My original point in this thread was just to point out that Wii-third party games do sell well.
That isn't a small thing.
GC Total SW was ~ 208.5m Nintendo was ~70m of this total
N64 Total SW was ~225m Depending on how you count third party-partnerships Nintendo was 124m-130m of this total
Basically, what you had for GC/N64 third party markets was the following:
N64: a 20m/year addressable market for third parties over the five years the system sold.
GC: a 27m/year addressable market for third parties over the five years the system sold.
For those two systems, between 1996 and 2006, only 33 third party games topped 1m units worldwide.
For Wii, in less than a third of that time, 50 third party games have topped 1m units worldwide.
Personally, I think the issue is developers haven't made motion-enhanced traditional games that are a) more accessible, and b) more fun. Usually, the publishers nail one or the other when using motion for traditional games. Mario Kart benefited enormously, as did the first Sonic game on Wii from nailing both a and b. Party games, music games and fitness games have benefited the most because they nailed a and b. But to me there is alot of unexplored potential yet in certain fairly big genres/subgenres:
Enhanced/Created on Wii in theory
- Competitive Boxing (Punch Out in some ways isn't really a boxing game, its more about evasion than punching)
- Dancing (Your Shape will do 2-4m)
- Platformers (on NES/SNES/N64 platformers were huge. The ability to "draw" platforms should offer tons of innovation...not much has come yet)
- Mixed Martial Arts/Taibo (Women would buy this - house wives like the fitness genre, girls love DDR - this is a combination)
- Sword Play
- "Real Racing" - If some publisher had the balls, and I have no idea if Wii would recognize this, you could hook up two Wii balance boards to your Wii (have your friend bring his over!), and race to a finish dodging obstacles on the screen by standing on your tippy toes or whatever.
Should be Attempted
- Fighting/Racing/Action RPGs should all work too. Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat that kind of stuff always did well on the NES, SNES, N64, GC...and most people play Smash using traditional controls. Nintendo fans have always bought fighting games - that audience is there for mainline entries. So there should be a big fighting game base on Wii. Racing games did well on NES and N64, and ok on SNES and GC. Over the top stuff like Crazy Taxi would work. Zelda and Monster Hunter 3 should there is an addressable audience for this type of game.
Avoid:
- Games without local multiplayer or amazing single player. Online is secondary. Wii is magnificient for local multiplayer, probably the best videogame system ever for it, and certainly since the N64 when it had the four player, racing and wrestling games that everyone loved.
- Needless motion control/traditional control. Do your research - figure out which game works best for the genre.
- Games targetted for only one region. You need universal content that is culturally agnostic.
- Content associated with fun only because of its violence or 'dark themes'. Women and kids won't know about it, men who own a Wii won't want it because they aren't interested or can be better served on PS3/X360.
The market for games not enhanced in terms of motion and accessibility is definitely limited relative to the base of the Wii, which is the main reason publishers have trouble with it.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
