You posted in another thread that publishers seem to be starting to grasp this too, and I think you're right. EA explicitly said something along those lines for Boom Blox (when "lol 3rd party flop" was shoved in his face, twice, by a gaming "journalist"), and it seems THQ is taking the same attitude towards de Blob. Then there's the chance that Activision is feeling the same (as you pointed out).

Curious, that. I hadn't expected the executives to clue in quite so quickly.

This is a really interesting thread.

I got a theory. Seems like a lot of times when popular ninche games come out for the Wii we get some threads here about people having no trouble finding any copies at local retailers. With such of abundance of games being released on the Wii, maybe retailers just buy a small bit of everything and the better games tend to always end up being understocked untill the retailer realizes there's a real demand there. Games like Pool Party and the lot wind up unsold, while games with good word of mouth sell out their meager stock and lead to more restock orders.

For anyone wondering, Monster Lab is an obsecure RPG where you build your own Monsters to fight. IGN gave it an 8, Gamespot and Nintendo Power gave it a 6.5.

Yea I believe I said that considering I was discussing it with Outlaw today at college.  But yea it's basically 3rd parties are starting to grasp that their business model with Wii and really DS as well has to be slightly different.  And that is to first understand how the trends are going.  That being that you will do well but usually not for awhile unless your Nintendo.  And I think that's really help up for most games especially with mainstream titles.

I mean it's a lot more difficult for new IPs to get a share but I think Boom Blox and De Blob have shown where positive reviews have led the core gamers in which eventually makes the title over time to become mainstream.  Both of them had similar trends where they started off kinda slow but steady sales and then they just start to explode when the holidays come around as the maisntream buy into it. 

So yea it seems that the developers are starting to understand this.  If anyone understood it well it was Sega with mario and Sonic as that just shows you how if you know how to enter the Wii market then it won't take long to have sales that bring you profits out the wazzoo.  But yea it's settled in with EA and THQ as well and that's why their mainstream properties along with their new ones are doing quite well.

Well an interesting theory indeed but its doubtful that's what happens.  Remember preorders by retailers are based off of hype not assumption.  This is probably why these titles that you call niche but I call mainstream don't sell well early on.  Because there is no hype surrounding these titles.  So they take a modest preorder and do so for a few weeks and eventually it catches on with the mainstream.  Thus they start making weekly preorders which is what legs is.  The ability to keep a constant pace of preorders within the retailer such that supply is always there. 

So I personally think its the exact opposite.  The hyped games or core ones get the big stocks to start off with and will always have that while the mainstream ones have to earn it.  Game Party had to earn it and now a store wouldn't want to be without it.  Nerf-N Strike seems to be something similar.

Brilliant idea on Nerf's part.

I think the most impressive part is NA on Black Friday week, the Wii had 130 games to do 10,000 or more. This span across more than 25 developers. Ninty didn't even have the top spot as it only had 16 compared to the 22 from EA. Now of course Ninty's 16 sold more than EA's 22 but it shows you that Wii is allowing devs who sell 20,000 units in a lifetime sometimes in one week. Kinda reminiscent to the PS2 on a slightly smaller scale.

I think you both said the exact same thing.  The big games, like Nintendo games, are bought in large quantities by the retailers.  But beyond that, the retailers aren't too sure about what else to buy for the Wii market, so they buy a little bit of everything.  The good stuff moves off the shelves, and so they know to start increasing their orders for those titles.  So those titles have earned it.  The bad stuff doesn't get sold, and doesn't need to be restocked.

At least that is how it should work.  No retailer in my area has had any copies of Okami or Zack and Wiki for at least two months now.  I'm going to order them on the internet.

This proves how viable of a console Wii can be for serious development projects, imagine larger scale Wii projects opening to huge sales then keeping up these legs till the end of the gen, some games that would have never sold a million in past gens cause it's a core niche title could possibly hit a million in this gen.

How is that the opposite of what I said? Maybe I didn't make it clear what I meant by niche. I simply meant titles neglected in the gaming press. And by "buying a small bit of everything" I meant bit of everything outside the over-advertised nonsense that they buy tons of copies of.

Otherwise, we're pretty much saying the same thing. Games without the blessing of the selective "core" gaming media lunatics (the real niche) tend to only get small orders from retailers. Because of that everyone else (mainstream like you already said) are often underserved until someone realizes the actual demand. Hence these slow upswings in sales that start at next to nothing.

Haha your right.  Guess that just phased me.  My bad brainbox.