The DS and Wii userbase will not make games hits that are not hit material.

[LordTheNightKnight]

NOTE: Sorry if the title seems off. I ran out of words.

This was inspired by the thread about GTA Chinatown Wars, but this is broader than that. This is about the supposed notion that userbase is to blame for a game not selling well.

Those people probably don't mean this, but they are implying that DS and Wii owners are under some sort of obligation to buy more copies of some games just because they are so many, and it doesn't matter if those are games the userbase doesn't really want.

I can see the logic, though, but it's crap logic. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the logic in the userbase argument seems to be that "The ratio of people who will buy a certain game is constant in any amount of people who own a video game system. Therefore the more people who own a video game system, the more people who will buy a certain game."

If that's not the argument, I'd both like to hear what it really is and why the context of the argument seems more like what I just wrote.

But assuming it is, any statistics class can show you why it's wrong. And it does not have to do with the supposed demographics of who has a system. It has to do with plain, old human diversity.

How this relates to the title, if there are, say, 450,000 Wii owners (so far) that want a brawler game that's all black and white except for the blood, and you expect there to be a lot more people buying the game, then you shouldn't have made a game that only appealed to that number of people. It's not the rest of the Wii owners' fault the game doesn't appeal to their tastes. No, the rating doesn't mean squat, since the Resident Evil games are plenty bloody and they are selling better. Although Platinum games has hinted at a sequel, so that comment is directed more to the gaming press and other people who complain about the sales.

On the same note with GTA CW. If there are only a million DS owners so far who want a top-down GTA game with elements that complicate actions that the series kept simple before, then it's Rockstar's fault for thinking the simplified controls and realistic 3D art direction weren't part of the elements that made the series a smash hit.

And assuming just because it has GTA in the name that it's supposed to sell more, is basically implying DS owners are obligated to be sheep to brand names. You're basically stating it's a bad thing to be savvy about what we buy. Oh wait, because the critics like it, the brand name is okay. How about the critics are sheep to the brand names? But that's another thread.

Anyway, with other franchises it's clear we buy those games when they are worth buying. Call of Duty has yet to have full local multiplayer on the Wii (which is a major common factore in most of the top selling Wii games), and the series is still selling a million copies consistently with plenty of online play with the two installments that have it.

Final Fantasy has been selling well on the DS, with about half the titles selling over a million. The Wii on the other hand hasn't really got an FF game worth selling loads of, and I haven't seen many argue that the Wii FF games should sell more (I own Crystal Bearers, but it's closer to one of those quirky PS1 RPGs that Square made than an FF games, and those never sold huge).

This is a bit of rambling, but I am tired of this blaming 120 million people overlapping with 70 million people for not buying games they don't really want. It's like going "It's not supposed to be good, it's supposed to be bought." We aren't goiing to buy what isn't good to us.