Analyst: Wii Is 'Fool's Gold' For Game Investors

[Procrastinato]

theRepublic said:

Procrastinato said:

Astrotrain, how do you explain CoD:WaW's relative lack of success (I said relative -- 1M is a fine number, but not compared to the 8M of the PS360 versions, across the approximate same number of consoles).

I think that qualifies as a "AAA" franchise title, it reviewed well, etc. It even has a market vacuum to thrive in, which is supported by your own claims that it has no real competition. Why then the 1:8 ratio?

If its not demographics, I find myself at a loss, as to what it might be.  It benefitted from the same cross-platform advertising and everything. The ratio seems too out-of-whack to be mere coincidence, or a "freak occurance". It even released at a cheaper price.

A couple of reasons.

Apparently, CoD 3 for the Wii was the worst version, and not a very good game (but it outsold the PS2 and PS3 versions anyway).  Then, there was no CoD 4 for the Wii, which was the breakout hit of the series.

Those things hurt the brand on the Wii, while at the same time it was gaining popularity on the 360 and PS3.  So on the Wii, the CoD brand was sort of starting from scratch, while the other versions could build on the success of CoD4.

CoD3 was the worst entry in the series, across all platforms.

Your argument kind of falls apart after that, in my book, since you can basically sum up all the FPS games on the Wii, like Metroid Prime 3 (which didn't suffer from the pitfalls you mentioned), CoD3, CoD:WaW, etc. and they still probably won't catch just the PS360 CoD:WaW numbers, let alone the numbers of the gazillion other shooters available (in competition with each other) on those consoles.

You could say "they don't sum up because there aren't very many titles!" and to that I would say "They don't even thrive in a market vacuum, as you state, despite excellent review scores on several of the titles."

I think your reasoning is a bit of stretch.  But... to each his own, as they say.