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jarrod on 05 March 2011
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bluthunder said:
jarrod said:
Zlejedi said:
MightyGrogg said:

Did they stop developing Wii games in Japan or something? There are more Wii games coming in March for the U.S. alone then Japan for the next 3 months. Are you sure there aren't MORE GAMES for the Wii in Japan and you just aren't listing them?


http://gamrreview.vgchartz.com/releases.php?month=3&year=2011&region=Japan&console=Wii&publisher=

Yes they did stop. And no you can't blame them when you look at those last few leftovers sold.

They never really started.  They just kept chipping away at PS3, despite the games like VF5 or Gundam Musou bombing upfront.  3rd parties have pretty much created today's Japanese marketplace on both PS3 and Wii through sheer persistence.


Famitsu:

Gundam Musou 3 - 333,615 
Gundam Musou 2 - 328,167
Gundam Musou 1 - 317,580

If it bombed why do they keep making them?


It bombed because they expected a million in sales.  They kept making them because everyone kept on trying on PS3, like I said.  In fact, every Musou game on PS3 we know of failed to hit expectations... Shin Samgoku Musou 5 was expected to sell 1m, it sold around 370k.  Even the "successful" Hokuto Musou was expected to sell 800k, and only managed about 540k.

Meanwhile, Sengoku Musou 3 sold a very comparable 290k on Wii (700k expected btw).  Think we'll still see Sengoku Musou 4 on Wii?  

Musou is neatly emblematic of the general 3rd party attitude towards PS3 and Wii in Japan... with PS3, 3rd parties were there day one, and despite their games generally not selling to what they expected or needed, they kept on pushing content to the system and bringing most of their biggest brands to it, and have eventually managed build up enough of a market to keep going.   On Wii, they might've thrown out an early experiment that bombed (ie: Sengoku Musou Katana), or a few years in they might've finally made a singular AAA (moneyhatted) effort that didn't sell what they wanted (ie: Sengoku Musou 3) which has/will likely be ported to PS3 anyway, but they've largely been almost entirely absent on the system, and arguably even shown an obvious failure like Xbox 360 better support (it has 11 "full" Musou games for comparison).  

You can't cultivate an audience if you don't try, this is why you see Nintendo and 3rd parties both taking a very different approach with 3DS from day one.  3DS is looking more like the "real" successor to PlayStation 2, this generation really didn't have one for various reasons (at best, something like DS and PSP combined came closest).