The Dead Rising Quote which says "Okami, Viewtiful Joe and Zack and Wiki didn't make money" (Something along those lines) is from Dead Rising's head of marketing or something, not sven anyway.

 And Sven says in one of his posts Zack and Wiki made a loss.

 Anywho, dinner time, will be back to this in a bit.

Exactly.  I asked my wife to get it for me as a gift but she couldn't for the life of her find it anywhere.  If a game can't be found by those looking for it and those not looking for a specific game but just want to get any game never see it on shelves what chance of success does it have if.

I was just looking at this financial report and I noticed they expect 500,000 units sold for Dead Rising Chop Till You Drop.

Up-to-date official Zack & Wiki data is nowhere to be seen though.

lol, Sven himself was talking about that 270k figure

It was Colin Ferris, who worked for GameRevolution.com until 2001 and is now a Product Marketing Manager at Capcom's offices in San Mateo focusing on the Dead Rising and Monster Hunter brands. Here

This game did 35,000 month one in the USA if I remember what NPD had for it correctly and managed to ship 300,000 - at least. Given that Capcom couldn't figure out how to sell retailers on the project and it sold that well anyway, they'd probably be able to say "this game did ok, here is why, buy the sequel" Sven is pretty fatalistic here given that alot of game series tend to start much smaller (would you have predicted GTA 3 sales based on GTA 2 sales?) and grow over time.

Its fairly clear that Wii games do have a strong shelf frankly, at least in the USA. A fraction of the 300k shipped went to non-North American markets but it probably managed to quintuple its month one sales in the USA. De Blob and Boom Blox had similarly low debuts but may end up topping 1m units lifetime.

Not really sure about the Viewtiful Joe complaint either...it was apparently in the NPD Top 10 in October 2003:

http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp?layout=marketData&content=topgamesellers&chartdate=10%2F1%2F2003&Submit=Go

I also seem to remember IGNCube saying it came in 11th and did like 110k but I'm too lazy to look. GC games were certaintly more front loaded but it probably did ~500k worldwide.

Zack and Wiki was a great title but who was it marketed at??

I would have appreciated the great puzzles the game had with some darker characters rather than Zack & Wiki. Zack was cool but the game seemed skewed for a younger audience, yet had that devilish Capcom difficulty that most kids find too hard or boring because they are impatient for results!

The game was aewsome but I think if they made the characters slightly darker (akin to say Ratchet and Clank) the game would have sold more! Still sad for Capcom and shame on Wii gamers for igoring it!

P.S I bought the game!

Uh oh!!

I think that its a pity that a Vice-President of Strategic Planning & Business Development feels the need to write in the tone he does. It is as if he blames consumers for not buying these apparently brilliant games. As Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development, maybe he should not be so smug, as the failure of these apparently brilliant games does not reflect well on his performance at his current job.

Lets be honest, if Nintendo (or Ubisoft or Sega) was to make Zack and Wiki or Okami, the games would have sold brilliantly and both been profitable. Not because they have the Nintendo stamp on them. But because the games would have not only been brilliant, but everything from character design, to the marketing strategy and even the development budget would be directed at appealing to a crowd that would have made the game profitable.

If Capcom is unable to make a commercial hit out of a fantastic game, maybe they should stop blaming Wii owners as they have done in the past, but fire their Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development.

If Viewtiful Joe didn't make money, then Capcom should be shut down.

Why else would you release three sequels -- and sell the rights to a cartoon show?

I would be very worried if I were an investor.

Then again, all these quotes are from the American office of a Japanese company made by people who used to be on the reporting side of video games. Maybe they don't know much.

Mike from Morgantown