Your argument would make sense, if developers started out supporting the Wii reasonably, and it dropped off after that. But the fact is, they didn't even test the waters, really. And the few that did, with half-decent games (that is, not Far Cry Vengeance or games like that) saw, in 2006 and 2007, results comparable to those on the PS3 and 360.

The Xbox 360 had 8 "violent" 2+ million sellers in 2005-2007 (note: this is based on 2012 sales numbers, the list would have been shorter at the end of 2007). These were Gears of War, Call of Duty 3, Saints Row, Halo 3, CoD4, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, and Bioshock. Meanwhile, in total, between 2005 and 2007, the Xbox 360 had 47 "violent" titles... and that's when I'm being conservative about what is enough to make a game "violent" (that is, multiple titles that would probably count as "violent" weren't counted).

Know how many Wii titles that could be described as "violent" there were up to the end of 2007? Being generous, there were 18 such titles, including Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3 and Battalion Wars, as well as such notable titles as Escape from Bug Island and Manhunt 2.

Remember, titles released by the end of 2007 had to have begun development prior to the release of the Wii, or had to have been massively rushed. So you can't use the "but the Wii doesn't show sales of more than 3 million for these titles". Of these titles, by the way, the only ones that weren't first-party that could be described as half-decent were Red Steel, CoD3, The Godfather, and Resident Evil 4. Of these, the two "decent" ones both sold quite well, and the exclusive one sold reasonably well. Only The Godfather, which released a year earlier on the 360 (and it didn't do much better on 360, or PS3, than on Wii).

So in essence, when you look at games released on Wii by end of 2007 that were even half-decent, and "violent" (and not first-party), you can basically say that all of the titles fitting this description performed quite well. Remember, only Halo 3, Gears of War, Assassin's Creed, and CoD4 did anywhere near the massive numbers that you refer to. Saints Row just barely broke 2 million. Mass Effect sold 2.6 million. Bioshock sold 2.52 million. Call of Duty 3 sold 2.58 million. So if you remove first-party titles again, you're left with the only real big-sellers being Assassin's Creed and CoD4. And given that the Wii got neither of these at the time (CoD4 was released two years later, thanks to Treyarch, and didn't do too badly given that the Wii version was released at the same time that the sequel on PS3/360 was, and wasn't even advertised, whereas the PS3/360 versions in 2007 were massively hyped and advertised).

So to summarise - no, you can't use the "no huge numbers" argument, either. Violent blockbusters barely existed in 2006 - there was Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Goldeneye 007 for N64, Half-Life for PC, Medal of Honor on PS2, Metal Gear Solid, and Resident Evil. And then Gears of War in 2006 itself. These are the only "violent" franchises that managed to surpass 5 million copies sold (not counting Zelda, as that's debatable). Indeed, you mentioned 3+ million... in total, throughout all time up to 2006, only 37 "violent" titles have sold over 3 million copies. Of these, seven are Grand Theft Auto, four are James Bond, two are Medal of Honor, three are Metal Gear Solid, five are Resident Evil, three are Star Wars, and two are Halo. Of the remainder, there's Diablo, Doom 2, Gears of War, God of War, Half-Life, Max Payne, Resistance: Fall of Man, SOCOM: US Navy SEALs, The Getaway, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, and True Crime: Streets of LA.

So again, you can't use the "huge numbers" argument. Third parties simply weren't going to give the Wii a fair treatment, and evidence shows that it was to their detriment. What would have happened if Capcom had made an all-new Resident Evil for Wii? What if EA had actually tried to make a quality Medal of Honor for the Wii? What if Activision had made sure that a Wii version of CoD4, complete with full online, was made in 2007? What if Ubisoft had tried making a Wii version of Assassin's Creed? But of course, they *didn't*. And that's the problem - they didn't TRY. Not ONCE. When they DID put decent-quality titles on the Wii, they were mostly niche titles like Little King's Story. When a "test" game sold well, they just put more test games on the system (see Resident Evil Chronicles games, for instance). And whenever a game would sell poorly, they would immediately blame Nintendo and the Wii, despite the fact that most of the games that this happened to SUCKED, and pretty much every review source said so.

Bioshock's best-selling version was on Xbox 360, in which it sold just 2.52 million. Multiple comparable Wii titles have sold in a similar region.

Dead Space hasn't sold more than 1.81 million, and that was the PS3 version of the original. See above observation.

Bayonetta? 1.03 million on PS3 is its best. This means that Red Steel, for instance, outsold it.

The Witcher? It sold best on PC, and even then didn't manage 750,000 copies sold. Xbox 360 version sold just 0.4 million in 8 weeks, and last week it barely managed to sell 10,000 copies, despite only having been out for 8 weeks.

So really, you can say whatever you want and deny it however you want, but games like Bioshock Dead Space Bayonetta or The Witcher don't sell particularly well. So that was a stupid argument you put forward.

Also note that you can't say that those games don't sell on the Wii because they haven't been RELEASED on the Wii. Dead Space Extraction doesn't count, since it's not even in the same genre as the main series.

as I recall the controls for the wii port of BULLY weren't too shabby either.

Just a little interesting tidbit. Nintendo has been interested in Mature games and has gathered developers to do this kind of game before. Unfortunately, it did not end up doing well, the game I mean. And that game is Geist.

I want Eternal Darkness 2...

There was a market for 'violent' games on Wii in 2007 and into 2008 but 3rd parties (like analysts and fans) wrote Wii off before it even came out. So Assassin's Creed and CoD4 weren't in development for Wii. 'Violent games that came out for Wii should reasonable well, usually a little less than 360 but better than PS3 - which is to be expected due to the size of the userbases at the time.

But even so, Wii's sales were less than to be expected by publishers as the Wii's userbase was bloated by 'casuals' who had no interest in such games. This new phenominom confused publishers. So while they experimented with ports and spin-offs, few real attempts were made. There's a reason for this. It takes two years to develop a real AAA title and the general belief (supported by analysts) was that Wii's audience would get bored of motion controls (gimmick) and lack of HD and move to HD systems.

I'm not sure people got bored of motion (except poorly implimented motion), but they did get bored of the lack of 'violent' games on Wii. Or having to play a SD, inferior version of said games (CoD) due to Wii's limited horsepower. So, yes, people ending up buying a 360/PS3 and let their Wii's 'collect dust'.

If we could revert time and if 3rd parties had any clue how big Wii would be in 2005/6 when those big, generation defining games started development, it would be interesting to see what would have happened.

If CoD4 and Assassin's Creed launched on Wii simultaneously and sold comparible to RE4, CoD3, Godfather, etc did on respective systems, then this whole generation might have played out differently.

Then again, Dead Rising, Assassin's Cread, CoD4, etc., utilized the power of the HD systems. Power Wii simply didn't have. Any Wii version would have been significantly graphically, online and to some extent gameplay impaired (even if the controls were superior on Wii). Where would people have gone? I suspect Wii would have supported that market much better, for longer in this situation but Move would have seriously damaged Wii. Then people wouldn't have to choose, they could have both superior control and graphics/online.

Nintendo made a hard decision to not compete with MS/Sony in power/online/graphics. In the short term it served them very VERY well. In the long term, it's bitten them in the arse, HARD.

Couple of problems, here - first, the SD-ness of CoD didn't at all cause problems. It was that CoD 4, which what the title that turned the series into a blockbuster, wasn't released on Wii until two years late (and simultaneous with MW2 on PS3/360). They'd already bought the game for 360/PS3, and this continued with future entries in the series. And the whole "Wiis collecting dust" stuff was just internet gamers being idiots - any real gamer played any great game that came to any great console, and the Wii got just as many great games as the other systems... it's just that most of them were first-party.

And if it was about knowledge of how big the Wii would be, then games that released in early 2009 should have showed up on the Wii. Resident Evil 5 is the perfect demonstration of this - released in early 2009, there was plenty of time for them to have the game on the Wii, and Resident Evil 4 did very well on Wii. Wii's success was obvious from early 2007, and didn't even start to let up until late 2008, so it can't be blamed on anything other than Capcom just not bothering to try.

On the contrary, it served Nintendo very well in the long term, too. Wii getting stronger third-party support at the expense of stronger overall sales and overall industry growth would have left Nintendo in a situation in which they would have died by 2013. On the other hand, that the Wii had such lacklustre third-party support means that it's a MUCH bigger deal that the Wii U has games like Mass Effect 3 and Assassin's Creed 3, and ZombiU, than it otherwise would have been if Nintendo hadn't already died.

So really, it looks like Nintendo's choices will been much better in overall hindsight. It was only the medium term that it seemed to cause issues, and even then, Wii is still selling (per week) better than Gamecube did for a large proportion of its life. In 2003, the Jul-Sept quarter saw just 810,000 consoles sold, according to Nintendo themselves. That's a worldwide weekly average of 62,000 consoles, which is right about where the Wii is now. And that was just two years after the Gamecube launched, and in a more active sales time of the year than we're currently in. Note that that period in the Gamecube's life saw the release of Mario Golf, F-Zero GX, Wario World, and other titles - indeed, 2003 was the year that the Gamecube saw the largest number of titles released. So it's not like it was a game drought (as opposed to the Wii, which has... what, maybe 10 games listed for release in the next 3 months?)

Nintendo is a family oriented gaming company. If anyone is going to make a violent game its going to be third parties. I'll say it before and I'll say it again Nintendo is the Disney of gaming. 

Well, I guess to correct that situation, Nintendo is promoting ZombiU -- a realistic zombie fighter where you last minutes.

My guess is that the core gamers will be turned off because your survival time is about what it really would be in such a situation (even though it is unrealistic). They would rather play unrealistically superior individuals in comically unrealistic situations which are done with three-tone graphics (gray, grass, and grime) and consider that realistic. (In other words, most people are the little girl who we see and then don't at the beginning of Mass Effect 3 rather than the hero who comes to vanquish the invading aliens. The first would be the reality, the second would not be).

Mike from Morgantown

Sort of. They produced Eternal Darkness and Metroid Prime (with Retro Studios) for the Gamecube, but games with realistic violence are not their focus, just like Disney does not focus on action movies, rather than fantasy and family movies.

Does Nintendo really needs to produce a game with extreme realistic violence to prove media that they are good at making games ? Of course not. A great game does not need to have this kind of content to be great, just like we see on movies or music.

I think this in one of that poor ideas that prevent videogame journalism to be taken seriouly inside the entertainment journalism - this necessity to take games as an adult thing all the time, when games can and should be for every and any kind of audience.