I'm still waiting for those examples of fantastically selling hardcore games without advertising or word of mouth.

I was referring to casual games.  Like Game Party which has sold over 2 million copies.  That's more than MadWorld, The Conduit, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, and Dead Space Extraction combined.  Deca Sports also accomplished that feat.  Big Beach Sports, We Ski, and Smarty Pants also completely destroyed any of those hard core games in sales. 

For those saying well just have a bigger advertising budget for hard core games.  Well if casual game without any real kind of advertising are crushing sales of a corresponding hard core games then why wouldn't a casual game with a lot of advertising also crush a hard core game with a lot of advertising on the Wii?

The problem with Wii hardcore games is perhaps indeed that it targets HD hard core fans....
I mean what hard core titles do we have? Madworld, HotDO, NMH, DSextraction... what do they all have in common? Blood and teenage male humor/gory/horror.

If the wii's install base is really 50 female , then do a hardcore game that can appeal to them too. Not all girl gamers are casual, but i'm pretty sure most will look at these 4 games and just say "yuck that's disgusting!!"
I'm not a developper, so I don't have ideas on what would interest the hardcore female players... but my guess is something that is more in the mario to metroid graphical range, not HD bloodbath type of games.

What is the current hardcore game definition? FPS, beat them up, shooters.... almost all of these have violence in common...that is not the only way to make a fun game.
Yet the new hard core games comming out are NMH2, REDC, RS2, TVC... yeah.... all in violence.
Now games that contradict are the likes of LKS, but that is a niche game even for hardcore gamers.


more on the op's topic, I wouldn't say it's as much advertising that is important as it is exposure. Some games are just not exposed enough, they need to make the press being interested, sure, but they need to provide more videos, more frequent news on the devellopment. Basically they need to be a lot more visible to the general gaming community than they currently are.
Heck come post your exclusive screens on a small site and he'll make a whole deal about it with a big article. Why would you give the exclusives to IGN or other big sites so that the news is lost behind the latest MW2 and Halo3 kills of the week videos or other special coverage of big name games??

On the point about hardcore/advertising...

Any game on any system will only go so far with the sole attention of hardcore gamers. We are not the centre of the gaming universe, the mainstream/casuals are.

The hardcore is niche by definition.

The big sellers on PS3/360 are the likes of Call of Duty, GTA and Halo. These are games that have hardcore appeal, but by definition, they are mainstream games. It is only recently that casual gaming has seemed to mean tacky mini game compilations. The truth is, casual gamers have been playing the likes of GTA, FIFA, NFS, etc etc on supposed hardcore systems for years. Meanwhile, the true hardcore games on these systems, the ones with little to no mainstream appeal, have struggled to reach 5million sales worldwide.

Then on Wii you have games like Smash Bros Brawl and Mario Kart which are exactly the same as those mentioned above. They were released to please the hardcore, but at the same time, they attracted mainstream interest. The thing is, Nintendo are the only company that have managed to do this with major success on Wii so far. We can argue the reasons back and forth until our fingers bleed from typing, but it doesn't change the fact that it hasn't happened. I would ask though, what games are there on Wii that are as good or better than those two above, that have mainstream and hardcore appeal, and that were developed by a third party?

I suspect the list would be short.

SSBB and Zelda both performed just fine, so the demographics are certainly there. Or at least were there, and both Nintendo and third parties made them go away.

The problem with this is the idea that the demographic and gaming market on the wii is completely known and understood.

We know that there is casual friendly gaming group on the wii.
However we do not know if there is a hardcore, although indications are that there is.

And you cannot say anything without evidence and so here we go:

In almost every case a niche M game has been released it has outsold previous incarnations by the developer or games in similiar genre.
Example: Madworld, NMH

In the very limited case where a new IP was released on a similiar time frame with a smaller (but not too much) focus it sold compareably to the PS3.
Example: COD3, Force Unleashed

There have been no Established Franchise, Established genre games released on the wii from third parties. Nintendos games have been selling very well in their established franchises.

None of this proves a more classic gaming market on the wii, but does have indications that such a market can exist if it is nurtured.

Eh... there's plenty of proof that the Wii can sell hardcore games. Developers who can't make their hardcore games sell are just using excuses, and most of the time doing stupid things like making "test games", spin-offs no one cares about or making gimped ports to be launched one year later than the original game.

In my view it's just no third party dares risk big bucks on a Wii project, to try and emulate the Mario Kart come NSMBWii 'bridge' appeal that Nintendo pull off so well. The finances are hard to justify - Wii games generate them ~$10 less then a HD game per sale, which after you count in costs reduces the profit per copy by 33% compared to a HD game. Throw in the Wii markets tendancy to buy games at reduced prices, and it doesn't look so rosy.

Nintendo throw a ****ton of money at the advertising budget, and it results a ton of sales. No third party has really dared try this approach outside of a Wii Fit / Wii Sports rip offs, because the figures don't add up, and they can invest just as much money in a HD project where they know the market will snap up a game with guns, warfare, blood etc.

Third parties have typically always invested the money after they know the potential for success is there. Until then they'll just keep making Wii game after Wii game, hoping one will randomly be a break through success, similiar to Just Dance.