We have all seen the numbers behind Dead Space Extraction, and frankly, they’re horrible. Unfortunately, EA will in turn blame Wii customers for not buying into their mature title efforts. Oh how EA screwed up, but thanks to the powers that be, Wii owners will be the ones being punished.

EA’s Games Label president Frank Gibeau once said Dead Space Extraction was to be an  “experiment”, or test for Wii owners. Frank described the title as a “calculated risk”, but does EA understand it would not have been a risk had they listened to core Wii owners? Instead of doing the obvious, the men upstairs decide- just like most other franchises that come to the Wii- to treat Wii core owners differently than the core owners for the PS3/Xbox.

Not only were Wii core owners excited about this game, but Xbox and PS3 owners aswell who were wanting more from the Dead Space universe after the original launched. Interest in the game was massive, until it was announced that the game was to be on-rails. On-rails, just what fans wanted right EA?

                        

                  The first scene you see is a tease to what could have been the game we all wanted

Frank once said “We spent a lot of research, time, and understanding that the customer dynamics of who’s actually playing on the Wii... we think we’ve found a market on the Wii that would be interested in the Dead Space: Extraction experiment. We’re going to take a gamble and build that market.”[1] EA found a market? You mean the core market that were all excited about the game when it was first announced that you completely ignored while making the game?

How has EA not yet realized that Wii core owners exist, but will not buy games when they know EA is treating them like they’re second rate gamers?

Marketing could have helped as well, but EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich suggested that EA’s decision not to heavily market the title may have been based on the poor performance of other mature-rated Wii games released while Extraction was still in development.[2]

Doesn’t that make you feel good knowing EA hasn’t any faith in their projects? Makes you wonder how they can blame Wii owners for not buying their games. Then again, EA needs to understand that Wii core owners are no different than those of Xbox or PS3 core owners, we all want quality. Would you put a light gun Dead Space on Xbox? The Wii’s motion controls are there as an enhancement in controls, not a crutch for laziness.

                       

             The original Dead Space was unable to pass the million mark on either of the HD consoles.

                        How successful did EA expect Extraction to be when making it on-rails?

The worst part of the story is that Visceral did a great job on the game. We reviewed the title and gave the game an 85%, stating that the production values were there, but the vision of what was important to core owners was missed (i.e. being a third person shooter). This however, was most likely not Visceral’s decision.

So will EA blame Wii owners? You bet if Visceral programmer Louis Gascoigne is to be trusted as he stated that the game failing “will actually influence the SKU plan with respect to the Wii.”[3]

EA just needs to stop blaming Wii owners for their mistakes and failures. Instead, why don’t you come out and say “look, we know we didn’t deliver the game everyone wanted, but to be honest, we didn’t have faith in the core gamers on Wii and were completely taking the route Capcom took on the platform with their Resident Evil series.”

With the kind of support the Wii gets from EA’s mature offerings is it no wonder their titles can’t sell?

http://www.nintendodpad.com/Welcome/News/Entries/2009/10/22_EA_to_blame_customers_for_Dead_Space_sales_instead_of_themselves.html

lets see how many years has the wii been out....and nothing has changed. This is the same coversation that's been had for years now, just with a different game in the title.

Yes it does get rather old eh.

Face it, 95% of devs just want to mail it in when it comes to the Wii.

i dont think there is blame here at all.
its "time and again we see these games fail, so we arent going to produce these types of games for this system"

I couldn't agree more. On-rails games, cartoon port games...how they want to sell?

I know it is frustrating, but this is issue has been talked to death already. Nothing is going to change.

What´s wrong with this picture is the fact that publishers put every single core game in the same bag.

"Hey, my on-rails shooter, that everybody told that would suck, didnt sell. This means EVERY MATURE GAME ON WII wont sell"

Nope. This aint the case. 

Soon there will be a publisher that will make BIG with a mature game* on wii. And these "test game" guys will have to cry over the spilled milk

(PS: I belive this savior game will be Red Steel 2. Its pretty, its fast, has mandatory motion plus. they will have to work hard to screw this one)

how is it EA's fault?

An on rails shooter that is a spin off of a game that didn't sell too much with it's fanbase on a different platform, and it wasn't advertised.

How much would an on rails shooter sell on the Hd twins?