW

Red Steel (launch titles usually do better than they are supposed to)

The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return

GT Pro Series

Sonic Unleashed (?)

WWE SmackDown vs RAW 2008 featuring ECW

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII

Reading's not really your strong suit, is it? Alright, I'll re-quote your homework assignment.

I also see you omitted to read the rest of my post...

Anyhow, have at!

Brawl. Galaxy, Corruption - (Nintendo first-party games)

Sonic & Mario - (May as well be Nintendo first-party with Mario in the game.  Isn't it published by Nintendo in Europe?)

Well there go 4 of your examples out the window.  See every third-party knows that Nintendo has an extremely loyal hardcore following that buys their games.  I mean if Nintendo had only sold 15 million consoles you can bet those games still would have been multi-million sellers.

CoD - So I read your reasoning for the poor sales of CoD 5 (in relation to its HD counterparts) is because CoD 4 didn't go to the Wii?  Wow, games like Resident Evil and Devil May Cry have never been on an Xbox platform but it still was able to hold its own for those games.  The Wii version of Guitar Hero 3 held it's own against the HD versions of the game even though Guitar Hero 2 was never on Wii, umm why is that?  If you're going to use the excuse of CoD 4 not being on Wii then why bring any major hardcore franchise to the WIi that has already been on the HD consoles?

RE4, UC - RE4 sold pretty well, it's too bad we'll never know what its sales would have been had it not been a budget game.  As for the franchise it's getting support.  Can you really blame Capcom for bringing RE5 to the HD consoles?  I mean it's selling in the millions and will likely end up with over 6 million in sales, that's far more lucrative than had it been on Wii.

The problem I see is that success stories on the Wii for third-party hardcore franchises are few and far between.  It's great that some people can come up with excuses for it, but at the end of the day how can anyone blame third-parties for what they're doing?  I mean it's not enough for a hardcore game to score well, it may be considered niche by some.  It's not enough for it to score well and not be niche, it may not get enough advertising.  It may get all three of those right and still not resonate with the Wii audience.  It seems like the planets have to align in a ridiculous way to ensure that a third-party hardcore game is a success on the console.  It's far more hit or miss than the more predictable gamers on the 360 and PS3.

At the end of the day third-parties are going to make the games for a system that they think will sell on it.  When casual third-party games are outselling the biggest hardcore third-party franchises on that system can you really blame them for making more Petz, Sportz, Cooking, etc, games?

I'm not going to play your game that is laced with loop holes and traps.

Any video game i say you will just say "Nope that game would have bombed ont he PS3 or 360 as well". The thing is that there is no way of knowing that a game would have sold better on another console.

Also your condescending tone is really annoying. Learn to talk like a big boy and maybe you will get you point across.

Oh, I'm afraid you're quite wrong here, Legend11. You see, it's only in your head that Nintendo has this magical fairy-like ability to automatically sell titles, regardless of quality. While I enjoy this fiction that the trolls have created, that Nintendo simply does not count, I have to tell you that Nintendo games are very much so a barometer of what's possible on the system.

I said it before, in this very thread, and I'll say it again: Nintendo games are very much so indicative of what a quality game can sell. And you're being quite silly if you think third-parties don't believe that. Or was it a mere coincidence, for example, that exercise games started popping up like moles once Wii Fit was successful?

Strange how you think third-parties will closely examine Nintendo when it suits your own prejudices, while simultaneously expousing that they will completely ignore Nintendo's example when it doesn't suit you. Strange indeed...

Ah, you did read my previous posts! Yay!

Now to why you're wrong again. The series you referred to were previously released in the last generation: Resident Evil 3 did not come out this generation on the 360, then have explosive growth with Resident Evil 4 (not available on the 360), only to see Resident Evil 5 return to the 360. It's the same story with Devil May Cry. In this generation, the userbase wasn't on any console before those games released. In fact, let me once again point out that when Call of Duty 3 released, the Wii's version was the second best-selling one...

As for your rhetorical question at the end, I think having over a million in retail sales is a pretty darn good answer. It's also helpful to developers in other ways. Did you know, for example, that without the Wii version to back up the HD version, World at War was doing worse than Modern Warfare was at the same timeframe? True story!

Yeah, I guess it is too bad that the fourth release of a three year old game didn't come out at full retail.

And I don't rightly recall making mention of a Wii version of RE5 doing better than it would on the two HD consoles combined, only that the two games were successful on the Wii. Which, y'know, is what the discussion was about and all. Fortunately, you don't seem to disagree. That makes this entire section a waste of bandwidth, but so it goes, eh?

Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter.

"Third-party hardcore franchises" on the Wii have only a handful of success stories, I'll admit. But then "third-party hardcore franchises" themselves are, to steal your phrase, "few and far between" in the first place. And yet, more often than not, those that tried end up succeeding. It's rather similar to the story on the HD console, in fact, with the minor difference that I can't recall any developer going out of business or merging because their Wii game flopped.

In fact, I rather enjoy tracing how this conversation has gone. It all begins with someone claiming that "hardcore" (ugh, that word...) games don't sell on the Wii, and citing No More Heroes. Confronted with proof that that's demonstrably not the case, and that the publisher is weeping with delight (their words, not mine) with its sales, the discussion shifts to "well yeah, it may have made lots of money, but it's not big enough to convince others to take a chance." (ignoring the fact that it's one that paid off!) Whereupon several titles that are bigger, and have done well enough to do just such convincing, are introduced. And the response to that is "those don't count!"

You know, I can't really hold this against anyone. At the clinic I work at, I often meet clients who owe large sums of money that they simply can't pay. They all react in different ways, but there's this small block of folks who, confronted with a reality they don't want to deal with, essentially squeeze their eyes shut and pray that if they ignore reality long enough, it will do them the favor of going away. It never does, of course, and the messes that result are often times quite ugly. I'm honestly grateful that, when folks ignore the realities of the Wii's gaming market, the worst that can happen to them is that they look a bit silly, and ultimately end up eating crow when yet another company comes out and says Game X sold quite well, thank you very much.