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

[cyberninja45]

Scoobes said:

cyberninja45 said:

Scoobes said:
Wow, confirmation bias and elitism in a single post, lol.

I disagree. Different audiences and market segments influence thrid-party sales rather than anything to do with actual game quality. Recent Nintendo consoles have sold predominantly to the wider audience as well as core Nintendo fans who will happily buy the next iteration of Mario or Zelda.

Funnily enough, third party games do sell on Nintendo consoles, just not in the genres traditionally associated with core gaming. On the Wii the likes of Just Dance, Zumba fitness, Lego: Star Wars, Carnival games, EA Sports active and Cooking Mama are all third party franchises that have sold millions. Like I said before, market segments influence third-party sales, not game quality.

@bolded So you are saying that there is no market for 3rd party sales on a nintendo console because they are a different market from the other console? So how does a game like RE4 (which is a high quality 3rd party game) manage to sell 2 mil copies on the wii if the market is not there?

Yes nintendo consoles do cater to a wider audience also.

It's present, but smaller compared to HD consoles + PC and less relevant from a publisher POV. When a publisher can produce a Just Dance game that sells >5 million and with a cheaper budget then a new RE, they're going to take that route.

Take shooters for instance. The Wii got a few shooters early in its life cycle (CoD3, a few Medal of Honors, Red Steel), but even with the marketing (especially for Red Steel), the lack of competition (especially as Nintendo don't have a traditional FPS- you seem to suggest this is why third party games don't sell, right?) and even with the rapidly expanding userbase the Wii had in its first 2 years, they were still low selling titles when comapred to the likes of Resistance or Gears of War.

Sales are still determined more by market segments than by the games quality. More importantly perhaps, the early sales on the Wii demonstrated that the audience was more heavily skewed towards party games and platformers with dance and fitness taking off a couple of years later. This is where third parties have had the most success.

I agree that the market is smaller than HD consoles+PC , but it was still there and still profitable from a publisher POV.

I am not sure I understand your second paragraph correctly but Red Steel was not a well made game if that is what you were implying.