We've all seen the countless threads a week after a game launches announcing it's doom because it didn't sell 43,912,081 copies in the first hour and nobody was killed in a stampede at their local Wal-Mart in order to try and get the last copy of the game in discussion. Of course anybody sensible and who follows sales of the Wii just reads the thread, snickers to themself how stupid the topic is. So I thought I'd go ahead and get some interesting numbers to really show how stupid it is. And maybe it will get through to people...but I doubt it.

So these are numbers for various Wii games that have hit that seven figure mark or will very soon along wiith their debut weekly North American numbers.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Week 1- 97,734  
LTD- 6.93m

Carnival Games
Week 1- 35,342
LTD- 3.19m

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga 
Week- 140,831    
LTD- 2.24m

Sonic and the Secret Rings
Week- 1 50,713
LTD-2.02m

Game Party
Week 1- 7,287!   
LTD- 1.94m

Deca Sports
Week 1- 22,769    
LTD- 1.72m

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
Week 1- 70,880   
LTD- 1.66m

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 
Week 1-- 49,094  
LTD- 1.62m

Rayman Raving Rabbids
Week 1- 67,716  
LTD- 1.50m

MySims
Week 1- 46,178   
LTD- 1.42m

We Ski
Week 1- 30,922
LTD- 1.33m

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
Week 1- 76,535 
LTD-1.26m

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
Week 1- 93,611     
LTD- 1.13m

Cooking Mama: Cook Off
Week 1- 18,827      
LTD- 1.10m

Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip
Week 1- 45,840     
LTD-1.03m

Endless Ocean
Week 1- 17,674    
LTD- 0.99m

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All-Play
Week 1- 52,255 
LTD- 0.99m

Call of Duty: World at War 
Week 1- 44,468   
LTD- 0.98m

Mario Super Sluggers 
Week 1- 97,401     
LTD- 0.98m

The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return
Week 1- 13,910  
LTD-0.94m

Boom Blox
Week 1- 25,738    
LTD- 0.90m

Now I left off a few examples as well as games that had huge launches but the above list of games proves that it is hardly neccessary to launch with big numbers in order to do well. All the games above sold under 100,000 in North America with the exception of Lego Star Wars which did a little better but is well over 2 million sold and still on the charts. The same is true for many of those games. Wii games sell well long after they're released. With the user base of the Wii always growing by large numbers, that continues to be true. I know many of the games on the list are party games, family, etc but look at both Resident Evil games along with House of the Dead 2&3, Call of Duty: World At War and some games that are aimed at everyone including hardcore, titles like Shawn White and Sonic, none of them opened with numbers that would knock your socks off but here they are now with a million sold or soon will be.

So once and for all, can we get over the doom and gloom threads everytime there is a new Wii game released?

Some people on this site still fail to realize that first week sales don't matter for Wii.  Excellent thread!

Well thought out and researched.
Wii does not seem to have huge launch days (barring Ninty's own titles)
but they seem to get purchased over several months, which I guess is what any publisher would prefer.

Low risk initial output, and reoorders from retailers for games that all they essentailly have to do is reburn copies of.

The only addition / argument to this post that anyone could realistically make is how many games have had an opening greater then 50K and become stagnant...
but then again, you'd probably have to do that for every system to make a valid comparison

Interesting! Thanks!

It doesn't help matters when Matt at IGN insists, others are watching how MW, HOTD, etc, will perform. Your right, someone should be watching these other titles but they obviously arn't.

Whatever the journalists say, everyone seems to believe that casuals are it, and mature titles won't sell, but im confident its not true. After all MW did sell 60k in 2 days and this is an R rated 18+ game.

Megaman: That's one of the reasons I'm alittle pist at this whole idea Matt brings into the equation "Companies are looking at how these titles perform, buy this or else" Its as if the sales of previous games don't matter. When it was said W@W was a flop, people held it up as proof that "hardcore" games don't sell on Wii. Now that is is a platinum seller, rather than be used as proof these titles do sell on Wii, it is dismissed as not really mattering at all. Another goalpost moved.

@Coaster: Great post, any other thread that attempts to prematurely call a Wii game a flop should be linked directly to this one.

EDIT   ^Thanks Arius

Megaman79, on a similar note, I was reading in a gaming magazine and they mentioned how some big name games didn't do so well like Boom Blox. I thought to myself, "based on what info?" Clearly the game is still moving along towards one million. It's pretty sad that even gaming journalists jump to conclusions and print it up. It would be like calling a movie a disaster because it only made so much in the first few weeks but continued to keep making a lot of money based on word of mouth and awards, etc. To me, that's the best sign of a game right there. If it keeps selling more than it opened with, people who play the game must like it enough to buy it. A lot of games on the Wii have done that. They'll see a jump in sales a few weeks after launch for no particular reason.

No matter how well those titles ended up selling it is very unlikely Madworld will follow a similar pattern.

Well its just like the film industry, the opening weekend, the blockbuster, thats all that matters. Films don't have 6 month runs anymore, thats how it works.

You tell that to Patcher who is still being quoted recently as saying de Blob was a failure, and this is 6 months after release, when vgchartz and THQ themselves expressed spectacular success for the title. 600k and 700k respectively.

You know the more i think about it i see a much greater failure in the inability to appeal to ALL ages, both genders and all types of gamer.

No one critisizes this, at least significantly, but BK, LBP, RC and Sonic are not appealing to the narrow audience of the HD systems.

Next gen. you will see the change in both competitors and it will not be towards conservative teenager audience, its not enough to compete anymore.