I truly think that the main problem that developers/publishers have been having with selling core games on the wii is in fact not of their own making.
Living in London, and having seen game shops and HMVs all over england in the past few years, the one thing that is obvious is that these core games are being given NO shelf space whatsoever.
The core games for the wii get released without a whisper, and get a tiny amount of space in a chart, maybe having one dvd front poking its head out on the whole wall of wiidom. There is little to no advertising around the store for upcoming releases other than mario and wii fit types, and after a week of this one dvd front obscurely lying on the bottom shelf at chart position 17, it disappears into the section where only the spine can be seen with 104 other games.
The gamer who follows on the net will know about it and buy it anyway, or tbh have bought it online as its invariably cheaper, but the average guy, this slice of the 50 million users sega are chasing, simply will barely ever know the game exists. There is no shelf space or shelf priority for these games so the sales will be limited to those who follow them online and do their homework. which for the wii is a smll proportion of the market
combine this with non existant GOOD advertising on TV for mature wii games, and they all slip unnoticed into oblivion.
HMV is the worst. I go in 4 scattered around london very regularly, and i have oly ever seen 3 metroid trilogys between them. So certainly in england, i swear, they dont sell because they are never on the shelves!
Anyway, something happened in 2008 where all of the hardcore gamers left, and all attempts this year are failing. I doubt severly as much as i hope, that any hardcore game from madworld/hotd overkill time onwards will repeat what re4, re:uc, hotd 2&3 etc did. that market seems to have disappeared entirely...
but i think with one AMAZING game, a game good enough that people would buy a wii to own, with huge advertising and store space would have a chance.
and once they sell it, they need to make sure that one sale advertising all of the other core games they are trying to push - advertise madworld, overkill and the conduit in the box, get trailers for their other games in the game menus etc.
once you have their attention, you dont let them get away!
Muramasa: the Demon Blade
