Mars, have you ever heard about DS?

In the begging happend the same thing.

hmmm mario & sonic has MARIO in the name appearing alongside MARIO characters. also the game is of much better quality than other 3rd party offerings.
Best 3 rd party games -
1. Resident Evil 4
2. MOH 2
3. Mario & Sonic
4. Rayman Raving Rabbids
5. Redsteel

 I'm sorry but i don't think there are too many good third party games on wii right now, the good ones have sold really good i think ( the resident evils for example ) and the ones that haven't sold it's maybe because they are really niche games or haven't had the apropiate publicity ( like both trauma blood games and Z & W, wich are amazing games ).

Now a case i'm really interested to see is  No more Heroes, i know it sold like crap on Japan, but that's something that most of us expected. This is a game that's been getting great reviews and praise from a lot of places and is the kind of game that should sell well on USA and Europe.

I really hope third party developers start using Wii like it deserves, and create games that could compete with the ones Nintendo is putting. 

Tell me one single 3rd party effort that should sell more than 2 million copies.

 Wait what? You mean like RE:4? Or GHIII? Mario and Sonic? Oh wait, that has Mario in the name... um. wait. <does game search> Sonic and the Secret Rings? Was that any good? Sold decent. MySims? Not bad. Lego Star Wars? Sold more on the Wii than other consoles, though I believe the 360 had Lego Star War games already. Where are these "good" games that don't sell well?

Zack and Wiki has a chance with Europe now.

Oh, Tiger Woods 08 is what he's talking about. It did like 500,000 less than 07.

@mars: thanks for the insight. And the bingo win. 

You called?

As the number of Wii consoles increases, every game's sales will go up. And really, the vast majority of the third-party games that didn't sell were very poorly made games, or had no publicity. Most of the third parties that made a real effort were rewarded.

Okay at the rate of repeating myself...

Reasons why third party sales will increase.

Developers caught by surprise in regards to Wii success and are only just now beginning to catch up.

Cheaper development, due to lower graphics, means more resources can be devoted to fine-tuning gameplay/marketing

Middleware will get better

User base will get larger

Newer gamers will start to be interested in other offering over time.

Hardcore gamers will buy more Wii's and 3rd party games once their is something that piques their interest.

Developers and gamers will evolve and begin to understand what works and does not work on Wii (just like on DS)


Some reasons why sales will always be held back.

Many "Core Gamers" (which is no longer Core to the market) will always desire more of the same with shinier graphics.

Many developers are will still make high budget games on HD consoles.

Even "Core gamers" who do like the Wii will still divided purchases between HD/PC games and Wii games.

The large amount of games (good and bad) will divide up possible buyers and prevent many games from reaching massive sales. (Ex: Would Gears of War have sold as well if it had come out after Halo 3)


There are many other factors. I think overall sales will increase but will never match PS2 numbers for individual titles (minus newer markets). Overall, 3rd party sales will go beyond in terms of profit. EA made a ton of money off of MySims, other high profit titles include Rayman Raving Rabbids, Carnival Games, RE4, REUC, Lego SW, High School Musical, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Cooking Mama and a bunch of movie/tv show games.

Oh boy, not the "Wii 3rd party games are crap by default" and "people only buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games" arguments again. It's understandable for someone who doesn't know where to get accurate sales data, but a member of these forums sprouting that rubbish is inexcusable.

Virtually all of the problems third party games on the Wii are facing arise from the fact that very few people (like John Lucas) had any idea of just how big the Wii was going to be. It takes time to make a good game, and back when the games being released now started development, very few publishers were taking the Wii seriously. Sooner or later they realised what a mistake they had done, and games of all types and qualities started work on the Wii. Is anybody surprised that the bad games were quicker to make, and thus got released first?

The good games that have been released are selling as well as, or better than games on other platforms, and a great many of the upcoming titles look very promising.