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Gamerace on 12 January 2009
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stof said:
Gamerace said:
@ scottie - When Wii Music sells more than the 5m I predicted (which it might)

The predictions here are low since none of these are AAA titles. They are AA at best. Therefore these are decent sales for (most) of them.

Conduit is the the best of the bunch (sales potential wise) but even it looks like a generic shooter which would sell about the same (1-2m) on 360 (maybe less due to competition)

 

Except there is one AAA title there. It's Madworld. It's made by some of the amazing developers of Okami, it features some of the best graphics on the Wii and it's got production values through the roof. Not to mention it looks like an exceptionally solid entry in to a much neglected Wii Genre.

 

And I'll say it again. Style is not niche, niche style is niche. People that think a hip hopping SinCityesque beatemup with cartoonish violence will have a similar appeal as a Japanese art style mythical wolf game are way off base. This games style will attract way more people than if they'd tried to go for realism. Infact, had madworld gone the Skate it route (as opposed to the Saun White route), then it would be in trouble. But this game has hit a stylistic home run that'll take its sales right out of the park (less than a million is IN the park)

It's also getting a lot of attention in the media and is being released by a company that seems damned sure that it wants to push it's hardcore games on the Wii.

Anyone that thinks this game will do less than 1 million life time sales... I challenge them to a duel!

 

You and Johnsobas are right on the quality of these titles it's true.  I'm sure both will get great reviews.  But in saying AAA I'm thinking both quality and marketability.   Both will be high quality, both will be hard to market.  Neither has a known IP.  Neither has massive hype (Conduit has far more hype than MadWorld and LKS has almost none).   MadWorld has a unique style to it which will more likely hurt sales.  Sin City did well in theatres but only relative to it being a low budget movie.  I expect MadWorld to perform similarly.    Little King Story could be the next Dewy's Adventure or Zack & Wiki.   Great game killed by it's own cartoony kiddy style mixed with adult level difficulty.

On the flipside MadWorld does have two things going for it - Easy to grasp gameplay/pick up and play controls.  If the controls are as fun and tight as those in Godfather it could really help it with strong word of mouth sales.   The style while bizarre to many casual onlookers is definately better than a realistic look.   Realism would have looked poor next to HD games, made it too gross for most and gotten it an AO rating.   It's SinCity look does what was intended, makes it all too surreal to be taken as real and allows people to relish in the obscene violence without guilt.   Ultimately it's all going to boil down to controls.   If my girlfriend can pick it up and start killing people in crazy ways within a few seconds, this could be a surprise hit.