A few points, from my PoV:
1. Even if a game only breaks even, that's still a win, as people got paid, food was put on tables, and gamers got a good game. SEGA execs will just have a little less money to spend on cocaine. (I kid, I kid.)
2. I don't think MadWorld's sales are actually bad, or too unexpected. Offhand, I think MadWorld has sold around 250k copies, and is still in print. Tales of Vesperia, which undoubtedly cost much, much more to develop, only sold around 300k copies, and is out of print, to my knowledge.
Despite Vesperia's (and other games) selling only 300kish copies, one doesn't see their sales whipped on a daily basis, and called a failure, or whatnot.
Additionally, 250k copies is not a terribly unexpected number. It's a title with a stylized graphics engine (which turns some people off), a new IP (another minus), from a publisher with a sometimes poor repuation (SEGA), in a genre that mostly died with 3D (beat-em-up). Futhermore, it's a rather short game, making it more of a rental for some people. And, of course, the audience of the Wii is less interested in mature games, on average.
Even Metroid Prime 3, one of the best Wii games, much more mainstream, with better reviews, a T rating, and from the Big N itself, has only sold 1.5m copies. I'm just not sure what sort of sales people were actually expecting with MadWorld.
Mature games can, and do sell on the Wii, there is an audience, they just will never sell on the same level as Mario Kart Wii or Wii Fit, with their crazy 15-20m sales. That's not a terrible thing, it just means that the Wii has, in general, a different demographic than the PS360.
Leatherhat on July 6th, 2012 3pm. Vita sales:"3 mil for COD 2 mil for AC. Maybe more. " thehusbo on July 6th, 2012 5pm. Vita sales:"5 mil for COD 2.2 mil for AC."
