Hanlon's Razor is simply "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Now while I wouldn't go with it never happens, I would say that the root problem developers, gaming press, and many people online have with the Wii is plain, old ignorance about what sells with video games.

Not with what they like in games, but with what sells. These people have been more or less a community (or at least a community of communities), and they have spoken more with each other than outside this group about what they like about games. Now I repeat, what they like about games is not the issue here. The issue is they think what they like about games is what makes a game sell to the mainstream, whether it's Wii owners or those who buy the mainstream HD games.

Basically, these people think elements A, B, and C sell a game, when elements X, Y, and Z sell a game (all these elements vary of course). So when developers make an HD game, they focus loads of money on A, B, and C, while often including X, Y, and Z just because they are expected, or even they are told to by their bosses.

The result is that the HD games are praised for A/B/C, and the reviewers and developers don't get that X/Y/Z actually sold the game. Take the reviews of Grand Theft Auto IV praising the "living, breating, immersive world" versus the ads showing the hero running around wreaking havok, just like the other 3D GTA games. In short, reviews aren't why those games sell. Despite how developers court high reviews, it's confusing correlation with causality.

So when Wii and DS games come out with only X/Y/Z, developers and gaming press are flustered that they sell. Those game don't have A/B/C, so they should be flops. Even the Wii and DS games they don't like but don't sell are for reasons other than those people think (they hate Wii Music for being a casual game and for the E3 2008 presentation, as if the mainstream even knew about E3).

Also, the A/B/C elements are often things related to processing power, or even some that are not but these people somehow think they are (thinking it's the tools more than the talent), and that even trying those on the Wii involves some tricks.

Then their Wii games focus so much on A/B/C, that X/Y/Z are almost forgotten. The result is praise for the games, but sales that are niche.

So since they think A/B/C sells a game, and those games have those elements, they can't see why their games didn't sell instead other than the audience didn't like the game. And the games with the opposite sell, and they can't see the appeal witout A/B/C.

It's not the audience. It's developers and gaming press having the wrong notion of what sells a game.

This is why I think High Voltage Software is worth of praise. While some developers didn't even have great reviews but mediocre selling "core" games (Deadly Creatures) and still blame the audience, HVS has actually talked to fans and gotten what they did wrong. Like the other people, they focused on A/B/C on The Conduit (gotta get the graphics and effects), and now they are including X/Y/Z in Conduit 2. Now I don't know if they can pull it off, but this is the lesson the more talented developers need to learn.

Now the DS is sometimes an exception (Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days feels like a KH game, and sold very well because of that), but some games, like GTA Chinatown Wars, suffer from the same problem. And the arguments over why it should have sold show the full, lack of understanding of these people when it comes to why a game sells.

They think the elements of critical praise,  userbase, M rating, critical praise, and a brand name sell a game. Thus they were shocked when Chinatown Wars didn't tear up the charts. I already discussed the critical praise part, so there are the others.

Userbase is simple if one actually does some research. Userbase so far only has a relation to total software shipments. In short, it only raises all the games being sold, not any individual game. Those game still have to sell themselves. You will see varied sales for loads of video games on all systems. Applying them to just the Wii and DS doesn't make their audience wrong. It shows those applying those haven't paid attention to the history of game sales.

M rating still has to be coupled with a game that appeals to the mainstream. If the mainstream knows about the game, but doesn't want it, the rating means squat.

Finally, there is the thought that "It has Grand Theft Auto in the name, so it should have sold". This is the brand name fallacy, where people think brand names alone sell a product. Now while some people buy brand names no matter what, with the mainstream, a brand name sells because of what people think the brand name offers.

Now it does make people avoid off-brands, but again, it's not because of the brand name itself, but because they think the off-brand doesn't offer what they like from the brand name. Take Saint Row 2. It has the same feel of a 3D GTA game, but without the brand, it sold just a fraction of those games (fortunately still enough for a third game). Or take the Zune to the iPod. Even if the Zune has better specs, it's an off-brand, so it sells a lot less. This is also why a lot of us feel the Move is going to be a tough sell unless Solny can set the games apart from Wii games. The mainstream won't see the specs of the sensors, or the HD graphics (which are part of A/B/C)*. They will see an off-brand Wii.

Now brand name can raise awareness of a product, but that only helps sales a little. When a product with the brand name doesn't offer what made the brand name a hit, people won't buy it. New Coke is the most famous example, but with gaming, the same applies. I could go the extreme with the CD-i games using Zelda and Mario, but looking at the wacky spinoffs buy the same developers shows that brand names can only sell a game so much. Mario spinoffs are often hits, but the sales usually pale in comparison to the main games. And even when they are hits, those games still have to stand on their own to reach mainstream appeal (Mario Kart being an obvious one, which made its own brand name).

So Chinatown Wars could have been a hit, but only if it offered what the 3D GTA games offered**, or stood on its own. It did neither, so blaming the audience for not going for those reasons make the reasons wrong, not the audience.

EDIT: And just in case someone brings it up, this isn't from Malstrom. This is stuff I looked at on my own. You can see in his blog he barely discusses HD games.

* I mean graphics in terms of detail, not art direction. HD graphics need good art direction or the graphical detail won't matter.

** COP The Recruit showed 3D graphics can be pulled off, and as for all the buttons 3D GTA games use, that is what the touch screen should have been used for. Switching radio stations, activating deactivating missions, switching weapons, and other things would be mapped to parts of the touch screen.

Not much that can be said, you did quite well. The only potential flaw is those elements of the market that very much respond to ABC and not XYZ, but that could be another issue entirely.

Brand is very important because it tells you something of a product and so is advertising. Imagine going into a retail store and going over a bunch of the brightly coloured and dazzling displays and being unfamiliar with any of the products. Games are intimidating for a lot of people so familiar names like Mario and Nintendo are very important to this market because they have no other way to tell the quality of the goods on the market. Thats the reason why 3rd party games are cheap, they are at a price where people are more willing to take a risk. I know this because I felt the same way in trying to pick out a DS game without being familiar at all with the library.

The reason why I believe the iPod takes the crown and the Zune cannot get a break is the same reason why Windows stays in charge:

• Compatibility: +++
• Reliability: ---
• Price: --
• Familiarity: ++++++++

When you're dealing with complicated or unfamiliar products people like to deal with the familiar. See people go into the shops and they know they can use an iPod and they can use the iTunes software so they stick with it, they don't know if they can use the Zune or the Zune software. When the general population is incompetent, they tend to gravitate towards the easy choices. When the population has a good general understanding of the product like for instance clothes, the market tends to be far more varied.

Where this relates to motion controllers is that the Move controller is close enough to the Wiimote but complicated enough for most people to stick with their automatic Wii purchases. It doesn't have the familiar titles or experiences which people have come to expect and making those cloned games more complicated is unlikely to endear them to the Wii potential market. I bet the most common first thing an average person will want to do when they pick up the Move controller is play Wii tennis.

On the other hand Microsoft doesn't have to replicate the Wii because people expect a completely different experience. However it does have the advantage in that people will want to show off the novelty of it if it works. Ricochet is there because its socially awkward. You look like a baboon playing it and thats the intention. The river rafting is there because its a reasonably intense if accessable two player game. The advantage with being unfamiliar is that the audience will take some time to become familiar whereas being too close to the original means people are familiar with the concept but not any of the USPs as they can't be bothered.

So you are agreeing with me for the most part?

Also, I didn't bring up NATAL because the Move versus Wii thing was more of a side issue to the main points. As in, if we discuss that, I'd rather that be other threads (I might make one if you like).

Both agreeing and disagreeing. Brand is a significantly important point especially in situations with increased uncertainty or complexity. They are a way of simplifying the purchase process and communicating information to the consumer. It can work both ways, it can help the sales of a product or it can hinder it and in almost all cases they have a significant bearing on the sales almost any product. It can't fight word of mouth nor can it make a generally poor game sell as well as a generally great game. However it can make a poor game sell better or a good game sell worse.

Either I didn't state my earlier point about it clearly or you didn't get what I wrote, since what you stated pretty much is my point about brand name, just with the addition that if something really doesn't seem like something people who go for the brand name want (in the case of GTA it's wreaking havok in a city which the art style of Chinatown Wars actually hindered), they won't buy it.

Sorry I was reading in a rush. Yeah.

It's an issue of investment, too. 3rd parties bet the farm on HD development, pouring millions into making engines for these games well before anyone was aware how this generation would actually turn out, and they're trying to stick with what they have. It would look really bad to investors if the 3rd parties came out and admitted that they could have made similar amounts of money without having to pour so much into cultivating new development assets.

 

That also explains the "multiplat everything" strategy that you see. 3rd parties chose to play in the space that ended up being the smaller space, where they simple couldn't survive unless they spread it out as far as possible across that space, leading to the concept of the "HD Twins" with "mirrored libraries." That's Wii's fault, since you see games that would have stayed exclusively Xbox (like BioShock) or exclusively Sony (like Devil May Cry) have to go across

 

I'll agree on the bafflement about them not making some no-brainer PSP-ports, especially of that Soul Calibur game. My guess is that has to do in part with PSP's strength in Japan, that for Japanese publishers it makes little sense to do PSP-to-Wii ports, since you're porting to a console with a smaller install base from their perspective. The more insulting thing is with the western third parties that make PSP ports (Army of Two 40th Day and Dante's Inferno come to mind here), when it would clearly have been to their advantage to make a Wii port instead, given that PSP can't move software to save its life in the West.


Well, I agree with 3rd parties betting it all on "HD", and that in part explains their slow turnaround. My issue is more that there's been no actual market wide turnaround, they're just going ahead with "HD". Even in previous generations where we had an unexpected market shift emerge (NES, PlayStation) you saw the industry eventually switch gears and move to correct for that shift... we haven't gotten that this generation, and it looks like we won't be getting it either.

The other end of this is DS, which has pretty much taken the bulk of Japanese support that I think Wii would've inherited. Japan's weird... DS gets most of the mainstream stuff, PSP gets most of the otaku stuff, PS360 gets most of the stuff for overseas, Wii gets left with nothing.

As far as PSP games, I'd agree in some instances the JP market target makes sense (Gundam Vs Next, Valkyria 2, Absolute Hero, etc) but games like Soulcalibur or Kingdom Hearts are made more for an international audience, and do substantially more of their sales in the west (where PSP's basically a dead format for software). Those sorts of games would more than double their worldwide sales with a Wii port.

Its interesting people always talk about the 3rd party struggles on the Wii, but don't really take note that 3rd parties haven't done that well in general with new IPs. Check the numbers for new IPs this gen and you will see they all range from "eh it did alright" to "it bombed" the only standout success story is Assassins Creed.

Off the top [my] head, The Saboteur, Heavenly Sword, Blazblue, Dead Space, Brutal Legend, Prototype, Bayonetta and so on all did mediocre to poorly. Its not just the Wii, the success stories have been the usual suspects of Call of Duty, GTA, RE, license games like TFU and Arkham Asylum. The big difference is all the major publishers has had a success or two with the status quo. Activision has had success with CoD, Capcom with SF, that's what the Wii is missing, its sales have been judged by the struggling oft new IP, a 3rd of which release in a 3-month period in STIFF competition (actually 37%).

To finish off, I'll post an excerpt from a Marvelous interview:

EDGE: Some of Marvelous’ latest titles had positive reviews worldwide but this did not translate into sales. What are the reasons of this? Do you think the choice of the Wii as a gamer platform is one key element?

YW: I don’t think it is about the platform. Of course it can’t offer the same level of performance and HD visuals of the other high spec platforms. Having the possibility to display 100 characters on screen where you would be limited to 30 on the Wii won’t make the game any more fun. This is not where the essence of video gaming is. Today, you have plenty of beautiful games that are not very fun to play. So it is not about the hardware.

The reason why our games are not selling as much we would like could be found in the name of our company. Marvelous has just reached the point its games are getting noticed and getting good reviews. But we are not a major name yet. The Marvelous brand is still associated to some not so good titles we made in the past. We are yet to gain the brand value of companies like Nintendo, Capcom or Square Enix. Even if you don’t fully understand what a title is about, because it’s branded Nintendo, Capcom or Square Enix, you feel like ok to buy and try it. A Marvelous game has yet to gain such recognition and trust from users. Now, if you consider the big but very light population of casual users, they don’t know about Marvelous at all. This population is by far the majority on the Wii. So in that sense, you could indeed think the Wii factor is working against us. But at the same time, if you consider games like Umbrella Chronicles, Biohazard 4 or a Tales Of RPG on the same Wii, you find that those games sell more than 200,000 or 300,000 copies. So there is a gamer market on the platform. I’m sure there are potentially about a million of them. So we need to gain the trust of these users.

EDGE: Often publishers are criticised about the lack of original content in titles, but when original games are released, users are not buying them. Knowing the risk and amount of effort needed to develop and release an original game, is there any reason to make one today?

YW: I really strongly think there is a meaning in keeping developing such games. If we don’t, I feel a great danger for our industry waiting around the corner. Originality would find itself in some underground, indie, level of production. I believe our market is shrinking because of gamers getting bored and uninterested in videogaming. We relied on those IP, series and characters stuffs for too long. I remember of the huge creative explosion that occurred when the first PlayStation and the Saturn were launched. There were tons of new ideas and concepts thrown on the market. It was an exciting time and many came to video gaming. That time and today are very different. I’m sure that gamers who have left video gaming today were among the ones that were very excited and very active on their PS or Saturn. A dynamic market is a magnet for creative and talented minds. If a market is based on the same stuff over and over again, it is not very appealing to creators and there are even lesser opportunities for new ideas. We are trying to get as much originality on our market as possible. Each time, we have a core idea that defines what we want to deliver with a specific title. Arc Rise Fantasia was about the tradition of the JRPG, Little King’s Story was about innovation while Muramasa: The Demon Blade was about the best 2D graphics you could deliver. Getting that wide variety of contents on the market is the only way you can appeal to a variety of people that are into videogaming.

Is that a response or just a rant?

@ LordTheNightKnight: You told us what A/B/C is, but could you clarify what X/Y/Z is? Is it the fun factor? Or am I missing something?