MWR: the core market didnt shift

[Reasonable]

intro94 said:

VictorG said:

Reasonable said:
I think the consoles have very different demographics and that's that.

Very few people seem to want to admit that the demographics the Wii dominates in are very different.  The people that bought a Wii for Wii Fit are not going to go out and buy the latest Call of Duty game.  Games like Just Dance really bring that point home since it scored lower and had a similar advertising budget as many of the Wii core third-party games it is stomping in sales.  People can come up with excuses and blame the quality of a game or the advertising budget or whatever but demographics is the real reason why some games sell better than others when all other things are equal.

nobody doubts wii has more MIXED demographics than the other 2 consoles. But that also means more chances of sucess with more varied titles than the other 2. Because of the mixed wii demographics, games like COD can find a big profit,with all the cons the publisher gave to the game, while still being a great platform for Lets dance sales. After all, Call of Duty Reflex(port) is making more profits than a higher budget NO PORTED Far Cry 2 did on the Playstation 3. Developers dont care where.They want money. 

You say demographics are different. COD3 sold better on Wii than PS3. That means obviously wi fit owners likd COD more than ps3 owners back then?If you ONLY think demographics matter, that would be your explanation.I find it a bit laughable to JUST rely on demographics for answers as why some wii core games sold better.

For example, Star Wars Force Unleashed saw the best sales on the wii rather than 360 OR PS3(unlike GHostbusters). What it says? Wii owners, or as you would like , WI fit owners  are more into Star Wars than PS3 owners, while PS3 owners are more into Ghostbusters.But i leave to you to wonder if there will be a Wii version of TFU 2.You think it wont be after these results?

Wii market is diverse and within it, theres a good, Smaller, but profitable core market.No more heroes 2 is a result.Is a reliable market if you give it good content, and is less crowded than the PS3 market where a load of expensive core games bomb in the competition where only big advertised games succeed.

CoD3 was too early in PS3 lifecycle - and too bad a port - to serve as a comparison point IMHO.

The bottom line is certain titles are going to sell better on Wii than PS3/360 and vice versa.  The real issue as I see it, and I see some other interesting points from others looking at the same point, is current market perception and the fact that so many see things in black and white - i.e. if CoD cannot sell nearly as much on Wii as PS3/360 (and trust me, CoD3 aside as an outlier, it's pretty clear that as things stand a CoD title on Wii is going to sell much less than on PS3/360) then it is a failure.

This isn't the case at all.  What we need is developers and the market just to be realistic, and see that sales of say 1.5 million for a CoD game on Wii is great, and there is no reason to expect it to sell 6 million or more.

Market perception is a difficult one though - all the Wii marketing I see via Nintendo is light, airy and family focused.  The image of the console has been built up away from titles like CoD and Silent Hill, which may be placing a glass ceiling on the sales of certain genres.

All my posts agree such titles can be profitable on the Wii, and all my posts point out that the upper limit is just much lower for certain titles and genres on Wii right now vs PS3/360 - and in fact that upper limit reverses for other titles and genres: for example I'm not sure Wii Fit would have sold that much if released instead at a 360 at the same point in time.

With the big split between HD consoles and Wii this gen I'm not myself convinced the Wii audience is that diverse in purchasing habits.  Certain Nintendo franchises sell really well, certain motion control titles and general titles sell well, but plenty of diverse and pretty well reviewed titles don't.  BTW again I think both the 360 and PS3 suffer from a similar issue, just spread across different genres.

Unlike with PS2 and PS1 generation there really isn't one console way ahead this generation in terms of covering all the demographic bases.  The PS3/360 have really split the market with Wii in US/Others with only really Japan looking fairly clear cut in terms of Wii being well ahead of PS3 and 360 being more or less irrelevant (sorry 360 fans, but in that market it is) and this, coupled with the big differences in HW and control schemes, is clearly giving third party developers a real issue with what they develop, for which console, and tailored to which control methods.