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Forums - Nintendo - Reggie: Wii Games Must Sell a Million to Make a Profit

Source: http://wii.nintendolife.com/news/2009/03/reggie_wii_games_must_sell_a_million_to_make_a_profit

 

Reggie: Wii Games Must Sell a Million to Make a Profit

Posted Tue, 31 Mar 2009 by Eric Onufer

Don't you shrug at us, Reggie!

That’s a lot of copies, how many have made the cut?

Unfortunately, not that many. In fact, most games typically sell less than 150,000 copies according to a New York Times article, where Nintendo of America’s head honcho Reggie Fils-Aime shared this interesting information. Fils-Aime said “[one million titles] was a lower threshold than for the other consoles,” and to make that number possible “[Nintendo] deliberately did not add high-definition capability to the Wii so games would be cheaper to make.”

According to NPD figures, only 16 titles have sold more than a million copies, and that’s from a list of nearly 500 titles. Of those 16, nine of them are first party, and if you follow the Nintendo Wii even slightly close, you can probably guess the majority of them - Wii Fit, Wii Play, Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros Brawl, etc. The grand king of Wii games is Wii Sports which has sold more than 40 million copies to date worldwide, making it the best selling video game of all time (although it's worth noting that it's a pack-in title in every terriorty outside of Japan).

Wii games sell new for typically $50 USD or less, while PS3 and Xbox360 games are in the neighborhood of $60 USD or less.



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Actually Reggie said in a subsequent interview that they misquoted him. I'll try to find a link...

 

EDIT: Heres the link  http://blog.wired.com/games/2009/03/nintendo-new-yo.html



"Pier was a chef, a gifted and respected chef who made millions selling his dishes to the residents of New York City and Boston, he even had a famous jingle playing in those cities that everyone knew by heart. He also had a restaurant in Los Angeles, but not expecting LA to have such a massive population he only used his name on that restaurant and left it to his least capable and cheapest chefs. While his New York restaurant sold kobe beef for $100 and his Boston restaurant sold lobster for $50, his LA restaurant sold cheap hotdogs for $30. Initially these hot dogs sold fairly well because residents of los angeles were starving for good food and hoped that the famous name would denote a high quality, but most were disappointed with what they ate. Seeing the success of his cheap hot dogs in LA, Pier thought "why bother giving Los Angeles quality meats when I can oversell them on cheap hotdogs forever, and since I don't care about the product anyways, why bother advertising them? So Pier continued to only sell cheap hotdogs in LA and was surprised to see that they no longer sold. Pier's conclusion? Residents of Los Angeles don't like food."

"The so-called "hardcore" gamer is a marketing brainwashed, innovation shunting, self-righteous idiot who pays videogame makers far too much money than what is delivered."

Already posted, at least twice.

And he was misquoted.

“The fact is, there’s no single magic number that defines profitability for a game. It’s all based on the level of investment, based on the price point, and so it’s unfortunate that I was misquoted in that article.”

Source

Finally, one clarification on the story we did Monday on this subject. For the story, Nintendo had told me that publishers of Wii games need to sell only one million games to turn a profit. The company wrote me to say that it meant that publishers can make a profit selling fewer than one million copies of a particular game. Nintendo declined to be any more specific about a number. - NY Times 



OMG Wii iz d000m3d!!!



Old and retconned.



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Oh no, I posted an old story. Ah well.