Resi producer: Adult Wii games need ‘X-Factor’ to sell

Capcom's Kawata says Wii isn’t the easiest console to deal with.

Adult Wii games need an ‘X-Factor’ to sell, the producer of Resident Evil 5 and Wii exclusive Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles has said.

Following the relatively poor chart positions of high-profile Wii games The House of the Dead: Overkill, MadWord and No More Heroes, a perception has arisen that adult games struggle to sell on Nintendo’s family-centred console.

However, Capcom’s Resident Evil series has bucked the trend. Last year’s on-rails shooter Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles sold well enough to justify a sequel, Darkside Chronicles, due out this winter.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com, Capcom’s Masachika Kawata said that he considers positive sales for mature Wii games “a reward” for the effort the company puts into creating them.

“First of all I don’t think that Resident Evil was the only exception selling on Wii,” he said. “There are other hardcore titles, such as Call of Duty, which were quite successful on Wii as well. People get this perception that on Nintendo Wii all there is are cutesy games. However, when you actually try to develop a game on Wii it costs you money, it’s time consuming and it’s not the easiest console to deal with.

“We were serious about creating and developing this particular game, and therefore the fan will accept and recognise our effort. I’m considering it a reward for our effort if you like. And also, we were lucky that we’ve got the Resident Evil brand, which is well-known all around the world.”

He added: “There are good games that didn’t sell, obviously. You need an X-Factor. However, vice versa people won’t buy it if it’s not a good game.”

http://www.videogamer.com/news/resi_producer_adult_wii_games_need_x-factor_to_sell.html

I thought this was going to be an article saying more games need to appeal to women...

X-Factror
Resident Evil and Call of Duty are established franchises. Madworld and No More Heroes new Ips with some niche elements. That's your X-factor Kawata San. BTW this part is kinda funny.

I think for a Mature game to sell on Wii it needs to be a quality title and have mature sensibilities. People aren't going to buy a game because of excessive swearing or excessive violence (HoTD:O, Madworld). However if it has a solid story with adult elements and great gameplay, then it will (RE4, CoDWaW and hopefully Silent Hill:SM)

The 360 is probably the easiest console to develop on this generation.

I love how we get very vague and cryptic responses from Capcom. No explanation -- just statements. For exmaple, if the Wii is just an enhance GC, why is it so hard to program?

I also find it amusing how the Capcom rep talks about low sales for NMH -- which is the highest selling Suda 51 game.

Someone must be taking lessons in Wii-speak from Sven.

Mike from Morgantown

I'd like to see detailed charts showing what they anticipated their Wii games would sell versus what they actually sold. With NMH over 400K now, and a sequel on the way, I'm not sure how you classify it as a flop.... These vague statements are annoying.

The one thing all those games have in common is that they take hardcore to the extreme.


This sounds graphic, but it is like people demanding a beheading, but these companies cut off the head along with the torso, the pelvis, the thighs, then the ankles.

These games all throw themselves into a serious niche, and I think we have all heard a thousand times what these niches are.

As for No More Heroes, that sold close to 400k and was Suda's most successful IP ever right? If it failed, why would we get a sequel and an announced triquel?

Capcom's "X-factor" is really some fuckin effort. As to the rest of what he is saying...........it doesn't actually make any sense. I'm rereading it now and it is very confusing.

I dare Capcom to port Street Fighter 4 or bring a new third person shooter from one of their top dev teams to Wii and then talk about X-factor blah blah blah...

The games Kawata-san listed (as others have said) are niche titles. Mad World would have flopped even on the PS2, all of Clover's titles seem to. No More Heroes sold better than any other Grasshopper title ever. And HoTD: Overkill is a rail shooter FFS! Why are all of these devs so keen on making rail shooters all of the sudden? They will never sell as good as a good FPS or TPS.

Resi and CoD sell on brand alone. People who know nothing about games will buy them because they have heard of them.

People are pretty quick to discount the sales of Red Steel as being due to it being a launch title. Personally, I think quality titles in genres popular on the other consoles with great IR/motion controls will sell.

Where are all the FPS besides The Conduit and W@W? Where are the third person shooters? Scarface was good but I think the profanity might have been a turn-off.

Where are the racers like burnout that don't have the player piloting a robot bug? Excite Truck was pretty successful and although I like Excitebots, I have to admit that the concept could be a turn-off to the mainstream. So far, every casual gamer I have shown it to is turned off, even though they liked Excite Truck. Games with wacky Japanese concepts (see Warioware) sometimes don't translate that well to people who aren't gamers into Japanese games, anime, and the like...

Capcom's support of the Wii has been pretty shameless.  Zack & Wiki (another game with a wacky Japanese theme that didn't translate) is their only original game for Wii this gen that I can think of.  The Umbrella Chonicles and Darkside Chronicles I guess you could say are original, even though they piggyback on earlier games in the series.  But making them rail shooters seems like a giant cop-out.  I loved RE4 Wii of course but how hard was that to make?  Okami was good as well although I prefer the original PS2 version.  Finally, Dead Rising was pure awful.  I want to know how much of this schlock went to fund Bionic Commando or Lost Planet 2?

Sure, if that X-Factor is called "quality."

This is why i'm so excited for The Conduit's promising initial sales. It shows these devs that there is a hunger for high-quality content if devs will actually put their best foot forward for once.