Can you tell me how many decent core games did third party devs released so far that got properly advertised? Casuals care much less about quality, therefore if you want a good 3 rd party core game to sell, it should be of a high quality and be advertised. And why shouldn't 1st party core games count? Your excuses are ridiculous. Nintendo games sell great because they are great, most 3rd party games so far are just bad.

Mrstickball, you really aren't behaving like someone with your position should. People can tell how much you hate anything that's not MS but you need to have a limit.

And there we are, back to the same excuse as Soriku :

"3rd parties Wii games sell poorly because of bad advertising."

Do you have any proof/fact/information about the level of advertising those games got compared to previous iteration of the game last gen ? Or are you just making this up too?

Or are you comparing to the best advertised HD consoles games ( which by the way are getting a lot more advertising this gen than last gen, I don't think GTA3 or MGS3 were advertised as much as GTA4 and MGS4).

PS : Ever come to your mind that the reason you do not see so much advertising for 3rd parties games on TV is that TV is a visual media and showing up graphics of a Wii game isn't really the best way to advertise it ? ( esp if the next commercial is about MGS4, DeadSpace, Re2 or any other game ..)

PS2 : It's pretty obvious from watching HD software commercials that Microsoft and Sony are helping those companies to advertise too, what is Nintendo doing ?

@Ail: You tell me which core games got properly advertised. If you are talking about Japan, then I don't have a clue, but outside games like NMH got zero advertising. Games like Dead Space, Saints Row 2, Fable II, GTAIV, bah almost every big core game for the HD's has a big ad campaign. The few core games that ever get released on the Wii get no advertising at all and they are almost always new IPs.

And about Tenchu, the game series has been on decline since Tenchu 3, that's the reality. When you compare games released by 3rd parties so far on the HD and Wii in Japan, you see that Wii has got nothing compared to them. Alsmot all the most important game series had seen an HD release while the Wii was able to survive only with 1st party games, since 3rd party devs completely ignored the Wii.

I'm saying that next year things will change at least in Japan.

The issue is simple.
Microsoft and Sony have a vested interest in 3rd parties software selling to boost the sales of their hardware and to get more royalties...
Does Nintendo need to 3rd party software to sell to improve hardware sales ?
That's not so certain, the Wii is already selling like hotcakes.
And the fact that the 3rd party landscape is so bare ensures every Nintendo title is a smash hit due to lack of competition...

Heck, if I was Nintendo I woudn't want things to change......

@Ail: It's true, they got the casuals in their pockets, they don't need that many 3rd party good games for them. But sales could be actually bigger if they were also able to endorse the core gamer. 3rd parties are already shifting resources towards the Wii, and a few are already making core games. What the Wii needs the most are sequels to popular games, you saw how well Guitar Hero, Resident Evil, Rock Band, PES, Star Wars managed to sell.

Trestes - I'd love to know how I'm being biased when I'm still proving a point I see as being valid.

The Wii is doing phenomenally. Just not with 3rd party sales. That's what I see. Attack me all you want, but that's what I see.

I guess we *can* wait another year or two to see how 3rd parties do, but we've been playing that "wait for a good 3rd party game" for 2 years now. How much longer do we need to wait? We've already seen critical success with Guitar Hero 3, Carnival Games, and the Resident Evil series - but all thanks to Western sales, which is my point. Japan has been non-existent in terms of moving 3rd party games. The West has been entirely different, where we've seen multiple million sellers. How can you debate that point? GH3 has sold 3m+ copies in the US for the Wii, yet in Japan nothing is even at 500k yet. Shouldn't that speak volumes as to how the market is for the Wii in Japan?

Which good games were released in Japan?

I'd say:

• Deca Sports (sold rather well in the states & Europe)
• Tales of Symphonia 2 (IMO, did very well)
• We Ski (eventual million seller thanks to US and PAL data - Still under 150k in Japan)
• Powerful Pro Baseball 15 (PS2 version outsold Wii by 3:1)
• Biohazard 0 (GC version did phenominal in Japan. Even better than RE4)
• Biohazard 4 (sold 1m+ in US + PAL. GC version did 400k in Japan)
• Dragon Quest Swords (sold well in Japan)
• Powerful Pro Baseball 14 (PS2 version outsold Wii version by 2.5:1)
• Powerful Major League 2
  
• Nights 2 (Nights 2 sold 4x as well in the US. Nights 1 for Sat sold 400k)
• Zack & Wiki (totally bombed in Japan. Sold moderately well in the US and PAL markets)
• Soul Calibur Legends
• Trauma Center 2nd Opinion
• Dewey's Adventure
• Red Steel (say what you will about it being an FPS. But lets face it: even Resistance did over 100k)
  

Those are a few 3rd party games I looked at. In almost every example, US and PAL sales vastly outstripped Japanese sales.

The best examples would be Konami's Powerful series, which has sold abysmally on the Wii, and the PS2 version outstripped Wii sales, which shows the series is still relevant.

What I'm getting at is this synopsis of the Wii

Wii Japan:

• Sales driven by lapsed/core Nintendo Gamers
• Casual Gamers
• Minimal 3rd party success with either Core or Casual games. Has 6 titles from 3rd parties to hit 100k on the year. 0 games to hit 250k.
  

Wii US/Europe:

• Sales driven by lapsed/core Nintendo Gamers
• Casual Gamers
• Notable 3rd party success with Casual games on an incredible scale. Struggling with core 3rd party games, most notably sports games. Far better position than Japan.
• Has over 20 different 3rd party games to hit the 250,000 mark in North America for 2008.

And I'd love to go back to see how you'd like to argue Zack & Wiki's sales on the Wii. Last I checked, it was a phenominal game that was supposed to do real well in Japan, and managed decent numbers in the US.

Mrstickball has a point, this a thread about Japan sales and there hasn't been any good 3rd party Wii sales there....

@mrstickball: Lol WHAT GOOD GAMES were released there? WHAT big games? NONE.

MGS4, Yakuza Kenzan, Gundam Musou, Mosou Orochi, Dinasty Warriors 6, Devil May Cry 4, Ace Combat 6, Eternal Sonata, Ridge Racer 6 & 7, Valkyre Chronicles, Soul Calibur 4, Blade Storm, Disgaea, Armored Core 4, Armored Core 4 answer, Infinite Undiscovery, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Ninja Gaiden 2, Virtua Fighter 5, Lost Planet, Tales of Vesperia, Dead or Alive 4, Dead Rising, Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit, Gundam Operation Troy, Kidou Senshi Gundam, PES 08 (Released half a year before the Wii version) etc were all released on the HD consoles.

Which big games were released on the Wii??
Tales of Symphonia (Spin off), Dragon Quest Swords (spin off), Chocobo's Dungeon (smaller than any other HD game SE has planned), RE:UC (spin-off), RE4 (port), Dragon Ball z Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Shiren the Wanderer 3, Kidou Senshi Gundam, Tenchu 4 are the biggest core games that 3rd parties gave the Wii. And as you can see most of them are spin-offs.

Comparing the HD libraries to the Wii one is just laughable. The Wii has gotten no main game from any big franchise so far, while the HD consoles are being flooded.
How do you expect big 3rd party sales on the Wii when the biggest games are on the HD's?

Dont be a joke, accept that Wii 3rd party game sales aren't good because games aren't good. If not, tell me why couldnt any HD game sell as well as the Nintendo made ones? Because Nintendo makes games that are huge there, and gave people something worth playing. 3rd parties almost completely ignored the Wii or gave it the afterthoughts. But as of late, Japanese 3rd parties have made far more announcements for the Wii and almost completely ignored the HD consoles. Wii without good 3rd party support trounced the competition, now just imagine next year when games start to arrive.