Crystal Bearers developer: Selling on Wii will not be easy.

[routsounmanman]

RolStoppable said:

ckmlb said:

 

It's a debate, I think 3rd party core games are generally not selling as well as they should (some are not selling well at all).

1 million sellers on the Wii:

Total: 59 games

1st party: 19 games

3rd party: 40 games of which 16 are targetted at casuals and 6 are casuall/core hybrids (3 guitar heros, 2 mario and sonic olympics and 1 rock band)

So out of 59 million sellers, 35 are first party or purely 3rd party casual games and 6 are hybrids, 41 out 0f 59 million sellers causual or first party. If you consider all 6 hybrids thats's 35 out of 59 casual and first porty, not as bad but still an easy majority.

Of those 18 3rd party core games (As their main focus), there is litereally only one core new IP that debuted on the Wii that is a million seller and that is Red Steel (a launch game).

1 new 3rd party IP that has sold over a million on Wii a console with almost 55 million userbase in about 3 years on the market and it was a launch title.

That's an alarming fact.

But whose fault is it? The Wii owners'? Or are third parties themselves to blame?

Let's have a realistic look at that. In order for a new IP to surpass one million in sales it needs at least one of the following things: quality, marketing, attractive pricing, a worldwide release. It's also pretty much a requirement that the core game is in a popular genre to surpass one million. What are these genres? Well, they are defined by what has been successful on previous and current consoles (PS2, Xbox, GC, PS3, 360, Wii). So let's go through these genres and see which new core third party IPs had a realistic chance to sell one million copies based on the requirements mentioned before, because there must be a good reason why people buy a game.

• FPS: 1. Red Steel. It didn't have the quality, but it was advertised. Being a launch title helped as well, because people wanted to see how FPS work on the Wii.
  2. The Conduit. Mostly based on its hype, but unfortunately the final product fell short of expectations. Decent game and decent seller, but it's not going to reach a million.
• TPS: N/A
• Sandbox: N/A
• Platformer: N/A
• Action: N/A
• Action-Adventure: Monster Hunter 3 - very close to a million in Japan alone
• Racing: N/A
• JRPG: N/A
• WRPG: N/A
• Fighting: N/A

So overall, it's one out of two so far. I doubt that one of the HD consoles has a better ratio of success when it comes to new core third party IPs this generation, but feel free to prove me wrong on this one.

Anyway, what this means is that third parties are doing something wrong when it comes to core games and it's not the fault of Wii owners that there aren't more million sellers from third parties. Most of the time their quality games are niche products which have no realistic chance to pass a million in the first place. Obviously those games can still make profits, because the one million mark hasn't to be reached in order to make a title successful.