You have assumed an identical cost in development between wii and HD game development. We already know you need fewer artists on a wii game which means a lower dev cost. With everything else being identical you would mroe than likely find wii titles are more profitable vs dev costs. As to the purchasing reduced cost titles, there are no other competitive titles beyond nintendo's which have no proble selling at full price years after release.

From the data there is potential for success for a core game on the wii.

nintendo got trampled last generation because the core gamers had already abandoned them. that's why this generation nintendo went and make a system that brought in an entirely new consumer base that previously had no interest in video gaming.

soo...someone please explain to me why making the traditional "core" games this market had no interest in prior to the wii are suddenly going to be appealing to them on the wii?!?

I think a lot of people make very foolish assumptions that the well informed "core" gamer necessarily prefers genres like FPS; and that unsophisticated "casual" gamers will necessarily prefer genres like mini-game collections. The truth is that the bulk of all game sales above a certain level (regardless of genre) come from mainstream gamers, who are only going to become aware of a games existence through word of mouth or an advertising campaign.

Realistically, the demographic of a console might have some impact on the sales a game would achieve on that system; but this impact is fairly minimal, and is less of a determining factor on the final sales of a game as several other factors that are currently being ignored. Basically, if you kept the quality, production values, marketing, genre, release dates, competition, and notoriety (basically new IP vs. established IP) roughly the same between games released to two different platforms you might see a 10% difference in sales that could be attributed to the demographic differences of the platform.

On the other hand, we see endless comparison between Wii games and HD console games where the HD console game was higher quality, had greater production values, a larger marketing budget, a more well known IP, and a better release date and people are blaming the demographic for the poor performance of the Wii game.

No I haven't. My point is in regards to making a Wii game on a big budget, and then marketing on one. Even with the cheaper by nature developement costs, if a company went out to make a AAA Wii game, and marketed it like they would a HD project, they'd still by my figures have spent ~ 75% of what they would on a HD game. Thing is, at full price they're only making 66% of the profit they would compared to a HD game - going off figures I've read on here, other forums, interviews and such like.

 There is undoubtedly success for core games on the Wii, but my issue is just in regards to whether that success if best left in the 'low budget low payoff' style of investment for a game like No More Heroes, Mad World etc as oppose to a company doing on what many on here think is 'obvious answer' and approaching the Wii like HD consoles. From where I'm standing I can see why third parties are hesitant to make such an investment on the Wii.

the GAFers are partly right, except in the idea that advertising is the root of it. Games get advertised based on their estimated ability to sell. Those estimates that publishers have before the game hits the market are what determines that. So when they're not advertising a lot, or not at all, you can tell already that the publisher has no confidence in it.

Where they are correct is that the Wii needs high-quality core games with mainstream appeal. It seems to be a one or the other thing to this point, that anything mainstream has to be extraordinarily casual, and anything core has to be extremely niche. The games that try to work down the middle generally work out rather well, when all the factors line up right.

hardcore people always make the false assumption that only hardcore people are buying the hardcore games.

like you said all hardcore people know of the games due to interent, but that doesn't equate to not needing to advertise. If halo 3 or call of duty didnt' advertise it would be lucky to have half the sales it has.

and bringing up madworld ever in examples is just retarded, that game is not ever going to sell millions on any format.

Copy Monster Hunter.

Well, let's look at the top 10 gamecube games:

1		Super Smash Bros. Melee	Nintendo	7.08
2		Mario Kart: Double Dash!!	Nintendo	6.96
3		Super Mario Sunshine	Nintendo	6.28
4		The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker	Nintendo	4.55
5		Luigi's Mansion	Nintendo	3.53
6		Animal Crossing	Nintendo	2.98
7		Metroid Prime	Nintendo	2.83
8		Pokémon Colosseum	Nintendo	2.54
9		Sonic Adventure 2 Battle	Sega	2.49
10		Mario Party 4	Nintendo	2.47

Smash Bros. Brawl sold 9.2 million.

Mario Kart Wii sold 20.93 million so far.

Super Mario Galaxy sold 8.47 million.

Twilight Princess (Wii) sold 5.46 million.

Luigi's Mansion didn't get a sequel.

Animal Crossing City Folk, the big Wii flop, sold 3.74 million.

Metroid Prime 3 sold 1.55 million.

Pokémon Battle Revolution sold 1.43 million.

Sonic and the Secret Rings sold 2.18 million.

Mario Party 8 sold 6.98 million.

Nine of these GC games got a sequel or a game in the same series on the Wii. Of these nine, 6 were outsold by their Wii counterparts, 1 roughly equalled. There is clearly a market here. Yes, there is also a big expanded market, but it's complete crap to pretend there's no core market on Wii that's worth pursuing. Hence why Nintendo are continuing to pursue it with Galaxy 2, Metroid: OM, Zelda Wii etc. There's nothing special about Nintendo though. These IP's weren't so big at the beginning of this gen, they are comparable to lots of third party IP's out there. Nintendo made them bigger this gen.

I see a lot of people trying to argue points they know little about.

First off Sand box games are not niche titles. 4 play zombie killing FPS are not niche titles. A guy who buys a lightsaber online and goes around cutting people in half and screaming "Strawberry on the shortcake" to 80's arcade sounds is Niche.

However that niche failure NMH sold 470k. Dragon age Origins, Bioshock, Borderlands all sold around the same on Ps3. Those were mainstream titles.

Also the original poster seems to confuse mainstream games like COD with multi million dollar budgets as some how "hardcore" They are not. He cannot show any Rail shooter or other niche title that is failing that got the same type of marketing budget as MW. Now if all Hardcore gamers just happen to know COD existed there would be no need for those huge ad campaigns. They are there though so that clearly proves him wrong about all gamers know what the good games are.


He seems to want to act like 2 year old ports and rail shooters should be selling billions on Wii. Where is the proof of this though? Just because its hardcore doesnt make it good. I didnt like Madworld and got bored before I ever beat it. I feel bad for having supported it at all.


If we took the games on PS3 that failed to sale a million what excuses would you offer? You don't think there is a valid reason for a 4 hour black and white button smasher with no replay value to fail so how do you feel about Borderlands, Have, Lair, Dragon Age, Bioshock, and so many other good games bombing on PS3?

It's funny though to see people pulling up Madworld. Like that is all they really have. I remember Overkill being called a bomb but nobody brings it up after Sega said it was a success. De Blob was a huge failure til the developer said it was almost at a million. Trolls and fanboys will being up every single Wii game and call it a failure. Most of them are not.

With 140million consoles God of War 2 only sold 2 million. Okami didnt even hit 500k,Nobody bought God hand either or Killer 7. Suda had to move to the Wii to get his first successful game and the only one so far to get a sequel. Silent Hill for Wii had a bigger opening than Silent Hill PS3. I brought up the 140 million PS2 so nobody could try to argue install base. To me thats just an argument for people who know little to nothing about gaming.
If you want to know what sales on Wii, it's quality. Just look at the metacritic for NSMBWii VS sales and do the same for those games you want to pretend are AAA must own.