I recommend reading the interview with Yasuhiro Wada, president at Marvelous posted in this thread http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=81200. Among other things he talks about their games low sales on Wii. Some of the games made or published by Marvelous are No More Heroes, Muramasa, Rune Factory and Arc Rise Fantasia.

Edit:

What the heck is wrong with how the link ends up? It looks fine in preview but when I post it...*sigh*...

Nevermind, seems to work now.

Okay, then there was a context misunderstanding, since "better" has so many freakin' definitions.

I don't think "small" core titles sell on the Wii period.

If you're going to do a core centric type of game on the Wii ... you better bring it. It better be something like Zelda or Monster Hunter Tri. I think a game like Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers for instance will do OK, but stuff like Little King Story ... not so much unfortunately.

On all systems though there really aren't a lot of "smaller scale/budget" games doing well unless they're party games.

Core games don't sell because most of them fall under one or more of these categories.

-gimped port (CoD)
-niche audience (Okami, Madworld)
-bad reviews (The Conduit)
-minuscule budget (Most games)


I can count the number of 3rd party games that don't fall into those categories on one hand.

Lets look at what sells on the HD consoles

-Large Budget (too many to count)
-mainstream franchises (CoD, GTA 4)

All systems have seen moderate success with new IP's (Uncharted, De Blob, Boom Blox, Mass Effect, Bioshock).

I decided to look at all million sellers for PS3 and 360

I came up with...

32 PS3 million sellers

25 are sequels

2 are bundled

The rest are large budget new IP's and are on the bottom of the list.

68 360 million sellers

49 are sequels

at least 3 bundled

several large budget new IP's that are moderately succesfull (most of which under 2 million)

For Wii I get 52 million sellers, most of which are first party, excluding those I see

11 sequels

the rest low budget new IP's.

I'd say it's more that a lot of these core Wii games are new IPs and not pushing them as aggressively as the HD new IPs. Then again, they don't cost as much, so they don't have to push them as much.

Even if they don't sell as well, they don't have to. All this notion of needing big sales to do well is an HD thing, and doesn't work with the Wii.

No. It's becuase you're not defining "better" or "worse." Th who? Remember that people buy games to do a job. They want a product for a purpose. People bought Wii Sports so they could simulate playing real sports with less fuss (like time, money and ability). A lot of games don't sell becuase there is no job.

Does Redsteel 2 count as a high budget 3rd party game? Its E3 presentation was sick.