What was the 3PAR for the PS2?

OT: Most of the big third party games just go to the HD consoles and the Wii usually just get's the scraps.

By the way I'm still amazed at the people (whether developers or anyone else) who think Dead Space Extraction had a high chance of succeeding. It doesn't have brand name, no previous Wii games and there are already plenty of on-rails games on the Wii on a genre which isn't known for big sales.

I also know that some people will dismiss these arguments as excuses, but there's nothing one can do against that. No matter how reasonable one is when analyzing a game's sales, there will be always some who think certain games should have succeeded despite all that went wrong with them.

At the same time, those same people will accept a developer's excuses for failing to make popular Wii games... that's where the hypocrisy comes in.

Mhhh this discussion has a secret answer to it, there's some reasons why 3rd party games don't sell on wii and it's not the wii is for casuals malarky.

Here's something else to remember when talking about the Wii and 3rd parties.

3rd parties made their minds up before the Wii launched that the Wii was going to be relegated to 3rd place. They put their money on the HD consoles taking over and have stuck with this since the beginning. They have consistently tried to push the Wii owners to move away from the Wii and onto the HD systems. They have treated Wii owners as third class citizens the entire time. Not one major developer has put a first rate team behind building a first rate game. Every studio uses their second and third strings to make Wii games and expects Wii gamers to gobble their games up. If they don't use their third rate teams, they use their second rate teams to port their "big" game a year or more later when the first rate team is releasing their next big game.

3rd parties don't want the Wii to sell software. They want their investments into the HD consoles to pay off. The FUD machines started before the Wii launched and the same FUD machine is still going strong from the same companies.

The Wii market demands the best games. The 3rd parties have thrown it the scraps.

The future can be very harsh on these companies if they decide to do the same thing next gen. If the successor to the Wii does take 70% of the market which is a possibility, the 3rd parties will either have to play fair with Nintendo or they'll be left fighting it out on a smaller market. They are currently fighting it out on a smaller market then last gen. Early this gen quite a few people rolled the dice on making an HD game and lost. This trend will continue into next gen.

The huge profits that EA and others saw in the past are gone. EA is still going down the wrong path and will continue to lose money if they don't invest properly.

So far this generation we have seen a remarkable number of studios go bankrupt (or at least face downsizing) because publishers continue to focus most of their efforts towards the HD consoles; which has resulted in record revenues and record losses for many of these publishers and developers. Many of the games they have released for the Wii have not performed particularly well but being that they were developed by the studios "C-Team" on a shoe-string budget using a new IP with little or no marketing support that can hardly be called a surprise; the surprising thing is that many of these games still outsell games that have higher review scores, were developed by better known studios, that have respected IPs, with larger production values and a solid marketing campaign on the HD consoles and many publishers are still unwilling to devote any further resources to Wii games.

Now, I'm not saying that these Wii games are selling like the best HD console games but of the 60+ FPS games released for the XBox 360 only about 1/3 were million selling games in spite of most of them being developed by established studios using well-known IPs and they did receive reasonable marketing campaigns. Hypothetically speaking, if these resources were directed to the Wii they would have probably achieved similar or better sales with a lower budget translating into a better bottom line for the publishers.

I disagree. If you take a look at 3rd party games that sell on the wii it seems that devs are forced to develop "shovelware" to sell their games. Most serious, mature games on the Wii that actually try don't sell at all... I think it is sad really. Carnival Games? Carnival Games: Mini Golf, MySims, MySims Kingdom, Cooking Mama, High School Musical, etc etc. The list of these games go on. If I were a serious developer, I would never lower myself to these standards... Sorry, but it's true...

What games tried?  NONE... all of the games that people list as being "THE GAME" to point at the Wii for poor mature sales have been either third rate games or they would never have sold on any of the HD consoles or the PS2 etc.  They aren't "THE GAME" you think they are.  So please... list these so called "GAMES" so the obviousness of it all can be pointed out to you.

Spoken like someone who has never had a real job ...

Several of the games you mention sold well because they were timely (Carnivale Games was popular because at the time people were having Wii-Parties regularly with their friends, and 4 player at the same time multiplayer wasn't that common) or because they are the kind of licenced game that has been popular on countless leading systems since the dawn of the industry (for example High School Musical). On top of that, I think you'd be surprised by how many "Core" gamers played games like MySims (which is a fairly decent Animal Crossing clone) or Cooking Mama.

Video game makers can either develop games customers want or they can go bankrupt.

Also you are omitting from your list of games: Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Call of Duty: World at War, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Call of Duty 3, Red Steel, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return. These would fit under the "serious" and "mature" labels.

Yeah, that's 7 games! Woooow!!! 7 games!!! Which half can be found at the HD twins as well, and the other half are ports (not Red Steel)! Sorry, I own a Wii, but that is for Nintendo games only and some 3rd party. RE4 is a port from last gen, yippie...