Some thoughts on Wii Game sales

[Parokki]

Red Steel had a cool concept, a pretty decent advertising campaign, and most importantly it was a launch game. A lot of people decided to buy it the minute they heard it was a FPS with sword fighting using the wiimote. The reviews probably came too late for most people to know it sucked before buying it too... I don't expect a lot from the sequel, since it's competing against a much larger library, and the name has a pretty bad reputation.

Zack&Wiki showed/reminded us that even a innovative and cheap game won't sell on internet hype alone. What advertising they did have was also pretty bad, I mean half of it was 5 year olds playing with their parents, even though it's a game with some serious depth and content. I remain confident that games like Z&W have a bright future on the Wii, but they'd do a lot better as downloadable titles.

Twilight Princess is actually the best selling Zelda game after the original LoZ and Ocarina of Time if you put the GC and Wii versions together. I don't think it has anything to be ashamed for.

Super Mario Galaxy has sold less than I was expecting, but should have monster legs like NSMB. I think the case with most disappointment is that we were blinded by the monsterous launch of Halo 3 and other top-heavy 360 titles, and now seem to think a game has to sell over a million on day one to be succesful.

The game that's sales I'm looking forward the most right now is Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. From its strong launch it clearly had the potential to be the fourth 3rd party million seller on the Wii, and the second from Capcom, but the second and third week drop-off has been pretty heavy in all regions. Maybe the people who were waiting to buy the first lightgun shooter to hit the Wii were a majority of people who're going to get it after all? RE4:Wii had insane legs despite its relatively weak launch, so I'm still pretty optimistic.