What your definition of advertisement.It had internet ads ,Videos on the internet and videos on the wi channel itself, games like no more heroes did well with just that but did disaster day do that.It was doomed to failure from the start with elongated development time and critical flaws.

Edit people seemed to forget that Nintendo does make new IP's every genration but also they are the fastest to discontinue a franchise if it is not profitable.

Disaster was totally undershiped and it didn't have any ads at all on the web or TV. The only available videos were the ones from the Japanese version and to the majority of Wii owners the game doesn't exist.

Unlike Wii series or Mario games which get constantly advertised and everyone knows about them. Thus sales being gigantic.

Sony did have to advertise LBP for it to get those kinds of sales, nothing comes free. Nintendo just doesn't treat new games like potential hits. They expect them to sell on their own, but the problem is that majority of Wii owners doesn't frequent gaming forums and websites constantly unlike majority of the HD system owners. The HD games need much less advertising because they have a different group of people consuming them.

But Punch Out was not a bomb by any means. It didn't sell well in Japan or Europe, but is selling decently in the USA.

I do wonder how split the Wii's fanbase really is in terms of casuals and core gamers, because they seem to have much, much less confidence in a new core IP than they do in new casual IP's, considering that ones are advertised and the others are not.

But then again Punch Out was a core game advertised mostly as a family friendly game in the UK and Europe, so I see why it performed really poorly there.

About the undershipping of Disaster in Europe, a lot of people here at VGChartz were reporting that almost none of their stores had the game available, maybe because of low retailer expectations due to it being a surprise release or maybe because Nintendo didn't ship enough.

Most undershipping is due to retailers and thieir idealogy on basing everything on preorders especially if it is an new IP's.

Secondly as for audience split comment that is true in the sense of past trends supporting it but also trends are slowly shifting the other way. Especially since Nintendo are slowly showing supporting third party games themselves.exp Muramasa,Monster Hunter
which they have always been reluctant of doing.

Lastly I still believe Disaster Day was set for failure from conception. Delays abound,Lack of confidence from developer and publisher, and developer inexperiecce at making this type of game just seemd it odds of success was stacked against it.

trestres

nintendo wont give every game advertisments. itll give TV adverts only to games they thing have the potential to sell really well. tho of course they do make some mistakes. They gave TV advertisments to punchout and trace memory R, didnt stop those games from selling poorly in europe. we cant say for sure if TV adverts would have helped disaster very much

Advertising is only given to games that are thought to be potentially successful in the first place. That's the great catch-22 of it all. You don't want to waste potential funds as a failure

And it's a little unfair to compare them to Sony and Microsoft in this regard. Microsoft relies heavily on second parties, and Sony tends to let many of their potentially great franchises die, so their new IPs are their mainstays (like Resistance, inFamous, and Uncharted. If they had cultivated Spyro, Sly, and Crash, those teams would have been making those games)

Why would you continue to develop a game that you thought wouldn't be successful? This isn't a small developer that needs to make money back to live. This is Nintendo. Just cancel game when it even comes close to not succeeding and start on something else. It isn't something exclusive to Disaster btw. Even their high end products like Metroid Prime 3's advertisement was all internet/wii channel based.

Actually Metroid  did have tv advertisements so that examole doesn't count.You should use something like No more Heroes as an example.

Maybe Captain Rainbow...

http://wii.ign.com/objects/142/14265257.html