MWR: the core market didnt shift

[MaxwellGT2000]

Reasonable said:
I think the consoles have very different demographics and that's that. A CoD title on Wii can be profitable, no doubt about it, but the market for it is a fraction of that on PS3/360. The ratio between Wii owners wanting a CoD game and PS3/360 owners wanting a CoD game is huge.

On the flip side, look at the demand on the Wii for titles like Wii Sports, Mario, etc. and compare that to say Banjo on 360 or Ratchet and Clank on PS3.

The bottom line is that if you really had to chose where to invest, for a title like CoD it wouldn't be the Wii. This doesn't make the Wii doomed, but it does explain certain opinions and views of developers and analysts.

In reality, if it's profitable to add another 1.5 M units of a franchise on Wii to sales of over 10M on PS3/360 then hopefully developers will say why not and make such games available to those who would clearly like to receive them, but in terms of general analysis the much smaller Wii sales are going to be judged somewhat harshly (arguably incorrectly as this simplifies the demographic position).

Very good post, though it could be argued that with the media frenzy from various games for the 360 and PS3 helped create those FPS markets, which really the only FPS on Wii that had a real budget for ads was The Conduit and to a lesser extent CoD W@W.  Which in turn the same could be said about Super Mario being promoted like crazy on Wii which is now breaking sales records, and games like R&C aren't and weren't promoted to help create those markets on HD consoles.

I think its reasonable to say as long as people own a console they'll typically still buy games for said console even if they own a PS3 and 360 as well.  So even if the "hardcore" market for Wii shifted to PS3 and 360, they'd still like to buy games on their Wii if its something that appeals to them.  Also that its never too late to help create markets on these consoles it just needs pushes in both media and software, not these "test" games with no marketing, the customers will come if you put some strategic marketing with good teams making solid games on any console.