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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Sale Expectations For Wii Games

I am really curious to see what the sale expectations for Wii games has been... It is really the best Judge of wether we will see more support on the Wii. I know RE4 blew away Capcoms expectations but what are some more....



psn- tokila

add me, the more the merrier.

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Sadly, not many companies release sales expectations. I can't think of any others of the top of my head.



Most companies are going to judge the success of their Wii games based on their sales in relation to their cost to develop the game. Third party developers have been claiming that it costs 1/4 to 1/2 to produce a Wii game as it does to produce a similar PS3 or XBox 360 game; on top of this third parties have also been producing far simpler games for the Wii than they have for the PS3 or XBox 360 so their costs may be as little as 1/10 of what their PS3 or XBox 360 games are.

In other words, many developers are probably very pleased with the sales of their games even though they are not million sellers.



I think Ubisoft expected at least 1m for RRR2, since the first one sold pretty good.



Predictions for December 31st 2008:
Wii 38,000,000
DS 84,500,000
PS3 17,000,000
PSP 41,000,000
X360 23,000,000

That's not usually released, but the average (good) Wii game needs to sell about 250 - 300K ww to be profitable. Some like Brain Age Academy I'm sure are profittable at much lower numbers.

So all in all, I can't think of a single 'bomb' on the order of Lair or Blacksite 21 on the Wii yet (although few companies have put that kinda effort into a Wii game). So while maybe not terribly impressive numbers sometimes, 3rd parties aren't losing money either.



 

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Didn't Capcom have like 640k for RE UC? It will be a million seller.



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UC will be a million seller or close to it, the way RE4 is going it could outsell the GC version.



psn- tokila

add me, the more the merrier.

I cannot remember the numbers but I think, RE UC expectation was lower than RE4 wii edition.
If third partys put effort into their games and stop the rushed cash in's and ps2 ports, the wii fanbase will support their games.



-UBISOFT BOYCOTT!-

RE4: 460k. Capcom has nearly tripled this amount. 

RE:UC: 600k. The game will almost certainly reach this amount soon.

Carnival Games: 200k. This game has blown past expectations.

There is no question that Mario Galaxy underperformed in Japan: the initial shipment was 700k, and it still hasn't sold through that supply. There is no question it overperformed in America: SMG has already sold more copies than SMS did in August (it's release month) + September + October + November + December of the year it came out.

Those are the ones I Know. I expect some games that never came close to meeting expectations just never told us what those expectations were, because it isn't very flattering. But of the ones we DO know, none have underperformed worldwide. 



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If a Wii game sells about 300k worldwide then it can be called a success. 500k I guess for a huge production value game and 100k for one that's well shovelware. Sometimes even less. But most are looking for 300k.

Such as Rayman: Raving Rabbids has sold 1.16 million on Wii. The profits Ubisoft has made off this game must be really really high cause development cost for this game couldn't have been much.

RE4: Wii Edition has sold 1.03 million units. I bet it only needed like 150k to break even. Capcom has made a killing off this. Red Steel probably needed 500-600k. So Ubisoft still made profits.

But right now easily the 3rd party game that is probably making the most money is Mario and Sonic at the Olympics. Although the game is part Nintendo, it is published by Sega. This game was probably a 300k profit game, and man its skying past that. Going to see some Sonic and Sega love for Wii.

I could name a lot of games on Wii that have done well for 3rd parties. In essence compared to when games make a profit, devs are doing quite well on Wii. The only game I can think of that caused probably a loss is Manhunt 2. And that's for obvious reasons of it not being a very good game but had high production value, and all that other crap around it costing more money.