@Paul Warren: It does, but using such expressions as an example of absolute quality is just stupidity. For the same reason you can say something sucks from your opinion, someone else can say that the same thing is the greatest thing ever existed. Now that you were using the review scores as an example, and if the scores would mean absolute quality, the sales would equal the score. But since they don't, the scores only imply the personal preference of the reviewers.
@Yushire: Why the new audience catering? Because that's the only way to get them into gaming. Then they are catered forward, until they are a part of the (current) core audience.
"New audience" isn't kids, kids are the very core audience and always have been. Parents are new audience.
I think you should my post again, since i specifically mentioned Sony having Singstar and Buzz to cater the new audience. But what Sony didn't do, is upstreamed the new audience, what Nintendo is doing. Nintendos vision is to get everyone to play all the games, when Sony focused on specific games for specific audiences. The Sony way isn't going to increase the sales of the the core games.
The last Nintendo published party/minigame collection so far, was Mario Party 8 (Q1 07), so there have been a lot more games than just party games or minigames. The party/minigames at the after the release, were supposed to show the public/devs what you do with the Wii Remote. After that phase, Nintendo haven't been putting them out. Now they focus other games. They have put out SMG, MP3, MKW, Brawl, for example, after their last party game. And party games aren't actually new audience games.
There are some genres that Nintendo is leaving to 3rd parties as a whole, such as FPS, so the lack of the genre is because of Nintendo having no interest on them and 3rd parties having no interest on Wii for the genre.
As for Z&W and NMH, they have a huge sales potential later on their life, due to the audience upstreaming, but as i said earlier, one of the problems in the industry is, that only the sequels are selling.
Going too far? They have so far released 3 purely new audience games and a shitload of core audience games on Wii. If Wii Fit is selling huge numbers, that's because people like it. I could see your complaint if the numbers were the other way around. Oh, and the "Wii Gardening" is Pikmin 3.
The mainstream isn't likely to jump to MKW, they jump it after Wii Sports and that's the idea. They played Wii Fit -> Wii Sports -> Mario Kart Wii -> Super Mario Galaxy, a pattern where Wii Fit is the "gateway drug" to get people to buy the Wii, then Wii Sports came with the Wii, is introducing them into competetive play, Wii Wheel in Mario Kart Wii is getting them into more the same fun they had with the earlier games and Super Mario Galaxy has the same Mario in it that MKW had. The pattern is pretty obvious.
Think about the pattern and tell me who Nintendo is catering in the end? The core or the blue ocean?
For the last chapter, SMB worked as a gateway drug back then, just like the new audience games now. And it was the same back then with Nintendo destroying gaming with NES and SMB, but, what do you think, did it? I doubt that even the cinematic games will go anywhere, although i'd prefer going back to skill based games instead of cinematic games.
@OkeyDokey: The difference is, that we're used to Nintendo making a quality game despite the subject and used to Ubisoft making a bad quality game despite the hype.
And sale are the only objective way to measure the games quality. Too bad, but that's just the way it is. The same issues that makes the quality of music being subjective, makes the quality of game being subjective.
Ei Kiinasti.
Eikä Japanisti.
Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.
Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.
