Jumpin said:
LethalP said:
Wii Sports and Wii Fit drove a lot of the Wii's sales. Of course Nintendos staple games drove sales too, but the rapid rate of the Wii's sales came from many people who you could call 'casual'. I know that is an eye-rolling term, but I don't know what elese to call them, whatever. Let's not dwell on semantics.
Also, 0.5%? Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, Wii Play all drove sales to a crowd that wouldn't normally buy a game console. Going by VGChartz this is a much bigger percentage of software sales than 0.5%, more like 15-20%.
Nintendo's staples like 2D Mario and Mario Kart also sold better true, but then why wouldn't they? They were often bundled with a console selling at a rapid rate. But my point is the rapid growth of the Wii over the GameCube didn't come from Mario Galaxy (which sold about as much as Mario 64 on a system with 3 times the sales), it came from the advent of motion controls and the innovative games that went along with it, particularly Wii Sports and Wii Fit. This shouldn't even be an argument.
Imagine the Wii was just a normal console upgrade without motion controls, with power like the PS3/360 directly competing in the same market demographic, and it released all the same Nintendo staples albeit better graphics, but the same game none the less. So no Wii Sports and the like. Do you think it would still sell like it did? The answer is unequivocally no.
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0.5% of the brands you mentioned before. But I wouldn’t count Wii Sports Resort and Brain Age or Wii Fit as the same market at all. Yes, they both utilize motion controls, but so ok does Mario Galaxy and RE4 Wii. Motion controls are an interface input; and one that made party games extremely fun. You also can’t attribute Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros Wii to bundles either since (for Mario Kart at least) that bundle didn’t launch until November 2010 after nearly 24 million copies had sold. Mario Kart does fall very much in line with the same niche as Wii Sports - both are geared toward local multiplayer/party gaming - not casual gaming; and that goes with Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Just Dance, Wario Wars, and others. These are a different niche than games like Candycrush Saga, Nintendogs, or Brain Age. Wii Fit was a big seller - but more for its health application - so it’s kind of the same appeal as the Fitbit - and it is a crossover casual game; a sub-genre I suppose since health games are all casual games too.
If you say party games and motion controls are the main draw of the Wii, I am with you, no argument. I only disagree with the casual gaming part (and I agreed with your first example list of Candycrush, Brain Age, and Nintendogs as being casual games).
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I'm not saying Wii Sports didn't appeal to core gamers, of course it did. And Mario Kart obviously appeals to people outside of the core gaming audience. But what i'm trying to say is... for example, my mother had zero interest in any games console until the DS and Wii. All she played was Wii Sports on the Wii and Brain Training on the DS. Literally that's all she played. She never touched any Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, ever. She ended up owning 3 DS's, all got broken screens from over use of Brain Training.
This audience of people who otherwise didn't play games absolutely helped sell the Wii and DS at such a rapid rate. I get your point that Brain Training and Wii Sports isn't nesecarrily the same thing, but they both appealed to the demographic I just talked about, my mother, probably yours, just people who don't play games much, if ever.
And now to the point of the whole argument, the Switch doesn't have that draw. It's a console that's doing everything right by the traditional sense of the word. It launched with a masterpiece Zelda and Mario in it's first year, it continued to deliver on experience and it's selling wonderfully. But it's only ever going to appeal to the core gaming audience, which in of itself is massive, but just don't expect the rapid sales growth the Wii and especially the DS got. Yet this still doesn't mean I think it won't outsell the Wii. It will probably have more longevity and could well surf past the 100 million mark. I'm simply adressing the people who refute that the DS and Wii sold so well because of a wider audience of 'casual' players. It's water tight, it explains their rapid growth.
