Oh well. Quality is relative and for some people, wii sports/carnival games/mario kart are quality titles. :O

In fairness, alot of core Nintendo games have sold very well, but they all rationalize that it's because "it's Nintendo". Personally I don't think "it's Nintendo" was the reason behind Metroid Prime 3's very good sales.

I don't think we should excuse developers for keeping their heads up their own arse either. If they want to think about the market in black and white terms, they will justifiably fail on the market.

How is Okami more niche than Zelda? And as for advertising, how much advertising did Uncharted get when compared to, say, Metroid Prime 3?
If you make enough rules as you go along to cut out counterexamples, you can prove basically any thesis. It all depends on what you mean with big game, with enough sales etc.
How many games of great quality, strongly advertised, not of a niche genre did ever not sell on any console?

The wii is loaded with big time quality third party support and The better the game is, the better they sell.


Happy.

Do you know a single other game in the same vein as Zelda that was a big hit? Zelda is actually a niche genre, it just a successful franchise built up over time, but when was the last time a similar game was made and worked out well on the market?

Besides, it was a commercial success on the Wii, it only failed to make money when it was initially made for PS2.

@Demotruk

Use common sense, thats why it has legs. Name recognition and genre. Madworld has a lot of things working against it. Has anyone made a game like Madworld? No. Is it a FPS? No. Is it Call of Duty? No. Does it have online multiplayer? No. Will the lack of replay value hurt its legs in the long run? YES. Please, explain to me exactly how Madworld expects to sell one million copies when all of those factors come to play.

And you should know better. Call of Duty has never been front loaded. Look at the numbers and see for yourself.

MM - What kinda excuse is that?? did the makers of de blob made a game that sold well before??

DC- they pulled 7 of the eight legs of it.. it's not even limping anymore.. a month and just 40.000.. come on.. it's dead..

@Demotruk
Okami did not sell for the Wii like it didn't sell on the PS2. The fact that it made a handful of dollars because it was a pretty direct port so it had low development costs does not change the fact that it did not sell.
What about Tenchu or the two Tomb Raider games? Those were pretty decent I seem to remember, and known franchises. And hardly niche games.

Name recognition and genre should also produce a heavy front load though. I don't actually disagree, it may have no legs, all I disagree with is saying that it won't have legs definitively. The true generator of legs are a viral effect, and being a good game. I honestly believe that CoD:WaW on Wii has had legs because it was a fairly well made, fun game, not solely because of brand recognition. If it sold merely because of that, then what's your analysis of CoD3, MoH:H etc. One has the CoD name, they are both first person shooters. And if CoD3 didn't sell because it was based on CoD4's success, why didn't it have a big opening, as is the usual effect of brand?