Contrary to what Nintendo and Wii fans want to make you believe, third party games don’t sell on the Wii.

As a gamer I couldn’t care less for software like EA Sports Active and other non-games. Besides fitness titles, the bulk of third party sales goes to minigame compilations like Rayman Raving Rabbids and Carnival Games, games shipping with gimmicky peripherals and kids games. But what about the games that matter, the real games? Do they sell on the Wii?

No.

The few great games like No More Heroes and MadWorld flopped hard and even the established Call of Duty franchise has a hard time selling any significant amount on the Wii. Nintendo’s console might have a huge installed base, but that has not been of any help for the more hardcore games. Even if they are of high quality.

“But Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition sold about 1.5 million copies and that was a two year old port!”

I am not biased, so I have no problem to admit that Resident Evil 4 was a great game on the Wii. It was the definitive version of the game, because it had the graphics of the Gamecube version and all the content of the PlayStation 2 version. Most importantly, it supported the Classic Controller. But in the end RE4 is an anomaly and it just doesn’t seem right to use it as proof that third party games sell on the Wii. Back then in 2007 when it released, there were hardly any good games available for the Wii and on top of that it was a budget release ($30). Any somewhat decent game could have sold that much under these circumstances.

While numerous new core IPs were commercially well received on the 360 and PS3, the Wii has yet to see a game cross the magical one million mark in sales. The Conduit was a failure and no, Red Steel doesn’t count because it was a mediocre game.

Considering all of the above, it isn’t surprising in the least that third parties aren’t willing to bring their major franchises over to the Wii. The one time they did (Tales of Graces), the game bombed pretty hard.

“Ha, you totally forgot about Monster Hunter Tri! It sold one million units in Japan alone!”

Compared to the PSP games which all sold significantly more copies, it flopped.

“It will pass the PSP games in sales once it’s released worldwide!”

Now, now. Don’t move the goal posts. I know for a fact that Nintendo will publish the game in Europe and Australia, so it effectively becomes a first party title, rendering all of its sales in those territories irrelevant.

It’s time to face reality, Nintendo fanboys. Third party games simply don’t sell well on the Wii and whenever a company releases a high profile game like Dead Space Extraction (Metascore: 82), Wii owners reject it because they rather buy a Nintendo game. According to NPD numbers, Dead Space Extraction sold just a little bit above 9.000 units in its first month of release.

There’s something seriously wrong with the Wii audience when third parties do their best to sell to this market and fail while Nintendo rakes in the money with lazy efforts. Third party support for the Wii could have been very different today (for the better), if Wii owners had bought games like Deadly Creatures and Zack & Wiki.