"all 4rd parties still THINK they MUST use the wii remote. there are games (SUCH AS SPORTS) where TRADITIONAL contorls would work better. im looking at you EA. use them as a secondary optoin and more people might buy the games"

The traditional sports powerhouses are getting left behind and trying to catch up. Games like Deca Sports, Sega Tennis Wii, Big Beach Sports and We Ski are outperforming any given version of all the second tier (NBA, MLB, NHL) sports games. And games like Mario and Sonic and Wii Sports have totally rewritten what is possible for sports games sales. EA, Take2 and Konami are all burdened with liscensing entire major sports leagues, and all their players and stadiums, and then trying to make a "realistic" game, and do a dance with adding content every year, so that there's always more to add beyond "just a roster update." 2K Sports is unprofitable, and I would guess that Madden and FIFA make all of EA Sports profits. Now things like All-Play, Freestyle, the special advertising for NHL 2K Wii, and the special Wii version of Pro Evo, are all trying to block off these new brand of sports games and win a piece of the pie.


I don't think development costs are the whole story here. To complete the picture you have to take into account Marketing/Testing/Publishing costs. Its been stated previously that the Wii required as much if not more advertising as the HD consoles by an Ubisoft executive due to the "More fragmented userbase"

I think they just don't know how to market to Wii's userbase. Nintendo can sell 5, 10 and 15 million copies of games on Wii, which suggests there are large groups of people looking for something similar. Ubisoft, and most third parties, just doesn't know how to reach them. (They also aren't getting a boost by Nintendo co-marketing their top games.)


Yeah, that's totally why GH3 and RE4 didn't sell on the Wii at all.

GH3 is a new market value game.


Hasn't enough credible research come out which shows that the majority of the current Wii population owned a console last generation? The market research doesn't back up the "expanded market" theories that I've seen.

Not really. The only thing I recall is the NPD report that was misinterpreted as being based on their console sell-through figures, when it was really based on a seperate survey on what is "installed." Even then, that won't tell the whole story, as Nintendo's internal research has suggested that far more people-per-household play Wii, which I think is supported by the types of games which are selling.

1. I think the issue is that Nintendos marketing budget is 5,10,15* greater or equivelent if you consider the effectiveness of marketing one of the best known gaming icons. Marketing is expensive - especically considering the lower relative development costs of HD consoles vs the Wii. $10,000,000 doesn't sound too bad next to a $20,000,000 game but try to pass those numbers through accounting if you want to market a $6,000,000 Wii game. So maybe they do have to spend that kind of money to market their games, but publishers believe it or not are actually quite conservative so I doubt they would want to spend 150% more on marketing than development unless they see a clear payoff for the investment. 

2. I agree that the market survey didn't tell the whole story, however does that suggest that the "expanded" market is really based mostly around drawing more people per installed household to the console? So essentially its about increasing console participation? It doesn't actually disprove that most Wii owners owned a console previously (These people are more likely to own a console anyway) But indicates that theres perhaps more to the statistics than indicated. This means that WiiFit is selling mainly to current Wii owners as an "expanded participation" type market. If market sales are bredth then household participation would be depth of the whole market penetration picture. It does make sense in a lot of ways, Wii software sales in the E.U are radical.

++ to impulsivity. As long as Wii owners keep buying crappy games, developers will keep making (highly profitable) crappy games for Wii owners!

Next up on the 3rd party 'good game' failure track :the conduit.

I see lots of sigs begging fellow Wii owners to buy it...to no avail...

This analyst does not seem to know the meaning of the word "inhospitable."

To me, the title says that Nintendo is making life a living hell for developers again -- like it did in the NES days. That is not the case. Basically, if you have a pulse, Nintendo will let you program for the Wii.

Instead, the person is complaining about the relative under performance of the Wii version of Madden NFL 09 and some other points (when was the last time that THQ had a top 10 game?).

Here are my points.

First of all, since NPD does not have Wal-Mart or Toys R Us data, it may be using out-of-date (i.e., Gamecube generation) models to estimate sales from those retailers. Given how different the Wii is from the GC, and given how Toys R Us basically has dismissed the PS3 in its displays, this may not be appropriate or providing good results.

Second, Wii sports games don't sell as well as they might on other consoles. So that is not a good barometer of third-party Wii sales.

Third, Wii games sell differently than other games. They are not front loaded but rather have "legs." Some analysts don't get this concept because they are too busy looking for the next Halo-type sales event instead of looking at the big sales picture.

Fourth, Wii has a lot of low-range sellers from third-parties. A 100k here, a 100k there -- do that 50 times and it adds up.

Finally, as has been cited before, Nintendo answered this question with NPD data showing that it is faring well with third-party sales.

Just some things to think about it.

Mike from Morgantown

I would love to be a video game analyst -- but I could not afford the cut in pay.

+1 ps360 is way to go.

There is no "avail" if the game isn't out yet.

There are two points here that are being confused.

Point one is that 3rd party games cannot sell on the Wii, this is provably untrue, 3rd party games CAN sell on the Wii in quantities of a million or more. The issue becomes that relative to the amount of Wii games not many 3rd party games do sell well, and, more importantly comes the lead in to point two.

The games that DO sell well on the Wii tend to be crap if they are not made by Nintendo. Looking at some of the million or near million sellers we get carnival games at 2 million, Deca Sports at around 700k, Game party at 1.2 million, High school Musical Sing it at 1 million (kill me now...), Raving Rabids at 1.5 million, raving rabidz 2 at around 1.5 million and Smarty Pantz at 1 million...there is a horrible horrible pattern here. I bet all the games listed cost around 2 million combined to develop.

There are a few bright spots, Resident Evil 4 sold over a million as did one of the lego games (star wars) and then Sonic the rings(or whatever its called) sold about 1.5 million but as far as games that can be considered to have any quality at all (from 3rd parties) that's about it in the million and up set. I guess you can count the olympic games but given the reviews and the featuring of Mario I would put it somewhere between 1st party and the crap section of 3rd party (though at least it did cost more then 100k to make).

Ok yes Guitar Hero has sold well too, but that isn't going to spur any Wii core development, Guitar Hero has sold amazingly on every platform and isn't really related to non rhythm game development. On the other hand Guitar Hero selling well probably did force Rock Band Wii which is good.

The important point though, is that of the success stories on the Wii, almost all of them are low budget crap games and even those that aren't crap are ports of games made for last gen consoles (RE4, Lego, Guitar Hero). The only original Wii game from a 3rd party that has sold well without being a mini game collection, horrific sing along or something similarly terrible has been Sonic and the Secret Rings. Given that most 3rd party companies are not Sega and do not have the one mascot who rivals Mario in popularity, what hope is there for everyone else outside of mini games on the Wii currently?

The Wii is certainly capable of having games that don't suck, Nintendo has made enough of them, but without Rare to save 3rd party support (like it did in the N64 era) things look pretty bleak until people actually start buying games that encourage more good games.

The Wii really needs the conduit or at least SOME quality action game thats not a port from the PS2 to do well. Any game that doesn't have "party" or "sport" in the title would be a good start.

Impulsivity, most of the good 3rd party Games on the Wii are coming in next few months, most of the good 3rd party titles on the Wii sold relativily well to keep developers and publishers happy. And that was discussed before, i dont want to list those titles. And saying that good hardcore games don't sell is a myth that people should forget about.

Casual games also sell but i dont see anything wrong with it, in Wii second year we are getting loads of hardcore titles which shows that people did not focus on producing shovelware, party games on the system. They are putting RPG's, Shooters and other traditional titles.

Things are about to change soon enough, people. Several high profile games coming to the Wii will sell tons (Monster Hunter 3, The Conduit, Call of Duty 5 come to mind).

With the Wii, in order to make some serious money off "hardcore" games, you have to compete with Nintendo. Thus, you actually have to spend some money and much effort into your game.

Not one 3rd party has done this so far, with only a handful at least trying to (EA, Activision, Namco Bandai, Marvelous).

routsounmanman's post was probably the best post I've read this entire thread, seriously.

To sum up the last 3 pages:
"3rd Party games don't sell on wii, look at X, Y and Z games"

"Nice try stupid HD fanboy, way to cherry pick and ignore A, B and C games that have sold X amounts"

I won't side with either this time around, but it's interesting that the Nintendo fanboys here have the cahones to call another person a fanboy and cherrypicker when they clearly do it themselves.

Even though I said routsou's was the best, doesn't necesarily mean I agree with him/her. I would imagine that The Conduit and Call of Duty 5 would have to sell at least 1.5x of what the 360/PS3 sells (talking cod5 here) for it to really change the tide and the wii would need a quick succession of multiple high selling 80%+ average games in order for developers to latch on and "see the light".

Big ask I know, but the reason why is, PS3/360 are relatively easy to port with each other, or at least relative to the Wii (THAT Trestres would be why those "HD fanboys" are combining them). I would imagine the reason why 3rd party dev's are reluctant is because the money they spend on securing 2 groups of console owners is a bigger safety net then relying on the Wii, that uptil this point, is a minefield for certain genre's.

Don't ask which genre's because there will obviously be a few exceptions to the rule in each, but they are just that, exceptions.

If there is anyone to blame for this, it is Nintendo. It's not 3rd party dev's who only put out mini-game collections. It's Nintendo. They start with the hugely popular Wii Sports (a mini-game collection) and continued with Wii-Play. Then they bring out their brand name mascots and fill-in most of the genre gaps.

Who are 3rd party devs going to compete with? Nintendo's mini-games that are cheap to copy and have no brand recognition other than "Wii something", or Nintendo's mascots/icons in their trademark genre for their Xth outing?

Sure you can name games like Lego X or Guitar Hero as huge sellers, but you're talking about yet another HUGE brandname VS Nintendo (means it stands a chance) and a game in a genre that Nintendo hasn't yet released a monster for yet.

3rd party's aren't stupid, as much as most of you would like to believe and would like to believe you can do a better job then them, they really aren't. They are playing the odds, they are releasing games that they believe cater to the demographic. Again, I'll use guitar hero, monster hit on all platforms, but the fact of the matter is most (not all) of the core gamers playing that game are on PS3/360 and most casuals would be playing it on a Wii. I'M NOT LABELLING WII CASUAL AND PS3/360 CORE, I'M JUST SAYING MOST WHO PLAY ON PS3/360 WOULD BE CORE AND ON WII WOULD BE WHERE MOST CASUALS WOULD PLAY IT.

That doesn't necessarily reflect the fact that a core 3rd party game can sell on the wii, more that it's appeal is so wide that it reaches most people. Ditto lego star wars. I'm not saying that's always the case, just telling those people spouting those 3 games in particular (GH and 2 lego games), that it appeals to a larger audience then say a MGS or Gears would and 3rd parties making those kind of games would know that already (which is why they don't go to the wii).

Basically (and you can ignore my entire post and read this to sum it up), it's not about Wii being Casual and 360/PS3 being core, it's about where the Casuals will most likely be and where the Core would most likely be and that's why we won't see a succession of many high profile established IP's for a while on the Wii. (maybe what routsou said will be the thing that changes the tide)