For as long as one can remember, Nintendo has always carried this air of 'childishness' about them. Even going back to the days of the NES and SNES, they were primarily seen as a kiddie company, with games such as Kirby series not helping to dissolve that image. With Wii, for a moment it seemed a change was near. However, after seeing a handful of mature games on the platform, can we call it a success?
DS-x2.com asks: are mature games a dying breed on the Wii?
Just like you don’t ask a woman her age, you don’t ask a Final Fantasy fan how many games there are in total.
I don't quiet get who it's directed at. General player? Sure, I can believe them not knowing some of the less popular final fantasy games. But final fantasy FANS? There is nothing forgotten about these games.
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The Wii is seen as a child's gaming machine.
The problem with the Wii, is that it hold so much promise, but ended up being gimmicky.
I think Game Companies are having problems figuring out the Wii's audience, hence the lackluster sales of most games on the Wii, outside of Nintendo's own and a few others. I think the demographics of the Wii are made-up mostly by casuals who bought one due to hype or those that are really new to gaming, and buys perhaps a few games here and there more probably to impulse. The CORE GAMERS are definitely a minority on the Wii.
I mean just take a look at FF:CC Crystal Bearers, it's a Big Name game, from a popular franchise with great production values made by a known developer SE. You would have thought that it's a shoo-in for great success since it ticks all the right boxes for a Blockbuster Triple-A Wii Title, right? And yet it only sold 36,000 copies. That is quite telling, considering it was released in Japan, a country where RPG is a religion, and with a 10 million install base. To say it's sales are disappointing is an understatement.
Something tells me, that those CORE GAMERS who have bought the WII early on, may have become disenchanted with the Wii, and have bought themselves an HD console to supplement and supply what it lacks, but they ended up discovering that it better suit their gaming needs. That is why most Core games don't sell well on the Wii, it is because the CORE GAMERS are purchasing their games for their HD consoles rather than the Wii.
This leads me to conclude, that there maybe alot of Wii out there, but a good portion of them is left unused, collecting dust.
The Wii has a wide line-up of games of all genres. There are a lot of "mature" games, games for childs and games for all kind of gamers.
Let's face the facts: Would MadWorld a success on the PS3 or Xbox360? Most probably not. It's a niche game with no big graphics budget.
No More Heroes sold almost 500.000 copies on the Wii, and No More Heroes 2 will probably sell more. Will the conversion from No More Heroes for the PS360 even reach the Wii sales? Everyone says no.
FF: The Crystal Bearers has low sales in Japan. But most people estimated this. It's not an RPG it is an action-adventure and got only a decent score from famitsu. A "normal" FF-Game or a game with a higher score would have better sales, like Monster Hunter 3 did (the most successful third party game on a non-Handheld console in Japan in this console generation). The biggest Japan-RPG for 2010 is a Wii exclusive: Dragon Quest X. And this game will probably sale millions of copies like the DS Version of DQ9 did.
Umbrella chronicles sold about 1.5 Mio copies. Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles will probably sell better than Umbrella Chronicles. House of Dead Overkill sold 420.000 copies.
In 2010 we see games like Metroid Other M, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers, The Calling, Tales of Graces, Mario Galaxy 2, Dynamic Slash, Red Steel 2, Monado-Beginning of a New World, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Epic Mickey, No More Heroes 2, Endless Ocean 2, Monster Hunter 3, Sin&Punishment 2, Dragon Quest X, etc. You see many "mature" games and many core games in this list.
The rumor that some kind of games not selling on the Wii occured because Wii games has a different sales curve than PS360-Games. Most Wii games has steady sales for many month, most PS360-Games make 95% of their sales in the first month (or the first few days).
And so even a "flop" like MadWorld sold over 340.000 copies until now, despite the low first week sales. Even Dead Space Extraction is by 80.000 now and probably will have decent sales in the end. On the other side I could name a number of "mature" games that flopped or has disappointing sales on the PS3 or Xbox360.
The Wii will of course get more "mature" games, because they sell and the publisher make money with this kind of games on the Wii.