Lowered Expectations: Why the Wii Core Audience Won't Ever Show Up

Well sir, While i agree with many of the points made here, you discounted Resident evil because of it being a franchise, which is now really saying yea its 3rd party but it doesnt count because it doesnt favor my point in this article, there have been other 3rd party games that have had success on wii that you failed to mention, One gme that sold well and had a 32 player online mode without friend codes was EAs Medal of honor heroes 2, How about Activisions own Call of duty WAW with over a million units sold and its online gameplay making it one of the wiis most played games online. But let me guess, this doesnt fit your point of view because they arent NEW ip's?

Well when we look at games on 360 like dead Space which had great reviews but performed poorly what can you say about that kind of game not being receievd well? Some times games slip by unnoticed and gamers just wont pick them up thats the reality on all consoles.Theres a reason why the prequal is now a Wii exclusives. Im a core gamer through and through and own every system from atari 2600 up, The wii has a hardware limitaion for grahipcs this generation, but it does not lack in immersion when the games are done right, You had balls of listing games like dead rising chop till you drop, castle vania judgement, and Indiana Jones staff of kings, all which were games NOT made to appease the crowd that would buy them, how could you put those games up there when clearly those were quick dirty ports with nothing but making a quick buck in mind, they werent even "good" games why should we buy it?

Sales of mad world have been slow and would have made a better argument, except the wii games sell on a long tale, madworld has already sold over 250,000 copies, and has consistently sold the same amount it has been week after week.

For the record here are a list of GREAT games on wii that are 3rd party and have sold well. these are clearly not an exception and yes im including some casual games that werent total garbage.
Boom Blox (EA)
Mario and Sonic at the olympics (SEGA)
Guitar Hero III legends of rock (Activision)
Call of duty World at War (Activision)
EA sports Active (EA)
Resident evil 4 Wii edition (Capcom)
Guitar hero world tour (Activision)
Rayman raving rabbids (Ubisoft)
Red Steel(Ubisoft)
Sonic and the Secret rings (Sega)
Resident Evil umbrella Chronicles (capcom)
Rock Band (EA/Viacom)
Monster Hunter Tri (capcom)

And thats Not including the powerful nintendo First party lineup. Clearly ther is more to Wii than you have let on, the Core games that sell well seem to be the ones that people care more about and develpoers put time and good resources into them. Do you even own that many games on your system of choice. if you are like me and Do then YOU are the exception to the rule, when the attcah rate to systems are no where near the number of good 3rd party games available across the board. sems like this article was mad to appease your point of view with out a little more though and research put into it, i just think people hat spend too much time on things like this are clearly not the ones out there buying, we blog more than we play. the games mentioned above stand as a great counter point to your article...but let me guess, like rsident evil, those dont matter either right?....

Hullo Anthony – Firstly, we'd just like to note that I'm not making a statement to you and everyone else reading that we're not making a statement about quality on anything: there are plenty of great Wii titles. That said, let me address the games you brought up that we didn't already address in some way in the feature.

For all of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band titles, music games have a broad appeal with mainstream audiences, so they're not strictly core titles: same goes for the Sonic games, the Rabbids titles and Boom Blox which are aimed more squarely at the "family friendly" audience. Red Steel benefited greatly from being one of the few mature titles for the Wii launch- we frankly don't think it would have done as well as it did if it launched later. Call of Duty: WaW for Wii has done well, but you must remember that it's sold many more copies on Xbox 360/PS3 and that Call of Duty has a broad audience that many other titles of its ilk do not. As for Monster Hunter Tri, we were really focusing on the West for this article, but we will say that Monster Hunter in general is a crazy breakout hit in Japan for reasons we don't fully understand, so its sales aren't that surprising nor will Dragon Quest X's whenever that comes out.

P.S. We'd honestly like to play games more and write about them less, but we're paid to do the latter. :)

Thanks for your comments!

This is in response to the article as well as your post, David Radd.

It seems to me that for every one of the games Anthony listed, you came up with an excuse as to why they don't count. They're not 'core', they're casual, they're launch titles, they're 'mainstream', they sell better on other consoles, Japan doesn't count...

AlI I ask is why does this same conversation keep happening? The 'core' gamer asks why the Wii can't sell 'core' games, and every year a whole bunch of 'core' games gets added to the list of high selling Wii software.

We saw it last year, and the year before and I'm willing to bet we'll see it this year. The numbers will come out or some Third Party will announce it in a financial statement or some such thing, and we'll have a whole bunch of million sellers or surprise sellers added to the Wii software charts encompassing many genres.

So again I ask why? Why does the 'core' gamer need to ask the same question again and again. I'll summarise by using the very words from your article.

'...they say one of the surest signs of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.'

Now in a year when the average score for Wii games is shooting up at a record rate, and more Wii software of all genres keeps selling, all I ask is could this 'analysis' of the Wii and the 'core' market please stop? Every year it happens, and it seems it will happen every year forever more...

Or some poor fool is going to keep listing high selling Wii software, and as much as Anthony proved a point, it really shouldn't have to be said at this stage of the generation...

Marky: I stand by all my arguments, which I illustrate in the feature and won't repeat here. I'll just add that I looked at the trends of what's sold well (and not) and I was fully aware of all the titles Anothony brought up when I wrote this article, and I stand by my reasoning for them as well. The essence of what I'm arguing can be boiled down to this: looking at the tendencies for Wii software sales, Nintendo titles are very dominant and the third-party titles that sell are usually "non-core" titles.

P.S. We'd wouldn't make the argument if we thought publishers had learned their lesson. ;)

Thanks for your comment!

David

The fact that Sega, EA and Activision are improving their focus on 'core' titles for the Wii (The Sega 3, Activision improving their ports of 'core' games for the Wii, EA testing new ways of giving the 'core' audience what they want with Dead Space:Extraction) shows, in my opinion anyway, that there is a 'core' audience on the Wii that will buy 3rd party games, they just need to be found and catered to in a way that perhaps traditional 3rd party support didn't allow.

I hate to leave the realm of fact and enter my own personal opinion, but 3rd party support for the Wii has gotten better this year, and is perhaps the best it's ever been on a Nintendo home console for years. Games are being designed specifically for the console and the launch of Wii Motion+ seems like the best opportunity 3rd parties will ever have to catch the Wii hype train again.

You say that publishers haven't learned their lesson. I think they have. They see M+ as a new opportunity to approach the Wii as a new platform. And they see that there is an audience for 'core' titles on the Wii, and as such are releasing more 'core' games this year than any previous year, and these games are tailored for the Wii's diverse audience. I hate list wars, but titles like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Cold Mountain, The Conduit, even the port of Modern Warfare show that third parties see some potential for sales and each of those games (and the many not listed) show the signs that their publishers have learned much about the Wii and it's audience.

Where you and the traditional audience of gamers see 3rd parties abandoning the 'core' gamer on the Wii, 3rd parties see an untapped audience, and I'm not talking just about the so called 'casual' gamer, but the gamer who is looking for quality Wii experiences that cater to traditional gaming tastes. Nintendo has supplied this audience since day 1, 3rd parties now realise that those gamers are the ones who will buy the games on a regular basis and have so far been under served outside the traditional Nintendo experience.

Anyway, I get the feeling that this is a case of agree to disagree, but considering I found this piece after reading the article ' Sega: Mature Games on Wii Actually Can Make Money', I'm not too sure why these discussion even take place. The only people who know the actual facts are the ones who won't share it with any member of the press or any single gamer.

I guess I am a online FPS gamer on the PC. I love my PC rig. But the Wii is far better for my personal life!

Given a choice between an evening on my own playing Left 4 Dead with online friends and an evening playing Wii Sports or Super Mario Galaxy or a WiiWare platformer with my girlfriend I know which I would choose. The Wii is far closer to the "2 Up" experience of console gaming I grew up with in the 80's and 90's.

Which is what I am looking for in a Wii game. What I understand to be a 'console' experience rather than a 'PC' experience. That doesn't mean that games have to be multi-player, but it does mean they have to draw people in who aren't holding the controls.

How to realistically market this sort of game to the average WiiFit owner I don't know. My background is marketing but in a very different area.

The Cursed Mountain advert videos on the net seem to be trying. A couple play the game together and get scared by the shocks. This is a game that you buy instead of watching re-runs of Most Haunted on Sky. This is a game you play together.

Came into the UK Wii Chart at No 9. Not a bad start and a sign of things to come?

Marky: Just to let me repeat what I said in my post to Anthony: this isn't about game quality, since there certainly have been some great titles on the Wii, even third-party core titles. It's about predominant sales trends. To us, it doesn't seem so much like game publishers think there's a core audience on the Wii as they do see the huge install base and assume that huge sales will follow – we think that the primary audiences for the Wii are different than for the PS3/Xbox 360.

I know the interview you're talking about with Sega West President Mike Hayes: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/sega-mature-games-on-wii-actually-can-make-money/

Since he refused to talk specific sales numbers, until some sequels or new core titles are announced by Sega for the Wii, I'm going to assume he's putting a brave face on a less than stellar situtation.

So if somehting sells one million copies, on wii it isnt a sucess because it sold more on 360 or ps3? Im sorry but that just seems like a ridiculous statement,For every title i names there was a "but" argument made because it didnt seem to corolate with the article at hand, the fact is A game like resident evil SHOULD count and Call of duty SHOULD count regardless if it was a new IP or not, If you want to think about it, dead Space dead an awesome job of underperforming on 360 and PS3 because it was a new IP, Thats just how things go in this generation of gaming, established franchises tend to do better, IF they are equally handled acros the board, Am i saying that the Wii isnt mainly played by a more "casual" crowd of folks. no im not, what im saying that there are Core gamers like myself, and tehre are Core games on the Wii that have sold well and will sell well. development costs on wii are way less than its 360/ps3 counterparts and do not need to sell as many copies for them to be a financial success as Sega has stated about some of its core franchises that has come out on wii recently, All I am Saying is the title of your article says the Wii core gamer will never show up...i beg to differ we are already here and buy the games that are worth our core gamer money,

Most core gamers have a wii and a 360 or ps3 so yes when given a choice most times we choose a 360 or ps3 version, but when a great game tailored to core gamers does come out we do buy them, as the games i listed before make my point. If those games up there were included instead of your "examples" like dead rising and castlevania, your article wouldve been a little more convincing, I value alot of points made, I just think the market is a little less skewed as you made it sound.

One last thing about this whole Core VS Casual its come to a point where the "casual" crowd is now the bigger audience and games like Mario Kart Wii fit, Wii Spotrts resort and Wii play have proven this, I think that the Core is quickly becoming the Niche market and we soo will not have to attention of the publishers, it will be a fresh new start into how immersion will come into play in our games, and things like Wii jotion plus, Natal, and Sonys Wand, are a testament to that. So even if the Core "never shows"(even though i dispute that), It doesnt seem like they need to.

Anthony: I was attempting to put the games you mentioned in the context of the article – it's not that they "don't count" but they're appeal generally matches that of the general Wii demographic. Resident Evil was a notable exception to that, so that's why I addressed the series in particular in the article itself.

I also completely agree that the Wii doesn't need a huge presence of core gamers to be successful. I could do an article about exactly that, or how the Natal and PS Motion aren't likely too chip away at Nintendo's market share in that field.

Finally, I'll admit that the article title is a bit hyperbolic, but its zippier than "The Wii Core Audience is Significantly Smaller Than the Xbox 360/PS3 and Third-Party Publishers Should Reconsider Their Plans for the System." Just the nature of the biz. ;)
Again, thanks for your comments!