Look at the list. I know you are not unable to watch by yourself.

51 platformes on Wii, 18 on PS3 , 17 on 360.

If you want to look at the multi, then Sonic Unleashed sold way better on Wii than on 360 or PS3 when there are a lot more of competition on Wii than on the HD consoles for platformers. It's just basic. The main public for platformers is on Wii and not on HD consoles.

You, HD fanboys, have a hard time to accept it but it is the way it is and I think that I have already been very patient to explain something as obvious.

Just a little info on some titles you mentioned...

Mega Man 9 :      Wii > (360 PS3)

Mega Man 10:    X360 > PS3 > Wii

Sonic 4 Episode 1:  X360 > PS3 >> iOS > Wii  (X360 = (iOS Wii))

The platformer market for downloadables, sans Virtual Console, is far different than what anyone thinks. Of course, its a logical assumption to think it fares better on the Wii without data. The truth is far and away a different story.

Again, I am not disagreeing that the main public for platformers is on Wii, I'm disagreeing that platformers are dead on HD consoles which is just ludicorous when you look at the list with multiple million selling platformers on PS3.  If platformer was dead as a genre LBP would not be at 4m.

As a side note, calling people fanboys on these forums is not allowed, I'll ignore it this time because I don't like moderating people I'm actively in a debate with but if you do it again I'll have no choice.

I would note that the reality of the situation really comes down to what companies are putting their money in.

Nintendo's bread and butter has always been platformers (Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong, ect). That will always skew the data in their favor, just like Microsoft has always pushed FPS games via Halo and 3rd party agreements for games like Gears of War, and Sony has pushed a significant 'mixed bag' of titles.

I agree with your analysis concerning LBP. Any company could likely push a huge amount of copies of a platformer on the X360 or further on PS3 if they wanted to put the money into it. The real impetus is that they are simply too busy profiting from their bread and butter IPs to venture out into new areas. Once in awhile, you see it happen with phenominal success. Recent examples would be Nintendo's Sports series (Wii Sports, Wii Sports, Resort), Sony's God of War series, and Microsoft's Fable series - which are different than their cornerstone IPs.

How does MM9 compare to MM10 overall in terms of numbers?  It looks like Wiiware sales have fallen off the map, though that's something I've heard has been a general trend?  

Actually, can you give us some insight into actual numbers for all these titles?  Be interesting to see how Sonic 4 is comparing to retail Sonic sales...

MM9 did far better than MM10. However, that is the trend for virtually every downloadable game - no sequel ever out-sells the initial title.

I don't have all the actuals right in front of me, so take my estimates with a little grain of sand:

MM 9 = ~450,000

MM 10 = ~225,000

Sonic 4 Ep1 = ~450,000

Sonic 4 got hammered by user ratings. Its under a 4.0 on every service, AFAIK, which is bad for its pedigree. Its legs are starting to set in, though, and should have a very long and fruitful lifespan. By comparison, you can pick an original Sonic title from Virtual Console or XBLA, and it sold almost as well as Sonic 4 did on all platforms combined, so its really not a 'Sega can't sell games on DD services' problem, but instead a 'Sonic 4 really didn't perform to expectations' problem.

Oh, and as a bonus (concerning the platformers argument): LIMBO (XBLA) outsold all listed mentioned by pretty strong margins. Its likely to gross more money in the future than any platformer on any other downloadable service (Mario VC titles included).

That's... quite the drop for MM10 actually! MM10's been hard for the usual sources to track on XBLA due to no leaderboards, but it's weekly placing has always been fairly terrible (launch week it only managed 4th place even, though that was partly attributed to it launching a week earlier on PSN and WiiWare), so I'm not sure if those numbers entirely add up even.  Capcom's also been dead silent on it (unlike MM9, which they were pretty vocal about being a success).  I really think Capcom & inti would've been better off doing a SNES styled MMX9 instead.  I also don't see MMU doing all that well in the future, it's visuals have been pretty divisive/panned, which is often the death knell for new-retro oriented titles.  

Sonic 4 has been almost universally critically panned, I think Sega & Dimps would've been much better served killing the Episodic DD release in favor of a "full" retail title.  I think rather than 500k, they could be looking at 5m if it were a real "return to form" at retail.  Even a flawed retail product could've done better though I think, cutting out retail I have to imagine also cuts out a significant portion of the reliable Sonic fanbase (especially on Wii).  This is going to be a perpetual problem for bigger brand titles on DD versus retail imo, for the foreseeable future.  GameBytes estimates also put the XBLA figures really, really low (like under 50k territory so far, lower even than Sonic Adventure on XBLA), so I'm a little curious about your 450k overall estimate if XBLA really is leading?

I know Limbo's done amazingly well, it was heavily promoted as part of Summer of Arcade, it's gotten seasonal discounts and it got a significant amount of industry press attention.   Last I saw (Gamerbytes estimates in Sept/Oct I think) put it near 600k, and still doing 30-50k monthly iirc.  Braid was a similar success story a year earlier, and I think Super Meat Boy will continue the trend.  Still, there seems to be an elevated level for all these games, especially above the Indie games doldrums where you'd normally expect this sort of content were it not hand selected by Microsoft to go elsewhere.  It's another problem with XBL for smaller and independent developers, there's no even playing field; you get hand picked and highly promoted, or you get tossed into the Indies "3rd world" and mostly ignored.  Wiiware seems to have almost the opposite problem, everyone gets the same treatment, it's just shitty for all. :/

I think it's pretty strong words to predict Limbo will gross more than any VC Mario though.  Mainly because VC is almost guaranteed to graduate to Wii 2 (continuing sales to a likely more online oriented machine), while Limbo's post 360 sales are very much a question (as are it's sustained sales... Braid eventually fizzled and Limbo may as well).  In Limbo's favor though, it's pricepoint is 3 times higher than a VC NES title... to outsell SMB1 for example, it only has to sell a third as much (at full price).

I don't want to attack other places that do estimates, but....Gamasutra's methodology behind tracking Sonic is flawed. They are using leaderboards to track a game that cannot be tabulated via leaderboards. Leaderboards for Sonic 4 are only updated in the event that a user actually checks the leaderboards themselves - which not everyone will do. I can't pull it up right now, but Sonic 4 led sales on Major Nelson's Top 10 for its debut week, which beat out titles like Dead Rising: Case Zero which sold very well in October (>60k), so that gives you a minimum threshold for what Sonic did.

For the argument of promotions - you can argue that the games are performing well only due to Microsoft's promotion. I can understand that, but it doesn't change the argument that other non-MS promoted platformers have done very well like N , The Maw, and Cloning Clyde which all sold well over 100,000 units (N did over 300k and had no promotion by MS). Super Meat Boy was never promoted by MS as a marquee title, like LIMBO or Braid, so it should be a good example of sales. It has sold 160k on XBLA and over 250k on Steam.

As for your argument about sales fizzling - that does not happen on XBLA. Braid never fizzled. It still sells very well, relative to its first month on market. Every title on XBLA still sells well, relative to their release, which is why LIMBO will reach great heights. Very few games ever provide major outliers in terms of long-tail. That is, every XBLA, PSN or WiiWare title is an evergreen title, unless they had abysmal sales their first month.

Put it this way: the average Xbox Live Arcade title, 2 years after release, will still be grossing approximately 5% of its first-month revenue every month, and will continue to do so, indefinately. Braid still sells about 5-7% of its first month. So does Shadow Complex, Mega Man 10, and so on. A few titles are well above this like Castle Crashers and Trials HD, but in general, the rule of thumb is 5% forever, as the game almost never gets de-listed. Since LIMBO was the marquee title of Summer of Arcade 2010, it is likely to reach higher numbers due to popularity, and should still be selling 7-10% of its first month sales, 2 years from now (or about 25,000-30,000 copies per month, every month).

 Really facinating stuff on the digital sales, I was going to question some of the stuff said earlier about Wii's DD platformers selling so amazing but figured there'd be no figures :P. I think WiiWare sales are typically going to be hampered for any game - compared to XBLA / PSN - the service just isn't as well made for selling software, it's lack of online focus will limit the userbase that bothers and storage limitations on the console mean no one's going to be too download-crazy.

 It is a shame that outside of Sony's minimalist efforts (LBP and R&C) and RARE, the genre is pretty much confined to the digital space at the moment on the HD consoles. In truth though, I don't think many companies have really been making a plethora of platformers since consoles went 3D in the N64 days, except for er, Nintendo, Sony and Rare lol. Were there actually any reknown platforms made by anyone else last gen? Or even the generation before... I'm sure someone will give me a list but I'm struggling to think of one :P.

 Also on the topic of SEGA losing retail sales on Sonic 4, I've always assumed the strategy to be something like made 2-3 episodes on the DD services and get $45 off of people for them, then bundle the 3 together at retail with some bonus content and stick em on store shelves for $50 so the non-online people can get it. At least SEGA are idiots if that's not what they do :P.

 Also rumour has it Neversoft are rebooting Crash Bandicoot, so with any luck that might be a decent 3d platformer on the HD twins (As well as the Wii, I'm sure). No idea where I read the rumour, or it's legitimacy though, so er, take it with a bucket of salt :P.

WiiWare sales are certainly hampered, when compared to XBLA/PSN. Its a multi-headed problem, though. I cannot comment on the UI, as I don't own a Wii right now, but one major issue for digital content is a simple one - hard drive space. Stock Wiis come with 512MB of space, which is a very difficult thing have a lot of content on.

Now, the argument against that is that you can simply go buy a new card and expand, but then you get to the problem of the likelihood someone will do that. Few people are going to justify buying a $30, or $50 card for a few $10 games - its just not economically reasonable. This argument isn't just a Wii problem. XBLA has the same problem with larger games, as Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light saw pretty weak sales, compared to the pedigree of the title and the marketing (it was 2GB). Adopters of the Arcade or 20GB model are unlikely to be able to store such a game, which may of hurt its sales. Likewise, Android market sales are pretty poor, and up until the 2.2 revision, required games and apps to be installed on the onboard ROM which was 256-512MB.

I think the issue with platformers is that of pedigree - NO ONE is going to look at going against Nintendo for a AAA platformer. They have a massive amount of pedigree, and to succeed, it has to be able to be compared to NSMB: Wii. No one is going to be able to do that, because Nintendo is simply the best company for platformers, as their in-house talent knows how to make them the right way.

Having said that, I'd argue that platformers have diversified into other genres in order to be successful. There are a few games with platform-heavy elements that have done good to fantastic this gen - Crackdown was loved, before #2 kinda destroyed things. Assassin's Creed also has a very heavy dose of platforming elements, and has had 3 titles release this gen. Finally, you find the head-to-head comparatives in the downloadable sphere, because the simplistic platformers of years gone by are an underserved genre, and are, quite frankly, cheap to build. Super Meat Boy was a team of 2 people. So was Braid. At that point, it becomes viable to build a new platforming IP without the massive pedigree of Nintendo, or have a valuable IP like Disney did with Epic Mickey.

The other thing to look at is the long-tail in regards to Sonic. Sega has been the #1 company when it comes to long-term sales for their titles. They've always had compilation packs of their titles for post-Dreamcast platforms like the various Genesis Collections. Because of this, they are likely looking at the much longer term strategy for Sonic 4 - knowing that when all episodes are launched, they can indeed bundle for retail, bundle for downloadable, and also keep the titles available forever, and port them to next-gen consoles. Sonic 4 is likely to exist as a property they make money off of for the next decade as a digital title, which is a much better strategy than simply pushing something like Unleashed on the market, have it sell for a year, then never make a dollar on it.

I think that is one of the advantages of digital titles - you can build a portfolio that continues to provide value indefinately. Provided you continue to add value to your name brand, a title will continue to sell, which can be a great long-term strategy. You can see other companies like Square-Enix do this with Final Fantasy. They've ported Final Fantasy (the original NES version) to almost every mobile phone, and recently launched Secret of Mana as an iOS title at $8.99.

Developers and publishers are starting to understand how other entertainment industries make their money - from multiple streams. For example, when a movie releases, it makes money at the box office, then the rental market, then the home video market, then gets played on TV and watched via Netflix. In the end, a title that is ancient can continue to provide revenues via television royalties and ad sales on the internet. Video games don't quite have that analogue, but are getting there with digital content. That is why, I think, we're starting to see more Games-On-Demand from PSN/X360, because its a good thing to keep selling a game like Halo 1 for 3, 5, or 10 years down the road.