| Soundwave said:
These people are not interested in, or never were going to play games like Zelda or Metroid. Even 3D Mario is probably over their heads. Wii Sports was a fun distraction/party favor for a while that lost steam a while ago. |
This is myth that needs to die. It's just wishful thinking on the part of those who consider themselves "core gamers" who want to be the center of attention again. The casual crowd is here to stay. If the Wii's audience was the GameCube audience plus casuals, and the casuals were only interested in a few Wii games and then stopped buying them, the Wii would only have achieved slightly greater software sales than the GameCube. But that's not the case at all. The Wii sold over 4 times as much software as the GameCube. Those casuals must have bought more than 2 or 3 games -- the console has a tie ratio over 8. So either the GameCube quarter of the Wii's audience bought 50+ games on average, or the casuals bought their fair share.
The casual audience has not "disappeared." They have not "abandoned" the Wii. On the contrary -- it was the so-called "core" audience that abandoned the Wii. The casuals have been there through thick and thin. They were there in 2008 for Mario Kart Wii. They were there in 2009 for Wii Sports Resort and New Super Mario Bros. In 2010, Zumba Fitness, Wii Party. Through it all, those early games have continued selling. Do you think it's the "core" Nintendo audience still buying over 2 million units of Mario Kart Wii in 2012? Over 2 million of Wii Sports Resort? Almost 2 million of New Super Mario Bros. Wii?
It's not just the Wii, either. Was it the "core" XBox audience that made Kinect Adventures the best-selling 360 game in 2010 -- which, by the way, sold almost 5 million units in 2012? That bought over 5 million copies of Kinect Sports, released the same year, and again selling well over a million units last year despite being two years old? Does the so-revered "core" audience continue buying games by the millions years after their release? Halo: Reach, released 2010, didn't manage a million in 2012. GTA4 for 360, released 2008, hasn't reached a million since its launch year.
And my favorite example: Just Dance. The series that has sold almost 40 million units after debuting in 2009, just 4 years ago. 10 million a year on average. But let's break it down! Only Just Dance for Wii was released in 2009, and it sold almost 7 million units LTD. Not bad. Just Dance 2, released in 2010 for Wii, sold over 9 million units. Now that's growth! Just Dance 3, released in 2011 for all three major consoles, sold over 11 million units. How could the series grow so big so fast if the "casual" audience it feeds on have all moved on to $1 tablet games?
2012 was a slump year for Just Dance, although it's more like a transition year. Just Dance 4 will continue selling into 2013, but there's no denying its sales have fallen from 2011. How could this be? Well, the franchises's biggest platform, the Wii, was truly in decline in 2012. It received little or no software support the entire year, and much of the year before. In fact, it's a miracle that Just Dance 4 managed the measly almost 5 million sales it did.
Yeah, 5 million casuals were there for the Wii despite being shafted all year in releases. Man, if only there were some really core games released for the same console in the same year we could compare this to.... OH HEY, I FOUND SOME.
Just Dance 4 for Wii sold over 2.5 million units in the US in 2012. Xenoblade Chronicles, the high-profile first-party epic Nintendo RPG the internet was desperately clamoring for throughout 2011, was released in the states half a year before JD4 and sold under 400k copies. The Last Story, the epic RPG from the freaking creator of Final Fantasy that, again, the internet was desperately clamoring for throughout 2011, sold merely 150k in the US in 2012. The two games combined barely broke 500k, one-fifth the sales of Just Dance 4. "Core" games didn't fare much better in Europe, where The Last Story, released in February last year, barely sold 100k, while Just Dance 4 (October!) sold over 1.5 million.
Again... the "casuals" are still here. It's the self-labeled "core" that left.
And who cares if your "casuals" don't want to play Zelda or Metroid? Maybe those games just, I dunno, don't appeal to them. The same way Wii Sports doesn't appeal to you, yet the average Wii owner has dumped something like 40 hours into Wii Sports. Average.
