Mature Wii Games don’t sell!

In a recent Q&A session with Eurogamer, Wiiware developer Bloober team responded to statements made in a previous interview by Antoine Seux (with GameKult), director general of Capcom France, and by Patcher (article written on Gamasutra.com). The issue that was discussed was the reason why certain games do no sell well on the Wii.



Here is an excerpt from the first article:

Antoine Seux, director general of Capcom France, has deplored the poor sales of hardcore games on Wii, saying gamers have turned their backs on the platform. Capcom’s future, Seux says, is firmly on Xbox 360 and PS3.

“In absolute terms the figures aren’t that bad, but we’re not going to lie to ourselves, they’re lower than we hoped,” Seux said. “After three weeks, we’re at a total of 16,000 copies sold. There’s clearly a problem with this style of game on the Wii; gamers have obviously moved on to other things. And yet two years ago, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles was a great success on Wii. You can see that customers on this console have turned to much more mass-market stuff. It’s disappointing.”

There’s quite a few more more quotes in this article, but to sum it all up, Capcom is saying that the people who play games on the Wii are responsible for the poor sales of the third-party games on the system.


Here is an excerpt from the second article:

Even if a Wii game becomes a bestseller, says Pachter, it is unlikely to create the sort of franchises that make PS3 and Xbox 360 games so profitable.

“Sure, Game Party spawned Game Party 2 and Game Party 3, but is there any question why the sequels didn’t do as well?” asks Pachter rhetorically. “Who needs more mini games? It’s the same phenomenon as Guitar Hero. Once you have two or three of those games, you have a couple of hundred songs. How many more do you need? The nature of the games that succeed on the Wii don’t lend themselves to sequelization and this business is all about creating franchises. Like Madden. Like Halo.”

To sum it up, Patcher believes that the Wii should make fewer games with better quality, and in a way, I agree with him to a certain extent.



Here is Bloober teams response to these statements:

“With such a strong install base it’s hard to believe that there’s not enough people to appreciate mature, core content,” said executive producer Marcin Kawa. “It’s all about games and quality. I’m not surprised that another shooter on rails doesn’t sell well. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that people expect something more than that..

“Instead of bitching,” he added, “we’d rather create something that has value and doesn’t feel like a third-rate port put together to make a quick buck.”

“Our logic is far simpler: if the game doesn’t sell, we did something wrong.”

They are saying that the only games that do not sell well are the bad ones, or the ones that the developers themselves put less effort into making.



Here are my thoughts on this issue. I tend to agree with Bloober Team that the main reason why these third-party titles do not sell well is mainly the fault of the developers who make these games, and not the people who are playing them. Gamers like me expect something more than just on-rails shooters all the time, we want quality games from third-party developers, and to be honest with you, there have not been too many of them up to this point.

That being said, I’m not too onboard with the statement “Only Bad Wii Games sell badly”, because there is alot of third party crap out there that is bad by the standards of certain types of gamers. The thing you have to remember is that the Wii is a console that is trying to appeal to a number of different audiences, and honestly, more parents, grandparents, and children play games on it than the so-called “hardcore gamers” do.

This does not mean that the “hardcore” crowd does not deserve to have games that they can enjoy for the Wii, it just means that most of the profit that third party companies make is not made by these types of games, therefore they want to put less effort into making mature titles for the system. As disappointing as it is to read, it is the cold and harsh truth that most of do not want to accept or believe.

I do applaud the people over at Bloober team for speaking their minds on this issue, and I hope this helps other third-party developers realize that the real problem here is more about the way that they make their games, instead of the people who buy them.

Please share your thoughts on this by leaving a comment below this post.

Article links:

Eurogamer (Capcom): http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/capcom-france-gamers-have-deserted-wii

Eurogamer (Bloober): http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/only-bad-wii-games-sell-badly-bloober

Gamasutra (Patcher): http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4237/thirdparty_publishers_react_to_..php?page=3