The real reason why 3rd party games do not sell well on Nintendo hardware

[cyberninja45]

mrstickball said:
Very wrong.

Let's take the Wii for example - using Metacritic's top scores for 3rd party Wii games:

Rock Band 2 - 1.00 Million Units Sold
Xenoblade Chronicles - 0.83 Million Units Sold
Rayman Origins - 0.42 Million Units Sold
Resident Evil 4 Wii - 2.13 Million Units Sold
Okami - 0.52 Million Units Sold

Those are the top 5, 3rd party games on the Wii. Two were over 1 million units. That's absolutely horrendous for games that have a >90 Metacritic score.

You can defend it all you want, but even the fantastic Wii titles like Xenoblade have pitiful sales worldwide. Had Xenoblade been an HD affair, it would have likely sold 3-4 times as many copies, worldwide.

The Wii/WiiU caters towards a specific crowd. That specific crowd does not buy large amounts of non-Nintendo core titles. Comparatively, the 3DS/DS appeal to almost everyone, and 3rd party sales are generally better among top-tier titles.

I dont know much about rock band, but rayman origins and xenoblade came late into the wii's lifespan the console was already dying and the market for these types of games had already moved away from the wii.

Its a shame okami did not sell better though as it is a better zelda than most 3d zeldas's in recent times. But to be fair I think the wii version sold better than the ps2 version even though the ps2 had a much higher install base, so that says something right there.