No actually it is not. That's 1.5 Million on two platforms. While other games have sold a Million or more on each individual platform. Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 sold over a million units and The port of  The House of the Dead 1 & 2 sold over a million units on the Wii.

If all you have to make an argument is to compare a third person shooter to a light gun game then I do not really believe that you actually have an argument. Light gun games rarely sale extremely well while third person shooters routinely do.

In comparison, what Dead Space did on PS360 is fantastic.

Release good games from popular genres that people actually want to play, that aren't dumbed down, lacking features, late,  etc would be a great start. A bit of advertising wouldn't hurt either.

This game wasn't going to sell to anyone unless they were a fan of the franchise or rails shooters or both. Not a big market on any console.

p.s. Why didn't we get COD4 2 years ago?

Maybe to you but Not according to EA.

According to the numbers that float around this site, you only need to sell 500k copies in total to make money on average. If a game makes money it sold really well. The game you mentioned also sold well.

I was refuting the point that Dead Space did not sell well.

What are you arguing?

Maybe third party publishers should do something unconventional and LISTEN TO THEIR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS!!!

Wii owners have wanted a decent exclusive first or third party shooter based on a known IP and developed by a decent developer since before launch. Releasing half-assed ports of 2+ year old games, or releasing games in niche genres that have only done well on the Wii due to lack of options, is not listening to your customers.

Imagine EA produced extreme sports equipment and came to a small town with limited options as far as sporting equipment goes. When EA first comes to town they ask the people what they're looking for and the people respond with "Skateboards!"; while there are some options for skateboards that are available, they're all pretty poorly designed and implemented and most of the people who want a decent skateboard have been forced to use skooters because (while undesireable) they're far better than the skateboards that are available.

EA tells the people that they're listening to them, and months later comes back with a surprise. They proclaim to the people that they have listened and they have decided to unveil a state-of-the-art skooter because they noticed the high sales of skooters in the town. The people revolt and scream at EA "We don't want another skooter! We are up to our asses in skooters! PLEASE bring us a skateboard!" ...

Once again EA claims to listen to the people, and months later unveils the new updated skooter and claims that it is more like a skateboard than any skooter on the market. The people protest again, but EA has stopped listening to them because they know that people don't really want skateboards they want skooters.

Months pass and EA releases their skooter which is (mostly) ignored because no one really wants a skooter ...

EA can't understand this, they're brilliant after all they have record revenues and record losses at the same time. It can't be their fault! The consumer is at fault! "Why didn't they ever tell us they didn't want a skooter?" is heard in their head-office. At that point in time, EA decides that since people have shown no interest in skooters they must have no interest in any sports equipment.

For a moderate budget Wii game 500,000 units sold isn't that bad because if you assume that the publisher/developer receives $20 per copy sold it works out to being $10 Million revenue; and development costs and marketing cost will be close to being covered. In contrast, a reasonably large HD console game requires much higher revenue because it is likely that development costs alone are in the $20 Million range, and to limit risks they tend to have proportionately larger marketing budgets.

To put it another way, there are reasons why Factor 5 and Free Radical were going bankrupt after selling 750,000+ copies of a PS3 game and Suda 51 threw a party over the success of his Wii game after 300,000 copies were sold.

In comparison.

I'd think that 9k makes 370k first month look pretty good.

Yeah I agree. Wii titles don't need to sell as many copies to make a profit. In terms of HD games a lot don't make a profit but I think Dead Space did. The higher cost of development for HD games makes it harder for HD games to make a profit which is why my standards drops to whether theres enough sales to cover development costs.

DS:E could potentially make a profit too since it seemed like they used the same engine and probably reused a lot of the models from DS and there's a Dead Space movie coming out. Plus there's always Christmas...

this is a really well done game, and its a shame that people arent supporting it.  the whole l woulda bought this if it wasnt an on rails shooter thing is a bunch of shit.  suck it up and go get the game