@Mr Khan: and there's no hype simply because the other consoles haev too much to offer, that most Wii games get overshadowed by all those other games. Companies, including Nintendo, don't hype their core games. They get released by surprise and no one knows what the game is about.

It's like if you went to the cinema and find out about a movie called The Lord of the Rings, but you never saw advertisement for it or ever heard anything about it. You would probably not see that movie and you end up watching Star Wars Episode 1, which was heavily advertised and was pretty much well known around the World. Of course if you were a LOTR fan, you would have known already that there was a movie being released because you would have followed it closely.

Smae happens with games. New gamers aren't aware of the games coming out and they will never be, considering there's so many games being released, that they are confused and will go for what looks nicer on the outside or what they have known for a while. And when we take into account that the Wii's core market is small, the results are bad sales.

Zelda was being hyped for about 3 years already since its announcement for the GC at E3 2004. Compare the hype that Zelda got to the new Zelda DS is getting in less than a month. There's clearly no hype or interest being built around their games anymore, unless it's a new thing like Wii Music/Fit/Sports. Games like Disaster, Punch-Out (Save for the USA), Excitebots, Batallion Wars 2, Captain Rainbow, Takt of Magic, Sin & Punishment 2, Trace Memory R have all performed abysmally. And none of them got hyped and were all released by surprise. None of them was advertised properly either. Nintendo doesn't advertise their core franchises anymore.

They have a wrong misconception that core games sell for themselves, even worse when not even the core gamer knows what he will get when he buys the game. They don't want to spend a penny on making people aware of the core games. But they spend millions advertising their casual games. Plus they should have figured out already that the only core gamers who bought the Wii are the loyal Nintendo fans, most of the other guys moved onto the HD consoles. Mostly because of the selection of games and the HW specs. Nintendo has managed to remain relevant only with the new gamers and then the Nintendo fan is also at risk, since I have seen thousands of posts across hundreds of websites where Nintendo fans have been showing discontent with the current efforts made by Nintendo. It's a general feeling.

Yes, but the point i was addressing was more "are niche games niche because they don't get advertised, or do they not get advertised because they're niche?" The issue here is that the games that get advertised are generally worthy of it. That decision is made ahead of time.

It sounds rather cruel, but that's the end result of it.

First of all the shovelware minigames are being bought by parents who have 5-10 year old kids and really, they probably aren't very picky when it comes to games.  Also these games hit the bargain bin at $20 after a few months, all the sales for these games are coming from cheap parents buying the game because it has party in the title and it costs next to nothing.  The demographic that likes these games have very low standards so any turd with an appealing cover or title will sell.

The reason why Games like Dead Space Extraction and No More Heroes aren't selling is because each of them have serious flaws that not even sugar-coated reviews can cover up.  Dead Space Extraction is a very short rail shooter with no replay value, how it averaged 8/10 I'll never know.  No More Heroes looked like an N64 game and had numerous tech problems (only game I have ever sold because I hated it so much massive POS).  Okami is a niche title that sold equally poor on the all mighty PS2, nuff said on that one.  The demographic that buys these types of games have much higher standards and for the most part third parties have not lived up to these standards when it comes to making Wii games, so what happens is they are forced to buying Nintendo only games and maybe a few multiplats that aren't gimped too much. 

If Wii would get an ungimped version of Bioshock, Borderlands, RE:5, or Fallout they would sell like crazy I bet.  Obviously the graphics would have to be scaled down a bit but as long as the devs do as much as they can to ensure the game looks tastful and the game doesn't have an gimps or major flaws people will probably be happy.  There is also a major problem with third part devs omitting random things that should just be standard; voice chat, online, co-op, etc, Wii owners don't want a shortchanged version.

Metacritic?

People don't care about metacritic. This includes the core gamers. Nobody wanted Dead Space: Extraction, No More Heroes did well (why does this come up?), and Okami? Are you serious?

It's only easy to carve out this "quality games sell poorly" because the Wii gets most of the niche games. The same exact argument was laid down on the DS, when GTA:CW "failed." However, look what happened when they put it on the PSP. In fact, this game has all the supposed qualities (that Wii detractors give) of a huge success - high metacritic rating, with a huge brand name attached (GTA is as big as it gets).

Also, I see some things in this thread that are off. People that blame third parties for the Wii selling poorly in Japan miss the point. Genres like JRPG's are not the types of games that Nintendo needs. The DS did not become a massive success because of JRPG's, it was the other way around. Look at how the sales looked like by the end of its second year - only a single 3rd party million seller (non-JRPG), while Nintendo already managed 11, 5 of which cracked 3 million.

Nintendo blazes its own path. They don't pay third parties for games, because their strategy is to create a userbase the third parties cannot ignore. They just weren't able to create enough compelling software to sustain the sales (bet way too much on Wii Music / Animal Crossing). I imagine they were out of ideas. Still, the "core gamers" are not Nintendo's most important customers. Not only are they a smaller group, but the whole industry is already competing for them. They want the interest they generated in 2007 with Wii Sports/Fit, not the kind PS3 the is getting with its lineup.

All your examples are games that did 'abysmally' in Japan.  Once again, a market where the Wii is being crumbled by the DS.  Iwata has pointed out that they need to fix this, but its not so cut and dry that everything is Nintendos fault and they're losing their core market.  And they are not simply dropping all support for their games aside from their 'Wii' titles.  Even here in America they're advertising multiple titles beyond just WiiFit/WiiSports Resort.  From 'Mario and Sonic & The Olympic Winter Games' to 'Metroid Prime Trilogy', Nintendo markets their games and not just their 'Wii' brand.

Now you may not think these games are 'core' enough, but they still are being marketed.  And you can bet that soon Zelda: Spirit Tracks and NSMB: Wii will as well.  Its 100x more than Third Parties are doing.

While I do think Nintendo had a plan with the Wii to try to coax Third Parties to their side with a 'unique and multi-facetted system', at the same time I think what Nintendo itself was doing was just what it always does.  Develop so many original games completely based on their own ideas practically off the cuff (WiiMusic anyone) that they just try to do their own thing.  I mean, if you read the background development of things like 'Miis', WiiMusic and WiiFit, they've been in the 'idea' stage since the NES days.  Somehow I don't find their 'Wii' lineup be some kind of conspiracy to alter gaming.  Or to alienate Third Parties.  Its just the wacky (and admittedly genius) developers doing what they do (though WiiMusic probably should have been skipped).

But 3rd parties are ignoring the Wii, even if it's the fastest selling console of all times. The thing is, this time around Nintendo is facing real competition. They always dominated in the Handheld territory, so they shouldn't have had much to worry about. On the other hand, relying only on a couple hits /year was very dangerous with the Wii, since the other consoles were offering far more. Nintendo needs the core gamers, they are the ones that remain faithful and end up buying most of the games. The new owners may fluctuate elsewhere if there's something more interesting coming out. The 55 million userbase is just an illusion to developers. Sales by genre have shown otherwise.

Nintendo NEEDED good core games at the beginning of its life, but only Nintendo was capable of producing those games. Meanwhile a huge selection of games was coming out for the other consoles, so core gamers probably migrated there. Nintendo fans remain loyal, but up to a certain point. If theres a constant game drought of 1st party titles, people may start looking into other options and buy a secondary console.

Nintendo should broaden their market as much as possible, but they should KEEP ALL OF THE USERS interested. Because if they only plan on attracting owners and then move on to the next big thing, many people will end up disappointed and will haev to swallow the 3rd party garbage on the meanwhile.

@Kenryoku_Maxis: Mario and Sonic, seriously? Plus MPTrilogy wasn't advertised at all. Even then it was a compilation of older games, a thing most core gamers won't be interested in, even less when one of them was released less than 2 years ago.

Remember when Nintendo of UK said they wanted Punch Out to debut at Nº1 in the top 40 chart, then when it released it didn't even appear on the top 40? They barely advertised and aimed at the wrong audience with the ads. They have themselves to blame, not the people or the 3rd parties.

I told you that you would think those examples weren't 'core' enough.

And like someone already said, just because a game doesn't 'debut' well doesn't mean it isn't selling well.  Punch Out is already at 650,00 copies sold, with 100,000 of that in Europe.  Many 'core' Wii games aren't even selling 100,000 units TOTAL.  And it was advertised a lot here in America (its target audiance).  If it wasn't advertised well in Europe, that's too bad.  But hey, there's a number of games that Europe has gotten advertised I thought we should have.  Nintendo is like any company, and they put their marketing where they think it should go.

And MPTrilogy was advertised, both on American TV and a TON online.  Nintendo threw their marketing directly at the core with MPTrilogy.

I haven't seen a single MPTrilogy advertisement. There have been none on TV. I even tried searching for them at youtube and they aren't there.