I've been pretty critical of the Wii fan base in the past. As an adamant fan, and buyer of over 30 Wii games last year I certainly have no interest in pissing off my fellow fans for no reason. But I'm pretty concerned about what seems like a serious shift mid-lifecycle. Now some fairly good rebuttals based on the concept of "test-games", niche-games, or one of the other myriad of excuses can be offered as to why some of the very best Wii titles do mediocre at best. Still I'm not going to insult the integrity of these "defenders" because as a whole I agree the Wii has gotten the hardcore shaft. But that makes me even more bothered when games that are hardly niche sell just as poorly.

Sadly this situation while bad in the Americas is quite dire in Others. A look at the excellent Silent Hill:SM and Red Steel 2 are great examples. Both sold OK in the the Americas, and got raped in Others. I have noticed this trend for quite a while, but it seems to be getting worse. On the other end of the dial Others players seem to be picking up garbage like Let's Dance at an even faster rate. Why is Others such an awful hardcore market compared  to the already admittedly mediocre America/JPN audience? The further pussification of the Wii audience, which I expected to come via the influx of new Americans brought in by the "hipness" of the Wii as promoted by various sources, seems to be less a factor than whatever the hell is going on in Others.

To look at the numbers for Silent Hill and RS2 even thinking of only Europe is pretty embarrassing for Wii fans everywhere. What do you guys living in Others think could help change this around? Is it distribution, cost, or a growing base of ignoramuses attracted by the mass market model of the Wii? Just to pre-empt- it can't be advertising because that doesn't happen in the America's either.

I think the Wii has amazing potential, and the best library of innovative games this generation. But sales of great titles define a platform, and by that metric my fellow Wii owners seem to be pursuing an epic failure never seen by the dominant console.

What do you guys think? What's wrong, what needs to change, etc?

I think what needs to change is that people need to accept that the market isn't going to buy a game just because we might like them to buy it. Let it go, and accept that you only get to vote with your own dollars, you can't vote with somebody else's.

30 games ( last year ) ???????????
I love my Wii and will never get rid of it, but 30 games worth buying within 2009
you are full of poop, I really do hope you did not pay full price, or that you got your Wii last year and you made up for lost time

ps. Metroid Other M = Crack

To be fair 10 or so were not released last year. But there were tons of great games last year. I posted at least 10 first reviews of them on these very forums if you are interested. When you add the various sports updates and sequels you will realize 20+ over 12 months is a pretty puny amount of games per year. Granted some of them sucked, and a decent number I never finished. But my mistakes my own when it comes to picking up crap.

Now don't get me wrong I don't expect others to buy dozens of games. That is my luck, but I still can't square these numbers compared to those of other consoles.

That is fair and I can respect that. But for the purpose of debate why do you think some of these fairly widely praised titles did so poorly? Are the HD frat boys right that Wii owners are weinies, are they just less prolific in their buying, or are they simply uninformed about quality? Or am I (likely) missing something else?

I donno about Europe, but at least in Latin America, games and games consoles in general are way overpriced... i went to mexico last year.... walked in a radio shack... and they had ps3 for like 800Usd... wiis for like 500usd... and needles to say games for like 80 - 100 bucks each!

Hardcore gamers in 3rd world countries end up finding ways(piracy) of getting (hardcore) games for cheap, or free in some cases.... hence games like red steel 2 not selling well....

Please disregard this whole post if Latin America is not considerd in the "others " section in the chartz....

What you say is informative, but sadly yes Latin America is in fact part of the Americas listing. So if anything it further proves my point by illustrating that America+ Canada are buying more good Wii titles than all of Europe/Asia (excl. JPN)/ Africa. In many cases this isn't just by a hair but by 3x-5x times. Which is bizarre because console sales are fairly similar.

Others has always been the most casual region.

It's because most of the wii's hardware numbers are not from gamers like us. It is people like my mom and grandma who both have a wii, that make it seem like the good titles don't sell well.

If you take away all the older people(i mean the people who bought the wii for games like wii fit, i.e. my mom and grandma). Then the hardware numbers would be lower or comparable to the 360 and ps3. If you take that number as the installed userbase, then the games performed reasonably well.

We can't except people like my mom to play silent hill, madworld, fire emblem: radiant dawn...etc. I was like you earlier this generation, getting pissed off that stupid casual games sold INSANELY well, and good core titles did not, until I realized the wii userbase is splintered right down the middle, if not more so in favor of the casual population.

All I am saying is realize that you really have two completely different user bases in the wii base.

Agreed in general. But I don't think that addresses my question. Why the difference is regions? I mean it's not like American's and Japan aren't dominated by casual titles as well. It just that they seem to be able to at least post somewhat acceptable numbers for some of the non-casual titles too.