Well kinda an odd statement because selling any game on any platform isn't necessarily easy (except Mario to Nintendo fans and Halo to MS fans). Aside from that effort has to be put in it as it won't sell off brand alone... even if that brand is Final Fantasy. And even more so if it is a spinoff.
And I'd assume that most 3rd parties would look at the Wii market and see difficulties in the supposed "hardcore" market and it having issues. Of course I'd also ask how many BIG widely marketed "hardcore" games have actually released on the Wii. I mean Ninty does that with there products in that area and succeed quite fine. for 3rd parties I can think of well Red Steel, World at War, and Monster Hunter 3. I look at the sales of those and they are all quite nice.
Only others that I can think at least had a decent marketing campaign was The Conduit and that would be your one example of a game not doing so hot with a decent marketing campaign but wasn't necessarily a big release. I mean things like I mentioned come out on the PS3 and 360 all the time... even more so on DS than Wii.
Publishers jsut need to note, like Visceral Games complaint to EA, is that if you want it to succeed it needs to have a sizable marketing campaign. Just no one is taking that risk and thus it is assumed it is because the Wii base isn't buying it (which you can still get from it though for some parts). I mean when EA Sports Active is having a larger marketing campaign than things like Madworld, Conduit, Dead Space, etc... then you are going to have an issues.
I am going to give a lot of credit to Capcom though. They gave MH3 a huge marketing campaign and were able to ship over a million first week and probably are very happy with the result.
I'm not going to say it isn't the Wii's userbase that is a problem (it is and contributes to a part of it) but publishers need to listen to what Visceral Games stated and look about marketing a game like a big seller as well. Publishers can't just see it as the platform where it is easy to make money because of larger userbase and cheaper development costs and will just sell enough that way. There is a lot of shelf space competition on Wii and they are going to have to compete to stay in the mind's of owners just like on any platform.
