Legend11 said:
I was just reading Michael Pachter's post on NeoGAF in which he discusses third party game sales on the Wii and then asks NeoGAF, as a hard core site, what third parties need to do to have more success on the system. The responses are predictable to say the least since this topic has been discussed nearly to death on message boards like this one but I just wanted to point some things out that may lead to some interesting discussions.
The first is the notion that advertising is to blame for the poor reception of third party hard core games as a whole on the Wii. So I have to ask, isn't a hard core gamer by its very definition a person more into gaming? They're the people on video game message boards, video game websites, gamestop regulars, or at the very least they tend to discuss video games with their friends. So it seems strange that they would require more advertising than casuals that tend to be oblivious to release dates and most upcoming games. I mean who here didn't hear of MadWorld before it came out? Yet there are games with almost no advertising or word of mouth that sold far more than it. So perhaps it's really simply the demographics of the Wii that is to blame.
Another thing I noticed is that the advice given by people in Pachter's thread really doesn't make sense. If I were to ask what a third-party should do to have success on the 360 I'm sure many would say to make a FPS. Yet in Pachter's thread the near unanimous advice is to invest more in the kinds of games that are currently selling less on the system. Instead of giving the advice of making a decent to good casual game on the Wii and advertising the hell out of it the advice is to make a more expensive core game and advertise the hell out of it. This is akin to giving advice to 360 third parties to create casual games for that system and advertising the hell out of them. At the end of the day you have to ask if maybe third parties aren't the ones that don't get it.
Also another thing Pachter mentioned and that I agree with is that the split between hard core and casual gamers on the Wii may be far greater than originally thought. The millions of systems that have been sold thanks to Wii Sports and Wii Fit obviously have had an enormous impact on the demographics of the system. If half (or more) of the Wii userbase really is female it starts to make sense why some of those games aren't selling to what would be expected based on the installed base. The Wii really is a different beast and perhaps the best advice for third parties is to make the kind of games many people on boards like this one deride and to work hard at making them take off.
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This is probably one of the few smart things i've read from you. Excellent point, if the wii is all about minimum risk, then why not go the safe way and make more "quality" casual games.
