The Wii’s downstream market is near complete saturation.

Boogie- .92m (.44m Americas/.48m Others)

Boogie Superstar- .18m (Only Americas listed)

Game Party- 2.07m (1.26m/.81m)

Game Party  2- .94m (.57m/.37m)

~50 current games based on “Pets” or animals of some nature. Pikmin and Pokemon don’t count, I mean real animals.

Boom Blox - .95m

Boom Blox Bash Party- .08m

After the top 5 selling puzzle games, no others manage to sell past 200k with the VGC numbers listed.

The “Simulation” game category consists of the following:

Animal Crossing – 3.19m

3 My Sims games and 5 Sim spin-off (MS1- 1.44m/ MSK- .81m/ MSP- .04m)  (SimAnimals- .14m/ The Sims 2: Pets - .40m /SimCity Creator- .37m /The Sims 2: Castaway-.35m/ SimAnimals Africa- Yet to release)

These aren't all the examples that could potentially prove my point, so I ask that you guys support it with more facts if you agree, or at least speak reasonably if you don't. What is apparent here is the of sequels often underperform due to the "been there, done that" mentality that arises with games of this caliber. It will only get worse now that the Wii's library is closer to passing 1,000 games, unless there is a finer balance created between "core/traditional/production value" games with some effort put forth and stronger use of the Wii's capabilities with a larger understanding of its architecture over time.

In a similar fashion to the PS3/360 FPS market, publishers/developers will find it much harder to find their niche within the Wii's library unless they try something different.

for one thing releasing a sequel too early on wii is stupid because the legs are so long that many of them aren't done selling when the sequel comes out.
Some of those examples are not fair at all, it took boogie a really really long time of steady sales to get those numbers, same with bloom blox. Both bloom blox and boogie were called bombs when they came out by many people, and ended up being pretty big successes.

There is a point to make that sequels haven't always performed well for some games, the best example is probably trauma center. Some games are the type of games you only want to buy once.

Lots of these kinds of games have reached their sales by selling at a very slow and steady pace over a long period of time, and a sequel would look to have poor sales against the original even if it was selling better until it had been on the market for years ...

Beyond that, there is an element of saturation in the market. Very few genres can support more than (about) 5 games in a year that sell particularly well. If publishers choose to release 20 games in a genre in a year people should expect the majority of them to have poor sales.

Remember that great old song?

"You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time"

Some people have paid 30 to 50 dollars/euros for very bad and very disappointing games, and then you expect them to buy the sequels?

Lots of people in the industry do complain about the Nintendo's monopoly on their own hardware, but fact is, most Wii users know they can trust Nintendo: their games are (nearly always) top quality, and really deserve a full price... while 90% of the games out there (and not only on Wii or DS, btw) are just worth... nothing...

If you want more proof, just take a look at all the copycats out there: how many Nintendogs-like games had the same success as the originals? How many Wii Sports wannabees will have the same impact and the same sales as the original and the brand new sequel?

The industry could copy Mario Kart, Wii Fit, or any brand new "genre" or brand new hit introduced by Nintendo, but without any production value or any originality, how do you expect these games to have HUGE sales?

Nintendo's "core" market knows the deal for many many years, and most newcomers have now got it as well: crappy games are better left on the shelves...

And if some quality games don't find their audience on Wii, it doesn't mean anything: some PS2 games had the same problem, even with a 100 million+ userbase... it's the exact same thing with most records, books, movies out there: quality doesn't always mean success... so you can't blame the Wii or Nintendo if the industry wants to go the "E.T. road" once again...

In the same time, to pretend that a console with so many games in the all-time TOP 50 videogame sales is "saturated" is silly: the Wii may still easily double its userbase, and have many, many future hits... made by Nintendo, or not... but be sure most will be quality games...

I like over saturation. More competition means more good games, and more price drops.

I don't think it's market saturation.

People are getting smart.

Many people bought a Wii for Wii sports (moms, grandmas, grandpas, great grandmas, your sister, wife, w/e). They played Wii Sports and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, they played it to death and want more.

So what do they do? they go to the store and see "My Sims" with it's cutesy mii-like style, it looks familiar so they try it out. When they pop it in and realize "wow this game sucks, not nearly as fun as wii sports", they get angry. Now that game has a bad reputation and you won't dupe the same consumer twice.

This is good, Game developers actually have to try to make a decent Wii game, no more cashing in on the ignorant casuals who never bought games before.

Boom Blox is the only outlier there, but it took ages for the first one to sell what it has today.

Also, if this applies to you, look at how many POS games you have for your very first system, it might surprise you, I got tons of crap for my NES / SNES. Who bought you those games? mom and dad. the same people who are being targeted by Nintendo with the Wii. Now as you got older you started telling them don't buy these games, and eventually you buy your own games. The expanded audience has no knowledge of what game developer is good or not, what games are good or not, they don't go to gaming sites like we do so they just go buy what looks or sounds good.

Now that they've had a Wii for a while they have a better idea of what's good and what's not.

well, since games on wii ususally have long legs, whenever the publisher decides to release a sequel a year later. ususally the first will screw the new release over since it's still selling.