Wii not harcdore?

[Just_Ben]

naznatips said:

Your fears are misplaced. Metroid Prime 3 is selling stronger than Metroid Prime 2 was, and Metroid Prime 2 ended it's life at 1.27 million copies. Other "action" Wii games have been just as or more successful. Red Steel broke 1 million. Resident Evil 4 will break 1 million. It's odd that you should question 3rd party backing when 2 other action titles have been very successful from 3rd parties. Other 3rd party games have done reasonably well too. You can't really call what it's been selling to this point underperforming when it's selling games (like MP3) faster than they sold on the Gamecube (MP2) even though the Gamecube had a higher install base when released.

MP3 sold not as fast as MP2. At least thats what the NPD data is given me. RE4 is likley to break one Million, but so far they are not even shipped (capcom would announce such a step, and all we know are 750k from the begin of september).  Reosonable well is a thing of definition. If you compare the Top third party titles for the 360 and the Wii, divide it by the install base (attach rate) the pictures change. Of course they where a success because even those third party didn't have the Wii that high as it turns out to be. I don't say things can change, but for know it seems that the360 software market is "healthier" than the Wii one in the U.S. At least to me.

First of all, RE4 wasn't the only 3rd party hit. Rayman and Red Steel were both million sellers. Sonic SSR sold .72 million. Numerous 3rd party games despite not selling 500K were claimed to be successes by their companies such as Trauma Center. Second, Gears and Halo show there is a healthy shooter market for the 360, but a lot of big name games that cost a lot more money than Metroid Prime 3 have flopped on the Xbox 360 and PS3:

Yes Rayman and Red Steel did fine, and declare success is not the same as success. Success is only a matter of definition 

The Darkness pulled in .51 million between both consoles and no longer sells. Stranglehold did even worse, and that game cost 30 million dollars to develop. It's contributing to the bankruptcy of Midway. Project Gotham Racing 4 has taken 2 weeks to sell .12 mil. A huge flop for a big budget racer. Eternal Sonata between two territories even with heavy advertising on TV has sold .17 mil. Blue Dragon between all 3 territories has sold .42 mil. Viva Pinata sold .44 mil.

So finding games that flopped on the 360 helps your point?!? Not every Software on the 360 is a hit, I didn't say that?¿? 

My point is simply that the Wii is closer to proving that it can sell all genres than the 360 is at this point. It's certainly struggling with sports games, but it's had multiple shooters sell successfully, as well as Mario Sports games, party games, sim games, platformers (if you count Sonic as a platformer), and action-adventure games. It does not yet have a quality racing game to compare sales with. Nor does it have any quality RPGs. The 360 isn't even selling all games in it's strongest genre (shooter) successfully. Even quality games like The Darkness are able to flop.

Games are always able to flop. The 360 has the highest attach rate ever recorded for its current lifetime in the U.S. You can't tell that a flop. 

What conclusion will this lead to for 3rd party developers? Well, if they just base their development trends on their successes to this point, then the 360 is going to struggle to get games outside of the sports and shooter genres. Most of the games it has gotten outside of these genres have been funded by Microsoft directly. Also, all those games that I listed up there cost at least twice as much to make as a Wii game of equal effort. Some of them (Stranglehold) cost 5 or 6 times as much to make. Because of this, a Wii game doesn't need to sell as much to make money. Trauma Center was cited as a huge success by Atlus even though it only sold .48 million units.

Yes, and I would guess Stranglehold will be defined as success too, all just a matter of definition :o)

With all this in mind, I fully expect the Wii to end up with the majority of 3rd party support, especially from Japanese developers. As I have said many times though, it's unlikely that the effects of this shift will be seen in full force until early 2009 because of how long it takes to develop games this generation, and because the Wii was expected to flop.

I agree on the Japanese part. For U.S. there needs to be a stelar hit. Mario Galaxy can be that hit. What do you think the expectations are for it? GH has a change to hit on the Wii.