Another Hardcore Lie Exposed: Third-Party Sales Actually Improved on Wii

It's commonly said that third parties didn't do well on Wii. And while maybe that's true for many kinds of games that also released on PS3 and Xbox 360, when you compare Wii to past Nintendo platforms, third parties actually performed better overall.

[yugovega]

just dance anyone? close to first party sales on wii. surpassed most 3rd party games on all systems actually.

[legendoflex]

It's more than Just Dance, though. What was the best-selling in-house Disney game ever? Epic Mickey. What was the best-selling console Monster Hunter title? Tri. The best-selling Sonic title on Nintendo platforms? Colors.

[dedicatedtogamers]

A lot of people also omit the fact that since development costs on these games were significantly lower compared to an HD game, the profit margin was much bigger.

But Wii games were not "showcase" games. Developers didn't feel proud working on "inferior" hardware and threw a hissy fit. Developers thought it was more important to show off shading effects on multi-million dollar financial failures for the HD Twins than to brag about profitable, high-selling Wii games.

The same sort of stuff has happened on handhelds since...forever. Handhelds have insanely high install bases but devs who put their games on handhelds act like they're ashamed.

[stragomccloud]

You really articulated something that I've wasn't quite sure how to. Well done.

[StraightPath]

first people got owned, exposed and put to shame by he article " another hardcore lie exposed : Wii lost its core " and now putting shame by proving third parties did great n he wii too.

fanboys going to turn a blind eye

[kneon]

The article ignores the fact that the Wii install base was almost 5 times that of it's predecessor. So the sales rate/console is much lower.

Even compared the other current consoles it had nearly double the sales of the other two at one point. Yet sales of multi-platform third party games almost always lagged behind the other consoles.

You can always make numbers look good if you overlook analyzing what the numbers really mean.

[yugovega]

true and if im not mistaken skylanders sold the most on wii.

[Erimgard]

When companies made games for the Wii that were actually logically aimed at the target audience, they always performed well. Unfortunately, it had to miss out on some big third party titles due to its lack of processing power, and a lot of other developers just didn't understand the kind of audiences they were developing for.

[legendoflex]

So, what I'm wondering is: if third-party developers are obviously capable of making successful Wii games, and in Activision and Ubisoft's cases, if those Wii games are actually the MOST PROFITABLE TITLES in their catalog, why didn't we see more awesome Wii games last-gen?

[Godmars290]

More and more with "discussions" such as this I get the strong, almost overwhelming, notion that there is a severe misunderstanding of the subject's base concept.

I mean the term "hardcore gaming" should never be near a game like Dance Central. Unless said sentence has "least like" in it.

Also no matter how people want to defend the Wii by doing things like pointing out how certain games sold on it, the fact remains that what successes it had were not built upon or followed up. That despite being the #1 selling platform worldwide Nintendo have begun dismantling its support network and companies are making fewer games for it than they are its successor. So something has to be wrong.

@legendoflex:
That publishers not devs. That's the likes of Koteck taking the fun out of making games and installing revolving doors for devs who get fired as soon as they finished a project which was conceived by advertising committees.

Still, it doesn't explain or excuse why Nintendo seems to be repeatedly failing while leading. Much less why you can always find a fanboy - for anything - who may as well be lemmings.

[legendoflex]

That "something" is that developers would rather make games they want to make than actually serve customers. They would rather draw lines in the sand about which titles are "hardcore" and "casual" - which they imply means "good" or "crappy" - and draw as much attention as they can to the stuff they want, instead of going out there and making the stuff that people in general will actually play.

We saw the same thing with EA and NES: for years, EA thought making NES games was beneath them. Then, one day, they woke up and realized they'd been ignoring a massive audience!

[Utalkin2me]

I just find all this stuff funny....

[Hicken]

Resident Evil sold about 300k more on the Wii, whose install base is something like 4 times that of the Gamecube. The others mentioned from Capcom sold similarly, meaningly they actually did WORSE.

The same can be said for the Sega games, with the singular exception of the Mario and Sonic games, and there were how many of those?

Rather than comparing GoldenEye to GoldenEye, they compare it to BloodStone. C'mon, it was freakin GoldenEye! Of course that was gonna sell. Then they compare it to the Wii's version of Call of Duty, which everyone knew to be poop by then. And Skylanders was aimed more at the demographic that owned the Wii than the other two, so it's no surprise it would do better there.

They then go on to name other games that "sold well," but they were around a million, maybe two.

On the whole, they didn't exactly do well, given then 90+ million install base of the Wii.

Edit: Of course it doesn't mean 1:1 growth, but I think it'd be reasonable to expect about a twofold increase when the install base increases by five. The game, instead, saw a 1/5th increase. Not good, no matter how you wish to slice it.

Sure, third party sales, in general, were larger... and consisted extensively of casual cash-ins and shovelware, neither of which were too large on the Gamecube, and both of which oppose the notion that CORE game sales actually did better, like the article suggests.

Finally, production costs are irrelevant.

While you can argue that, yes, strictly from a numbers standpoint, sales increased overall, core games included, the increase far from reflected the huge improvement in install base that Nintendo has. I'm fairly certain that, if you compared the PS3 and 360 to their counterparts from last generation, the increases are better. Of course, they also received many core games the Wii did not, but that's part of this whole debate.

One of a few parts that get ignored as certain people try to make their point seem valid, when it isn't.

[legendoflex]

"Resident Evil sold about 300k more on the Wii, whose install base is something like 4 times that of the Gamecube. The others mentioned from Capcom sold similarly, meaningly they actually did WORSE."

It doesn't work that way. "Bigger install base" doesn't always mean "1:1 increase in the size of the audience for a particular genre or niche." Fact of the matter is, Wii DID have more customers for games like Resident Evil, Sonic, etc. than GameCube did - and most people claim that audience was nonexistent on Wii.

That, and while the Wii install base was five times that of GameCube, the number of Wii third-party game sales was closer to ten times greater. All those extra sales had to come from somewhere.

"They then go on to name other games that "sold well," but they were around a million, maybe two."

And also cost significantly less to make than Xbox 360 or PS3 games. We're talking like 3-4 times less, typically more than the range of the difference in sales.