'1,5 million people bought Dead Space. Not even >9,000 of them own a Wii? This is ridiculous. They either snob the Wii and its graphics, or simply don't care about an on-rails spin-off.'.

I didn't say all of them.

Still, why would your average Dead Space gamer own a Wii?

More to the point, why put a Dead Space game on the Wii in the first place?

Now, with that I can agree. Wii owners have been screaming for a third person RE game for 3 years and we end up having another on-rails shooter from a completely unknown to the system IP. Even if DS:E were third person, it'd still have trouble cracking 500k.

It's just that EA tried to capture a portion of the core gamers on the Wii while also appealing to the casuals. Of course, the casuals could never get into DS even on the HD systems. The core were put off by the on-rails transition and the "test" crap. Hardcores could care less about a Wii third party game with less than HD graphics and presentation. This game was sent out to die, simple as that.

if you're trying to say too many on rails shooters isn't the only reason, then yeah there are countless reasons this was gonna fail but they've been talked to death.  On rails shooters are not gonna sell like they did in 07 and 08 now though, they just won't.  HOTD 2&3 sold nearly 3x more than HOTD:overkill.  The reason is timing.  RE:DC will not sell even close to RE:UC, but unlike Dead Space RE already has a strong userbase on the wii and is a much bigger franchise in general so it can still retain decent sales, maybe half of RE:UC sales. 

I really don't understand third parties to be honest. Why must they all be followers? Carnival Games and Mario Party see success and all of a sudden there are a million party games. RE Chronicles and House of the Dead and all of a sudden everyone wants to make a rails shooter. Wii Fit was an astonishing success and now there are a billion fitness games. Truth is that in life the first to come up with original idea is likely to have the biggest success even if your product is better because people are unlikely to buy two of the same and if they already bought the originators product then they are much less likely to buy yours.

But the more intersting question is not why they have to be followers but why can they only be followers when it comes to the easy option? Mario Galaxy was a great success. Where is the massive 3rd party platforming game ripping off Mario Galaxy? Resident Evil 4 Wii was a huge success. Why has Capcom chosen to only release on rail games now when no onrails game has sold as well as RE4 Wii which is a game already on two other platforms? Simple answer is most 3rd Parties don't seem to have any talent to make a quality game unless they are able to use amazing HD graphics to hide the gameplay flaws. So with Wii they take the easy option of just making party games instead of a platform or other massive game or a rail shooter instead of a third person game.

Why there will be games which copy succesful games?

Carnival games and mario party sold a lot -> Game party (2.09m), deca sports (1.97m), big beach sports (1.34m), game party 2 (1.02m). There must be a lot of more these kind of games which have made profit but I am not going to bother to look below 1 million marker.

Same goes for those fitness games. I only know that Ea made one and there is Jill michaels fitness game and both of them are likely to made a nice profit. Make a cheap game -> get a nice profit = great. No publisher gives a crap who had the original idea and the most succes if they see good enough profits.

Why there isn't games copying SMG? Because they can't use mario and a game like SMG costs a lot more than next "game sports party". How many 3d platformers have sold 1m+ on wii? 3? How many of those 3 does not have a famous video game character who cannot be used by any developer?

No. It is not about lack of talent. It is all about assessing the risks and potential profits.

Interesting to note that the vast majority of people who bought (not played, since there were supposedly twice as many of those) Dead Space most likely do NOT own a Wii.

Considering that a spin off prequel title that changes the primary game play mechanics of the original is definitely NOT a hardware seller by any measure, maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that consumer interest has been so indifferent.

While there is clearly a market for survival horror games on the Wii, specifically Resident Evil (carried over from the Nintendo core audience on the GC), RE may be the one and only popular horror franchise to sell significantly on the Wii.

But as one of the minority players who actually bought Dead Space, and owns a Wii, I still didn't feel compelled to buy Extraction, despite the fact that the story (and significant back story) was one of the few things I liked most about the original.

I certainly didn't feel compelled to buy Extraction "to support third party exclusives on the Wii." At this stage in the current generation, my standards for console games have been raised, meaning good reasons, not excuses get my vote in sales. Maybe I'm not the only one among multi-platform gamers who feel this way and didn't bother to buy the game either.

Why is it that any Mario game can sell millions?  Is it not because of quality games that he became the biggest name in gaming?  If 3rd parties had talent they would make a quality game that would sell millions.  It does not have to be a platformer it can be any genre.

As for the games you have mentioned there are many Carnival Game copy cats that have failed to sell even 50k. 

My point is 3rd parties could have looked at the sales of RE4 Wii or Red Steel to realise that there was a gap in the market on Wii for a mature quality game to sell and make alot of money.  But they did not have the ability or sense to make that game.  Instead they were making party games of questionable quality and on rail shooters which are far easier to make than a proper third person game.

Why is it? Because there are a lot of mario fans who will buy almost anything with mario slapped on the box. Of course the main series games are of good quality but I just can't see a platformer of same quality selling that much without Mario. Has there ever been a platformer which sells as much as Mario?

How do you know that those 50k sellers haven't been profitable? I just can't see those games being so expensive that 50k sales would not give profit.

Of course they could have picked the 28. and 50. from the top seller list. They just choose to copy those games in the top 20 seller list. There are quality mature games on wii. They just don't sell as much as those games mentioned before.

Yes no platformer of similar quality will sell as much as Mario.  No question about that.  But has any fitness game sold anything close to Wii Fit.  The biggest selling fitness game that isn't Wii Fit is at around 3 million.  Wii Fit is gone past 22 million.  Why did EA not decide not to release their Fitness game when they knew it had no chance to sell even a 10th as much as Wii Fit?  Obviously because making a fitness game is easy.  Why have third parties decided not to make a quality platform game knowing it won't sell anything close to Mario Galaxy but will at least sell like 2 million if it is of a similar quality?  Because they do not have the talent to make such a game.  Why did no one make a quality FPS from after Red Steel till COD knowing there would be no competition on the Wii but instead they were releasing Guided FPS?  Because making a guided FPS is easy compared to a proper RE style game of FPS. 

Truth of the matter is they all missed a huge opportunity.  Especially last Christmas period when all there was from Nintendo was a Wii Music game no sane person cared about and Animal Crossing which was a port of a DS game.  If any third party had released an exclusive quality Wii game last Christmas they would have made a sales killing.  Instead their lack of talent and foresight meant they decided all Wii owners want are rail shooters and party games.

Panzer Dragoon: Orta is on rails, and it's one of the best core games I've played. It's also very, very difficult.

Star Fox 64 and Sin and Punishment are also on rails.

Your statement is wrong, imho.