If two or three third party games already out climb across the 1 million WW mark, will people stop claiming third parties can't sell on Wii?
Rayman has a VERY good shot at reaching that mark (at 375K total in NA... Averaged 18,350 a week in Jan, and 16,100 a week in Feb, ie awesome legs... And also appears to be selling well in Europe.)
And Red Steel, Monkey Ball, and Sonic will all be doing over 500K, with long-term shots at 1mil (subsequent holidays, price cuts, sequels renewing interest, launch game legs).
Plus a possible 500K+ end total for a game like Trauma Center is HUGE (170K in NA, not sure about EU). This is a game with a budget-game budget... Averaged 6K a week in Jan, 5K a week in Feb... I'm seeing Cooking Mama charting pretty high in some of these Wii-format retailler reports... Another game where an eventual 500K is just massive.
Anyways... What I really wanted to say was... If Nintendo owns them, how can they be a third party?
"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.
Essay Pro