Dynasty Warriors actually has sold worse so far. Its first week in America and Others was lower than MadWorlds unless you combine both platforms which has obvious problems. Even then it is on track to outsell the 360 version of the game without an established IP. You have me on the other two though. This game only managed about a fourth what an established big name IP would pull in while being more niche due to art style and having a fraction of the budget. That would put it in the success category in my book though.

^I can anticipate a reply: "those are all established franchises, what about new IPs"

At this point I place a bet that Bayonetta will sell better than MadWorld in its first week, even though I don't know squat about Bayonetta save for what I saw in the video. Anyone care to pick this bet?

Hasn't it been established that opening week sales are meaningless for the majority of Wii titles?

Yes.. but what else is there to bitch about the Wii... if its games sold frontloaded & had legs.. well it would have been kinda boring here on this site... xD

 While it is absurd to expect the game to sell better than established IPs, I don't give complete cop-out answers like that. You have to compare and them while keeping in mind MadWorld is going to lose. It has done very favorably compared to Dynasty Warriors, and pretty decent compated to DMC4. The Devil May Cry series was about as big as God of War so doing as well as it did is pretty good. Especially considering this is never going to be the kind of game that pulls the big numbers honestly.

 You might be right about Bayonetta. Seems less stylized and that gives it better odds. MadWorld is going to get hit for the same reason Okami did sales wise. The art style of the game is out there so a lot of people will dismiss it out of hand.

I don't care who said that, it's only an envious.

There are 20 Wii games there are so good.

More than games of PS3.

360 is launched before so...

No it wouldn´t, the mass meltdown and the fanboy suicides would be a delicous treat to my boring usual day.

^I'd say that "established" is a big word. I don't see any proof that a third party "core" game gets particular legs in sales just because it's on the Wii.

I pulled the top 30 sales on Wii for the 13th of March. Let's see only the third party games with more than 12 weeks of sales, and let me - sort of arbitrarily - try to extract the "core" games (I'm ready to accept corrections on my choices here):

9 - Guitar Hero World tour: w20 31k
15 - CoD WaW: w18 25k
18 - Mario & Sonic Olympic: w71 21k
30 - Guitar Hero III legends of rock: w72 11k

So we have the Guitar Heroes, a third party game with Mario and Sonic in it and a wide "casual" appeal and CoD WaW. Basically the only interesting case is CoD, and I can see it showing legs as basically the only good FPS multiplayer on the Wii. So while the Wii keeps gaining sales mostly because of its "widened" market, what happens to the black sheep in the family (older brother, father) that would like to play an online shooter on it? She or - most probably - he goes for the branded, well reviewed CoD. Exactly like people went for Resistance 1 on the PS3 beyond the actual appeal and quality of the game when less choice was available in the lineup... the lack of legs of R2 vs R:FOM says a lot on the subject.

So far, I don't think we found the "legs". Maybe I'm doing it wrong... Maybe I should take the third party "core games" and see how they sold...

No More Heroes
Total: 390K - 72k 44k 41k 21k 17k 14k 11k 11k ...
50% of total sold in first 4 weeks!

Okami
Total: 210K - 35K 18K 13K 8k 7k 6k 4k 3k 3k 2k ...
50% of total sold in first 10 weeks
I actually expect longer legs on ports, as people who already had the PS2 version is likely to wait for a lower retail price before buying

Red Steel
Total: 1090k - 143k 37k 31k 33k 32K 17k 13k 10k 10k 9k ...
Obviously front loaded being a launch title, but dropping fast enough after the 6th week

RE: Umbrella Chronicles
Total: 1260k - 238k 114k 66k 66k 55k 58k 47k 43 27k 24k ...
50% of total sold in first 6 weeks!

There are a few cases I could find of real legs: Sonic and the secret rings and de Blob. For Sonic I guess the name had a part into selling it to a fraction of the "widened" audience in the mid-distance

The real case is "de Blob", but it looks like an oddball rather than the rule: an indie title that gained its sales by hearsay like happened for, say, Geometry Wars.

In the end I don't see much evidence for the "Wii legs" for third party titles that can't be explained by the very same mechanics that work on other consoles ( name like Sonic or Halo, lack of choice in lineup as for CoD:WaW or R1 )

Different analysis to prove them are well accepted.

@Were-kitten
I'd generally agree with your assessment. CoD:W@W is really the only big example I can think of. Most of the "legs" cry is actually just games being made on a low budget and not needing the huge sales to back it up. No More Heroes gets bandied about for legs when really its an example of how low number of units sold can actually be a smashing success for the developer. Okami is a similar situation I think based on some of Capcom's recent statements (worth it for the port but still a bad investment overall).

I would go a step further and say de Blob is selling to the expanded audience. The game is not anything that I would call core. It is essentially a coloring book in video game form. I love it to death don't get me wrong, but its as casual as they come.

Shit. I lost a lot of analysis.

Look, you're framing it too narrowly. Look at the first ten weeks sales for games that have been out for a while - Resident Evil 4, Rayman Raving Rabbids, LEGO Star Wars, Game Party, Carnival Games, the Umbrella Chronicles, Cooking Mama, Sonic and the Secret Rings.

Their percentages of sales in the first ten weeks are all fairly low.

You have to look at the legs of all the third party sellers on the Wii, not just the ones that are still selling.