Ah, but do you not see the inherent problem with your own examples?  Wii Sports, Singstar, even just goofing around in GTA killing people and then running from the cops all require one thing - SKILL.   So while there may not be game objectives or for GTA you may be ignoring them, you are working on improving your own skill level at whatever the game is.  Singing in Singstar, Sports in Wii Sports or cop evasion in GTA.   As for other music games you're doing the game objective - matching the rhythm and again, improving your skill at it.

Wii Music requires absolutely NO skill, nor can you ever 'improve' at it.  Not from what's been shown so far.  Even a toy piano you can pratice on it and improve your skill.  With Wii Music you cannot.  It will always play the same irregardless.  If a baby can play as well as an actual musician then it may be great fun for the baby but no fun for the musician (unless it's his own baby).

As for price, people I'm not suggesting $50 is too expensive for a gift (for this game maybe).  I'm suggesting the cost of a Wii+Wii Music for a pre-schooler toy is too much.  It doesn't look like it can expand the market like Wii Sports and Wii Fit have.

So I'm not sure who the market is for this game.  I'm a casual gamer. No interest.  My son (core gamer) - no interest.  My Daughter - rather have GH or DDR.  My parents - nope.  The only person I can see wanting this is my brother for his 4 & 2 year olds, except he doesn't have a Wii (Sony fanboy).  If he buys one for Wii Music I'll shut the hell up.

"Darling?" Wasn't aware you were a fan of the gentlemen. Just don't get too cheeky good chap.

I must appologize though, my welcome was innapropriate to say the least.

Pity the Ps3 doesn't have something like Wii-Sports, Wii-Fit or Wii-Music, people might actually be buying it instead of the Wii, or actually buying games for it for that matter. I'm fascinated by how angry it makes haters to see Nintendo pushing casual games. It's like an affirmation that they're doing the right thing. And while everyone else in the industry is going broke on HD gaming, Nintendo is making billion dollar profits. I do have to tip my hat to the 360 and PS3 though for prepping HD gaming for Nintendo so that when they finally do make their debut it will be affordable. And the 360 and PS3's new motion controllers are proof that the Wii is the market leader.

Wii Music isn't a "better" game than GH or Rockband, obviously, as it can hardly even be called a game.  People may prefer Wii Music, however, as it gives you a little creative freedom.  The freedom may be extremely limited, yes, but at the moment there really isn't anything else like it, so there's no competition.

@Gamerace:  Sure, it will not move consoles like Wii Fit or Wii Sports have, but let's be honest, is that really a fair comparison?  At the very least, it should satisfy some of the new audience (ehem, like the 2mil that bought Carnival Games?).  The game doesn't need to expand the market that much in order to be a success.

OMG genius haha. People give this game too much of a bad rep when it has to be the most blatanly creative game ever haha.

OMG Nintendo is releasing a game in the same genre as Rockband and Guitar Hero, Clearly Nintendo is saying its game is better than those and should be the one and only music game. How dare Nintendo try to make Wii Music our only choice! Why, it wouldn't surprise me if Wii Music had a patch built in it that once installed on your console would prevent you from playing any Guitar Hero, Rockband or Rockrevolution games.

This is almost as bad as when Nintendo launched Wii Sports and Wii Play to compete with other sports games like Madden and FIFA.

^^^ Cute. I'm glad Ninty went a different way with Wii Music. I mean all we need is another GH/RB ripoff.. aka Rock Revolution and many others. And hell think how many peripheals it would have had haha.

Read my new sign.

didnt everyone say this stuff about wii fit? and thats got 80 on metacritic

@Gamerace: You propably are familiar with creative noisy toys, as i pointed out earlier, this could be a good replacement.

As for chrismas presents, 1000+ euros on presents seems to be pretty much the standard, which means in practice spending the amount of money worth of Wii and Wii Music per kid.

Wait, you apparently didn't get it. You're supposed to play along, where the skill is required, is how well you are able to play along. Just like getting a real guitar and playing along with a song that hear on the radio. Of course, with guitar, you need to know how to play it, but the idea is the same. Or, you can play it your own way.
As for GTA, walking around and checking out the scenery doesn't require any skill, since you don't have to kill anyone and nobody's going to kill you without any reason.
Singstar is very close to Wii Music, since you just sing along, with the difference that you get rated by how "well" you were singing, but you still can sing your own way.

@Euphoria: In Guitar Hero, you're supposed to push the buttons at right time to be able to score points, it's no different from Donkey Konga, when in Wii Music, you can play the songs the way you want to play them. Guitar Hero doesn't give you any other options, while Wii Music gives you freedom.

@astrosmash: Well, i have kids in the same agerange, so it's no wonder we see it likewise.

@ItsaMii: Epic sig.

When this game was shown at E3, I thought it was a bust. I didn't doubt it would sell 5M, or have a chance at 10M, but compared to Wii Sports, Play and Fit, that's kind of a bust.

But the amount of hardcore hate the game is receiving has me reconsidering... This is beyond the level of hate Wii Sports, Wii Fit and MK Wii get. This is the kind of hate Wii Play gets, and not only does that game continue to put up insane sales numbers, but people actually love it: it showed up in a consumer voted top 20 games of all time list recently.

So the hardcore clearly have no clue. They thought that game would fall off the map over time, and gave warnings that it would "turn new gamers off of gaming," but instead it's one of the favorite games of all time.

So now I'm not sure if 15M or 20M are off the table for this game anymore.

For the record, I have no personal interest in this game.