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Zucas on 27 January 2010
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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.

Well that is a completely misinformed argument haha.  Don't get a lot of these lately... wait who am I kidding I get them all the time.  "Hardcore gamers" as you and they put it is I assume to be the traditional core gamers although I'd disagree with the definition.  A few poor assumptions are that they are ALL well-informed, ALL buy lots of games, and ALL talk on message-boards, frequent game stores, or discuss with friends.  Keyword is ALL.  Do you think us that talk on these kinds of site are a majority?  Have you been in a Gamestop recently?  The majority of people I see coming through  my store that people like you would call "hardcore" I'd say don't talk on internet forums, started gaming as a kid maybe with the NES but only got big into gaming with the PS2, and probably couldn't tell you what Chrono Trigger is. 

The point is, people like us on these forums are a minority within the "hardcore" minority.  Generally these gamers are just like mainstream gamers/casual gamers in nature but just buy a few more games maybe due to gaming as a kid or higher monetary income.  But they probably don't know a game is coming out til a few weeks before it comes out.  They don't read reviews (they ask me at the store haha).  Point is hardcore gamers aren't gaming nerds.  They just aren't.  There is a small amount of them that are but for the most part (accept for Japan) they just buy more games than your normal customer.

How do you reach them?  You advertise and market.  That is how these games get noticed by them and that is why they buy them.  Whether or not demographics are same or different on the Wii is irrelevent, the actual core gaming base (people like you and I) are not a majority or even a plurality in any sense on any of the consoles and handhelds.  We don't make these companies money either.  We work at the game stores, talk online, read reviews, but the rest don't.  The rest either learn about it from us or they reached by extensive marketing and advertising.  So that is why that point is the best point, because if those PS360 games didn't get the marketing they did they would have similar issues... hell go look at the ones that did and you'll see why. This is an industry and your money make is how well you sell it.  Quality doesn't hurt but you sell it with getting people to know it exists and like what they hear or see (hype). 

The Wii is no different and it needs the same thing.  That is why the Nintendo games succeed and a few 3rd party efforts succeed.  But why the likes of most of them don't.  Of course there are your "in-store" successes that sell off box-art, name, or retailers "selling" them (games Deca Sports for example), but for the most part to sell outside of the core gamers, you have to let them know it exists and why they should buy it.  The core gamers will read the reviews, be well-educated on it, and know from day 1 (just like the Japanese gamers) but for the most part the rest in America and Europe will not have that luxury.  Whether you consider the people who bought Halo or Call of Duty or even some RPGs nowadays is your personal opinion, but the majority of them are not like the people on these forums (although thanks to Facebook and  MySpace popularity I think they are starting to leak over).