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Forums - Gaming - Disturbing Wii Third Party SalesTrend- IGN's Matt's C

Bodhesatva said:

Would anyone else love to know how much money (both in development and marketing) is being spent on 360/PS3 titles, and how much is being spent on Wii titles by third parties?

I would guess that the third party PS3/360 investment totals easily, easily triple the Wii totals, if not quadruple them or more.

 

 

It's such an unfair fight I want scream this every time. It's like giving one film maker 100 million dollars and another 20 million, and being absolutely shocked when the giant blockbuster outsells the low budet one. Frankly, third parties have failed across the board on the Wii -- they haven't given their games enough development time, they haven't picked their best teams, they haven't marketed their games well if at all -- and it's infuriating as a Wii fan to see some of this stuff compared to something like Call of Duty 4 or Grand Theft Auto, games with 25 Million+ budgets and huge marketing compaigns.

 

Here's a great example: Zack and Wiki didn't do as well as many hoped, and we've pointed this out many times. But what about a game like Stranglehold? It had, by Midway's proud admission, a 30 million dollar budget, and it didn't do well either. It had a much larger marketing campaign.

And yet we talk about these games as if they're equals, and the Z&W flop is just like the Stranglehold flop. Please -- I'm not shocked when a 5 foot tall man loses a dunking contest, but I am when an 7'5'' tall man does. It makes a huge difference.


Here's a final note to emphasize my point: no Wii games with budgets over 10 million dollars has flopped. Ever. I'd guess we've already seen 10+ such flops on the PS3.


 You know who else doesn´t like this, the CFO´s of these companies. Developer companies that didn´t have good efforts on Wii last year showed terrible  results. As Wii continues to sell/out it´s compeitors developers will either have to bring their big games to Wii or see their profits decline big time.



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Bodhesatva said:

Would anyone else love to know how much money is being spent on 360/PS3 titles (both in development and marketing), and how much is being spent on Wii titles by third parties?

I would guess that the third party PS3/360 investment totals easily, easily triple the Wii totals, if not quadruple them or more.

 

 

It's such an unfair fight I want to scream this every time. It's like giving one film maker 100 million dollars and another 20 million, and being absolutely shocked when the giant blockbuster outsells the low budet one. Frankly, third parties have failed across the board on the Wii -- they haven't given their games enough development time, they haven't picked their best teams, they haven't marketed their games well if at all -- and it's infuriating as a Wii fan to see some of this stuff compared to something like Call of Duty 4 or Grand Theft Auto, games with 25 Million+ budgets and huge marketing compaigns. Wow, you gave your best developers 20 million dollars and an awesome marketing budget, and they managed to outsell NiGHTS! Amazing! 

 

Here's a great example: Zack and Wiki didn't do as well as many hoped, and we've pointed this out many times. But what about a game like Stranglehold? It had, by Midway's proud admission, a 30 million dollar budget, and it didn't do well either. It had a much larger marketing campaign.

And yet we talk about these games as if they're equals, and the Z&W flop is just like the Stranglehold flop. Please -- I'm not shocked when a 5 foot tall man loses a dunking contest, but I am when an 7'5'' tall man does. It makes a huge difference.


Here's a final note to emphasize my point: no Wii games with budgets over 10 million dollars has flopped. Ever. I'd guess we've already seen 10+ such flops on the PS3.

 

QFT

Its very fustrating. And looking at SSJ12(no disrespect) last post, it seems a lot of the industry think the same way. There are different standards, a game flops on the Wii, then "games just don't sell on the Wii", a game flops on the PS3 "well the usebase is too small." The thing is i want both sony and Nintendo to succeed in what they do, because i love the games they make (team ICO are to die for), but even i can notice the double standards. The truth is alot of the big high profile games on the PS3 have flopped and not one on the wii has( though they are all Nitendo Made). But if a game sells well then its known as a anomoly or a 1st party game.  Its BS



Nintendo & Sony Supporter

Currently own- DS, PSP, PS2, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 DreamCast.

Man i have too many consoles..... 

Quotes to live by!

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing"- Helen Keller

"i am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward"-Thomas Edison

"Man is not the creature of circumstancesCircumstances are the creatures of men"


Soriku said:
"They can't make money on the PS3 because it has a small install base.
They can't make money on the Xbox outside of the US.
They can't make money on the PC because of piracy.
They can't make money on the Wii for any number of reasons.

I guess it is time for them to go die in a hole somewhere. What a bunch of pansies."

^ Best post ever.

Totally on the spot.I

In every other business companies adapt to the market. These developers expect the market to come to them.

WE NEED A SINGLE CONSOLE!!!! 

 

...Or we don´t know what to do 



BengaBenga said:
Soriku said:
"They can't make money on the PS3 because it has a small install base.
They can't make money on the Xbox outside of the US.
They can't make money on the PC because of piracy.
They can't make money on the Wii for any number of reasons.

I guess it is time for them to go die in a hole somewhere. What a bunch of pansies."

^ Best post ever.

Totally on the spot.I

In every other business companies adapt to the market. These developers expect the market to come to them.

WE NEED A SINGLE CONSOLE!!!!

 

...Or we don´t know what to do

 Sadly true 

 



Me said:
misterd said:
leo-j said:
@brute

The same amount of 3rd party million sellers as the ps3, and the ps3 has less than half the install base.

That's the benefit of crappy 1st party games ;)

 Fantastic response - really cheered me up that

 


I like to make Me happy! ;)



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Bodhesatva said:

Would anyone else love to know how much money is being spent on 360/PS3 titles (both in development and marketing), and how much is being spent on Wii titles by third parties?

I would guess that the third party PS3/360 investment totals easily, easily triple the Wii totals, if not quadruple them or more.

 

 

It's such an unfair fight I want to scream this every time. It's like giving one film maker 100 million dollars and another 20 million, and being absolutely shocked when the giant blockbuster outsells the low budet one. Frankly, third parties have failed across the board on the Wii -- they haven't given their games enough development time, they haven't picked their best teams, they haven't marketed their games well if at all -- and it's infuriating as a Wii fan to see some of this stuff compared to something like Call of Duty 4 or Grand Theft Auto, games with 25 Million+ budgets and huge marketing compaigns. Wow, you gave your best developers 20 million dollars and an awesome marketing budget, and they managed to outsell NiGHTS! Amazing! 

 

Here's a great example: Zack and Wiki didn't do as well as many hoped, and we've pointed this out many times. But what about a game like Stranglehold? It had, by Midway's proud admission, a 30 million dollar budget, and it didn't do well either. It had a much larger marketing campaign.

And yet we talk about these games as if they're equals, and the Z&W flop is just like the Stranglehold flop. Please -- I'm not shocked when a 5 foot tall man loses a dunking contest, but I am when an 7'5'' tall man does. It makes a huge difference.


Here's a final note to emphasize my point: no Wii games with budgets over 10 million dollars has flopped. Ever. I'd guess we've already seen 10+ such flops on the PS3.


1) If Zack and Wiki is a flop, it is still likely to be a profitable flop (hence the talks of a sequel).

2) On your final point - that's pretty awesome to know, but how do you know it? I've rarely seen game budgets openly talked about they way they are for films. I'd love to know your secret.



Only mario zelda and metroid will sell on the wii



^_^

I think many here missed his point.  While Matt might believe that 3rd party games in general don't sell well on the Wii, he was really zeroing in on the 3rd party mature games.

 While the examples he picked were poor, I think he is right, but doesn't come up with any decent solutions, or even really identifying what the problem really is.  The problem is the same one the DS faced but even somewhat larger.  Namely, a different mode of playing the game has brought in non-traditional players, upsetting what the market place was.  

When the DS came out, it was interesting, strange, but nothing really exciting.  It wasn't until Nintendogs came out that it really showed what it could do.  And even that wasn't really understood what it would become.  Namely a game to sell pink DSes,  (ie, sales to females, mostly young), and boosting up other games like animal crossing.  The second set of games were the Brain Age, etc, that brought in yet another audience, older adults.  But since the DS was first and got off to a good start, 3rd parties could sell their traditional fare and do all right, without doing much experimentation with the new parts of the marketplace.  

Now the Wii can come, and captured the imagination of many that would buy the DS and one new group, the family/party game.  While party gamers are easy to figure out, which is why all the mini-games sell well, other than Wii Sport, I'm not sure if there are any games that are really going after family players, but just treating them as just party gamers.

The 3rd party can do mature games, well, somewhat mature games, but they need to be along the lines of an interactive movie, where it can be played by one or more players, each one being a character of the plot.  If there is no player for a given character, then the game plays that character. 

But they need to do a better job of understanding their audience, and of marketing to that audience.  They can't just throw up some ads on gamer sites, and a couple of gamer mag. ads and call it good any more.  Not for many in the Wii audience.  Which is I think why Zack and Wiki is doing a poorly as it is.  Is it a kid's game?  An amusing but difficult puzzle game?  And where is the advertizing for it?

 

 



Torturing the numbers.  Hear them scream.