Piracy is the real reason why core games on Wii don't sell as well?

[Squilliam]

LordTheNightKnight said:

Squilliam said:

Thats also supported by the average sale price for Wii third party games. Pachter said IIRC they were $33 in the U.S. and we have also seen multiple instances of games which started poorly finally take off and sell reasonably after a $20 price cut. If people simply don't value the software at the regular sale price it creates a discord which can lead to piracy or it can lead to people simply not buying the software at the regular full release price.

But that doesn't mean it's because those are Wii games. Those games are just worth about that price to consumers period. It would be the same on the HD systems.

Is it? You've got one system with very strong copy protection and the other has a big downside to piracy in the form of losing access to Xbox Live and some console features. With comparable games, features like online are far weaker as well as overall user experience due to loading times etc. These features are more likely to reduce value for a Wii game for a significant proportion of the core gamer market on the Wii, which by itself doesn't make up a majority of sales but it does have relevance when talking about the relative sales of applicable core titles.