America = The main arena of this generation's console war? (Wii vs 360)

[Bodhesatva]

mrstickball said:
Louis, care to give me numbers to explain Rayman and Red Steel? Sales are nowhere near 1m for either game. Shipments? Maybe. Sales? Nowhere near. Both are lucky to be around 750k each. And my point was: name a franchise that is a Wii exclusive that just became announced within the past year. The reason I mention this is that 3rd party titles do great in the US by companies like EA, Activision, S-E, Ubisoft, Edios, ect. However, none of these companies have announced a major, or atleast mid-major game to be on the Wii only. Likewise, there is more Wii dev support, but again, it's not in actual known franchises, but IPs. The closest thing the Wii will get this year is Manhunt 2. Outside of that, I can't think of any for 2008 that are going to be Wii exclusive.

NiGHTS is pretty much the only top-flight title that Sega hasn't sullied yet. There is one. My Sims is another: I'll go ahead and wager that "The Sims" has sold more copies than pretty much any game you personally care a great deal about. 

Otherwise, as others have mentioned, these things take time to develop. I think the general trend towards Wii development will go like this:

1) February-November 2007, Shovelware. Desperate developers try to get something, anything onto the Wii platform.

2) November 2007 - June 2008: Middleware. Software that may (or may not) have been exclusively developed for the Wii, but isn't a top title. Easy example: Katamari Damaci.

3) June 2008 and beyond: Top exclusives.  By June 2008, I expect to start seeing top flight, substantial 3rd party software being announced for the Wii. None of these may come out before Christmas 2008 or beyond, but the games will clearly be well into development (9+ months) by the time they're announced. Some possible examples: Dragon Quest, Resident Evil (not 5, obviously, but some other title in the franchise), Mega Man, Soul Calibur. I have no insider information of any kind -- I'm only naming franchises that have reasonable ties to the Nintendo platforms.