Nintendo lost the entire Fifa market with the Wii. Every iteration of the game has been far superior on 360/PS3. May seem insignificant but that is a LOT of 'core' gamers who would not choose a Wii over the other consoles simply based on that fact.

Of course there are a lot of other reason; but more or less, Wii owners in Europe are casual gamers.

to add (not sure if things have changed much from 6years ago when I lived in Europe).

In some of the countries they earn as much a month as I do in a week here in Australia. So what I can gather from this is that most people can afford to buy games for one console.

So if PS3/360 have great hardcore games they go with that console. and Wii is their secondary console and is the easiest to hack so they just pirated and maybe just buy great Nintendo games.

Despite the overinflated expectations of developers (which they have successfully projected onto their core markets), many Wii games actually sell quite well: enough to make a profit, even. It's amazing just how few games one needs in order to do that, when you keep your development costs under control.

But the developers frankly don't market to the Wii audience. They don't want to, because you can't market to them the same way you market to the veteran gamers who have been conditioned by marketers to respond to specific, easy-to-develop things (i.e. graphics). To market to the blue ocean, you have to do two things, neither of which third parties seem willing to do. Companies that do these two things, like Nintendo, succeed. Others fail.

The first thing you have to do is to go to where the blue ocean is. They are not, as a rule, in the places where longtime gamers gather. They don't read gaming magazines, and they don't go to gaming forums. Why not? Because frankly, we creep them out; they've wanted to play for a long time, but they haven't wanted to play with us. Whether that's right or wrong is outside the scope of this thread; the end consequence is that you have to go to more traditional advertising venues: television (when's the last time you saw a third-party Wii game with a TV commercial?), newspapers, billboards, and the like. Nintendo doesn't go through all of these, but it goes through enough to make a difference. You can also see this in Nintendo's own sales: those that are marketed through "traditional" venues tend to do better than those marketed only in places where longtime gamers gather.

The second thing that you have to do is to advertise in ways that impress them. Marketers have had a long time to condition longtime gamers into believing that graphics make a difference, and that deep stories can take a game that just isn't fun and make it much better. But the blue ocean isn't impressed by these things. Instead, you have to convince them that the game is fun: specifically, that the act of playing the game is fun. This is why Nintendo's commercials flash back and forth between the game and the players: to convince someone that something is fun, you show people having fun with it. Third parties generally don't do this, and the few exceptions to this rule -for example, the Mario&Sonic games- have sold very well indeed. But it means adopting gameplay models that are fun -mashing buttons is, as a rule, not much fun- and this takes more work than third parties are willing to put into a console that won't let them make pretty pictures. This dooms them from the start: most longtime gamers swore off Nintendo long before the Wii came around, so you won't impress them with anything you do, but because you're not doing the one and only thing new gamers really want, you won't impress them either.

Is it any wonder, then, that third parties barely make any profit on many of their Wii games? They set themselves up to fail from the very beginning of the design phase. There are enough longtime gamers still on the Wii that they do manage some profit, but until they are willing to engage the blue ocean by focusing on quality over flash, they will never do any more than that. And it really is that simple. Look at Wii game sales: you see a lot of blockbusters and a lot of barely-profitable games (and utter flops), but you don't see very much in between. It's a simple question: do you engage the blue ocean, or don't you? If you don't, then you deserve what you get.

If you consult me and some of my friends you will discover that we are hardcore Nintendo gamers. I only buy first and second party games for Nintendo consoles. I also believe that games like Just Dance should be destroyed.

This.  lol

For the most part, the market is completely different.  I don't think anyone was realistically expecting Red Steel 2 to light up the charts because the audience for such a game is just not there in large numbers on the Wii.

After 1 Year of Wii Ownership I have to ask, why the Wii is selling so well in Japan/America. The PS3 finally got awesome games, that overshadow everything i have seen on my Wii so far.

When i was young, i always preferred Nintendo over Sega (I owned NES/SNES/Master System/Megadrive). But Nintendo lost me with its N64. The Playstation had better Opportunities to tell a great story. FF7 with its cutscenes was my greatest gaming experience back then. It also had Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, FF 7,8,9, Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, Front Mission, Tekken, etc. When i finally bought a N64 I had to realize, that it did not have much more to offer for me than Nintendo Games. In comparison to the PS1, i was totally disappointed.

I passed the NGC and had much fun with my best Console so far, the PS2. The PS2 had almost all of the greatest Games of that Console Generation. The Wii b/c was one of the reasons, I bought a Wii, the other being the Virtual Console. But i have to admit, that after the N64 disappointment, the Wii is totally inferior to the PS3. FF XIII just blew me away, Heavy Rain was just awesome, etc. But the Wii suffers from the Same fate as its predecessors... it is not getting the attention of the really important Companies like Square-Enix, Capcom, Konami etc. so nearly all thats left are the Nintendo Games. Only, that most of the Wii xxx Games are that simple that i lost interest after 2 days. Sure Nintendo went the other way with its controller, but it seems to me that they just made everything simpler so that beginner have an easier entry to the games.

I really lost interest in Paying around € 40 for a Wii game when I can get a PS3 Game at € 50-60. The technical gap is just too big, that I am paying that much for a new Wii game. That is my reason for not buying games like RS2.

I live in the UK and this is something that annoys me, although when i bought Tatsunoko vs Capcom the game wasnt even on the store shelf when i went into get it, i really dont have an answer to why sales are so low, my mate used to be a real gamer now he doesnt really bother buying games

I live in others and that's what I can say:

- There is no marketing for 3rd party hardcore titles.
- Games distribution in some cases is a shit.
- PIRACY.

Well the type of people who buy the sorts of games like Red Steel and Silent Hill (violent games aimed at teenaged males) already have PS3 and Xbox 360 and are buying better games than those ones on those systems. Wii is more for the less/non-violent games focussed on fun and unique methods of play.

People also buy more traditional console type games on the Wii, whereas Xbox and PS3 owners stick to genres that are more related to PC gaming.

Which strategy works better? You tell me how many PS3 or Xbox 360 games have passed 15 million, or even 10 million.

Well my mate he bought mario kart, that was a given and also PES08 but hes not bothered to buy the following versions of PES and i always recommend a game for him to buy but he never does, i let him borrow Madworld his brother loved the game but never bought it either, he used to have every console and be gaming mad, he only owns a couple of games