Call of Duty is a mega popular franchise so of course MW:Reflex will sell fairly well. Finest Hour and Big Red One are the worst in the series and they managed to sell millions. World at War on the PS2 is also nearing a million and I thought it was a bomb.

I'm just surprised the franchise hasn't done better on the Wii. Its not like there are better shooters available.

'3D Dot Game Heroes just came out, and showed us how a high quality niche game sells on PS3.  Not any better than Wii it turns out.The only real high budget Japanese 3rd party game we've seen on Wii was Monster Hunter 3 and it's outsold everything on the HD consoles so far.'.

Demon's Souls? VC?

Also, FF CC is a high budget JPN 3rd party Wii game.

Atleier Rorona did okay, Disgaea 3 did okay but undershot expectations.   On Wii the Biohazard shooters have done really well, as has DQ Swords or Taiko. My point is I think it's less some inherent capability of the platforms themselves to "sell games" and more dependent on the context of each release itself.  I think both FFCC and 3DGH both wouldn't bombed just as hard had they reversed platforms.  I think there's room for niche success on Wii and PS3, and there's clear evidence that big budget games can do well on both also.

Demon's Souls isn't 3rd party.  Valkyria Chronicles isn't really niche either (decent budget, big promotion, Sakura Taisen successor).

FFCC is pretty high budget, but it has a host of issues working against and probably would've flopped just as hard regardless of console.

It is third paty. SCEJ did help developing the game though.

Sony owns the IP and while SCEJ was involved in development, it was From Software's game. From is a third party developer, and AFAIK Demon's Souls could have been on x360 had Sony chose Ninja Blade instead.

@ ameratsu )

Sony essentially made DS - the producer and initiator of the project was a Sony guy

they didn't go to From and chose one of two possible exclusives, but this producer went to From and wanted to do a King's Field like game that is able to go further than that franchise and organized the financial backing from Sony for it

^ Well I based this on that interview a while ago that said something to that effect (approaching Sony/MS), and the fact that most of the employees listed in the staff section of my DS manual are From software employees. Good to know though.

lol, Lafiel careful you read as: DS to Dual Screen. My jaw droped for a second.

Dude, You do not tell me what to say. Let's get that point straight first. Secondly, the other part of your argument does not make much sense. You state that HD consumers are more prone to buying niche titles but that has not been the case, Silent Hill sold poorly on the HD platforms,  so did Fracture, and The Darkness. The notion that Japanese developers put their games on the HD platforms because of sales is not true. Thus far, portables have been moving more software than home consoles. Monster Hunter for the Wii has sold better than any third party game on the HD consoles in Japan.

The PS2 having a full year to realease is no joke. Developers were able to exclusively develop for that console and put hit games during it's first year. This also gave Square time to develop Final Fantasy X which debuted right around the time the GameCube launched in Japan. No, having a year lead on the competition was big for the PS2 and that's no joke.