Visceral Games:"Shame no one bought DS:Extraction, Wii support reconsidered

[theRepublic]

Garcian Smith said:

woopah said:
dead space fans were put off my console choice
core wii gamers were put off by genre
lightgun fans put off by price point


who exactly are they selling this game to?

Good question.

A good product is marketed like this: "Hey, look at all of these cool bells and whistles that you'll get if you buy [product]! [Product] is awesome!"

Most of the "test games" for the Wii from third parties have been marketed to core Wii gamers like this: "Buy [product] if you want to see more of [product category]. And we swear that the next [product] will be better than this half-hearted effort! All we need are sales of this one!"

Do you see what's wrong with this picture? Third parties are marketing their core-market "test games" to nobody. The only incentive that they present for buying one of these "test games" is to see other games on the core market. They think that consumers (core-market consumers in particular, but also consumers in general) are stupid enough to throw their money away on a product that has no discernable benefit to them except for a vague promise of something better in the future that you'll have to pay even more money for.

Basically, they're approaching the whole concept wrong. If they had released a game that consumers wanted for its own benefits, they would have succeeded. But this "test game" garbage is nothing more than negative marketing, and time and again the sales numbers have shown that it doesn't work because consumers are too smart to fall for it. And then, each and every time, the developers or publishers of the "test game" wring their hands and state, "Look! There's no market for core games on the Wii!"

In reality, they're just self-fulfilling their own dire prophecies.

Excellent posts.  Both of you.