That was the original Pokemon. Pre-cultural phenomenon.

Now, I'm not stupid, and in no way expect even 1/15th of the sales of that title out of Z&W, but what I'm trying to say here is that poor first week sales don't mean something won't sell in the long run. Another good, and more relevant example is Katamari Damacy, which sold like crap its first week and ended up with more 500k sales WW, possibly close to a million. (The site doesn't have EU numbers)

See also things like Cooking Mama and Trauma Center - off-beat, non-traditional-hardcore games that sold meh in the first week, but caught some part of the general cultural imagination, and continued to sell for long after.

 Amen, best thing said around here ;)

They don't have to, but they DO to other games, why not Z&W that REALLY need advertisement?

Faxanadu nailed it. If Capcom is happy that is all that matters. Capcom probably realized that they screwed up with Z&W like they did with the original Phoenix Wright game. Like Phoenix Wright, it seems Capcom has underestimated the games demand. That can only bode well for a follow up title.

The arguments in this thread are worthless until everyone starts putting their numbers out there. So here's the question: all things considered, what kind of numbers does Z&W have to do to be a "success"? Ideally, this would have been done before we had any sales evidence, but too late for that.

Still, we can say this much: the best pass/fail test of success is whether the game gets a 2008 sequel.

I always thought Trauma Center and Cooking Mama (which both have sequels announced) were the most comparable titles on Wii. Depending on the accuracy of VGC's tracking, both are just below 500K WW sales.

We should also consider that rare glimpse into Capcom's sales expectations for a few titles we got a while back. The ones I recall are ~400K for RE4:Wii, and ~800K for RE:UC. It is doubtful Capcom had as high expectations for this game as they did for RE:UC--a new, exclusive game from their biggest IP.

I would say under 250K would be a failure. Over 400K would be a success, and over 600K would very emphatically be a success. Over 1M was never a reasonable expectation, and I don't think many people had set expectations that high. But certainly 400K is possible given the data we have. If the internet hype makes the game top-heavy as some have suggested, under 250K is possible too.

But don't even bother discussing it if you won't put numbers out there.

I see people who want to define success in absolute terms which is a (remarkably) foolish concept; what determins success is relative to the particular game. Heavenly Sword can be considered a flop while Zack & Wiki can be considered a success even if Zack & Wiki sells far less units than Heavenly Sword. Comparing Zack & Wiki to Heavenly Sword is like comparing Apples to Ford Mustangs (Note: two things that are not alike) Zack & Wiki is a third party budget priced old-school point and click adventure game (read: currently unpopular genre) with a tiny marketing budget which could be considered a gigantic experiment, Heavenly Sword is a first party big budget action game with a massive marketing budget; it is likely that Zack & Wiki will break even at 75,000 to 100,000 unit sales while it (theoritically) could take 500,000+ units to break even on Heavenly Sword.

Ultimately, the only people who's opinion on whether it was successful or not that matters is Capcom; being that they seem (somewhat) happy with the sales, although a little frustrated with retailers, I don't think that the sales can be considered that bad.

i think the internet campaign for zack & wiki worked. infact, look at this.

 zack and wiki has 930 grabs, while super mario galaxy has only 740. that is VERY impressive. people must want to see what this game is about.

 Don't think that was me.

I agree that any advertising failure for a game is on the shoulders of the makers of that game.  No doubt about that.  If nintendo didn't come to them and offer a campaign they should go to nintendo with ideas and ultimately the responsibility is theirs no matter what.

With that said I think it is a good idea for Nintendo to get involved with more game advertising and promote some of these games that they think highlight the strengths of the console.  I think that is exactly what Zack and Wiki is and so in that light I think it was a mistake for them not to advertise for it, but I don't think they were obligated by any means to do so.

the way I see it is Capcom are the only people at the moment (including Nintendo) whose trying to invent a new IP rather than pulling out old franchises, quick ports or Next Gen outings of orignal games and this is never easy.

This is probably why it's being marked slightly cheaper and if it can get 500k by end of year and people felt good about it and the brand is better known then the chance of a sequel is quite high, I think it's about time Nintendo dropped their guard a bit and give a third party the chance of having one of their titles as a bundle with the console or Capcom should have approached nintnedo and said can we give a 25% off voucher in every Wii Box this christmas to try and drive sales and gather hyp to get the Zak and wiiki IP up and running.

Capcom's happy with sales.
Capcom's angry at publishers.

That's all I needed to hear.