Funny how people here are still saying third party games don't sell on wii.
Well offcourse we know that. But there is more too it. Those games are crap. If people read more you will find plenty of people who have analysed game review scores and you can clearly see how many of those games are highly rated.
Earlier posts have shown 3rd party games that have sold well if they are good and aimed at the right people.
People still talk about MadWorld not selling well. Sure it will sel slowly, but did you really expect big numbers for a black and white game with a 6 hour story mode and just pure killing. A lot of people would find that kind of game over the top disturbing. Hell I know people who won't watch war movies cause too much killing.
Metroid Prime has always been a nichie seires, just look at previous game. Sales are similar.
Offourse shovelware sells well. Why? because people who are buying it are non gamers who don't read online reviews and jsut are impulse shoppers.
The "core" audience of the Wii are educated gamers who research before buying. If the game is crap they won't buy it.
Now lets look at the gamecube. About 25million sales world wide. Wii is almost double.
NOW LET ME POINT THIS OUT. THIS IS ONLY A PURE GUESS.
out of that 25 million I would expect maybe 10-15 million core gamers (Nintendo's meaning). Rest was parents buying the console for their children or christams presents for others.
So now put this into perspective. OUt of those 15 million core gamers, maybe 13 million at most has upgraded to a new console. Maybe 10 million of the 13 million are brand loyal (over 3million go where the gfx are or hate motion controls) so about 10million X gamecube new Wii owners.
So in essense you are probably marketing to a 10 million core audience + 10-of the 40 million floating part time gamers and casuals.
So at BEST the total core market audience is 10 million + 4 million that MAY BUY a game.
Like I mentioned above, "core" gamers are educated gamers who will do their research.
What this means is developers NEED to make great games on Wii and not cheap ports with tacked on controls to sell well.
Even then you have to look at personal tastes in genre of those 10million.
So in reality your probably catering for maybe 2/3 of that again. So about 7 million people potentially will buy your game.
I know this is a very crude analysis that I have done. However in reality you cannot AIM at the whole user base, you have to aim at your audience you are trying to make the gamefor and make sure it is good for their tastes. Becuase those are the people that will help you sell the games for you by word of mouth etc..
