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According to financial analyst Michael Pachter, Wii title Red Steel 2 has sold 50,000 copies in the first month it has been out, putting it well out of the top-ten selling games for March. The first Red Steel game sold over a million copies.
Red Steel 2 is a solid game. It has earned positive reviews from the gaming world as well as my personal approval. It has a well-known name, and is aimed to appeal to the seemingly under-served "core" market for the Nintendo Wii. So what happened?
It's possible that the generally poorly received Red Steel has something to do with it. That game sold a lot of copies, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has a fan base. It got negative reviews, but was among only a few Wii launch titles, so many people bought it because they didn't have a whole lot of options at the time. I doubt many players finished that wonky game and thought, "I can't wait to play more of that!" Red Steel 2 completely abandons the setting, characters and flavor of the first game to try something fresh, so even the people who made the game seem a little leery of associating it with Red Steel.
There's also this possibility: Hardcore-style games just don't work on the Wii. Most gamers bought a Wii -- they're pretty cheap and pretty neat-- but everyone moved on from it pretty quickly due to both its lack of power and its lack of powerful games. It could be that a "core" Wii market just doesn't exist in numbers big enough to support the development of that type of games anymore. Games like Red Steel 2, The Conduit, and MadWorld just don't seem to be hitting the numbers you'd expect, given their good reviews and core appeal. In the future, I'd expect fewer and fewer core Wii titles from third-party developers.
What do you think? What would a core game maker have to do to make a successful Wii title?
Source: Kotaku
Comments
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dantastic4
Why do gamers nowadays care so much about game sales?Do you guys own stock in Ubisoft or Nintendo to care that much?I rember reading an articals from years ago that said the orginal Metal Gear on the NES along with the original Ninja Gaiden sold like crap when they first came out.Theres been lots of games I've bought that have sold not so well like Bayonetta,GTA 2,Resident Evil 4 GC and No More Heros to name a few.Word of mouth and the Hoilday season will be a big pick up for this title.
Ashley_Si
as a point of comparison, why don't you show the sales numbers for some shovel ware. i think that would show where this, and other games stand.
sparky1821
I just checked vgchartz.com and red steel 2 only has 3 WEEKS OF SALES DATA so far and it's at 110,000 copies sold!, this article by Kotaku and it's reposts are slamming the sales for no reason, how could no one realize that 50,000 is only for 12 days?, hardcore wii games will never have a chance to have stories about them selling well if journalism continues like this!
sparky1821
All these comments, and no mentions at all mentions that the 50,000 copies are a report from it only being ON THE SHELF FOR 12 DAYS, this whole article is jacked because it refers to a month, when it hasn't been a month, it may still sell poorly, but don't downplay it more than it deserves!, I bought a copy, and love it! I must be one of the few buying madworld, red steel 2, and the conduit ;)
ptr_lapp
"...but everyone moved on from it pretty quickly due to both its lack of power and its lack of powerful games."
Fantastic journalism. Broad, sweeping claims with no statistical backing to support them. Damn, Wikipedia has better content control than this article.
pipspoolcleaning3
The Wii is done.
Seriously? We haven't all figured this out yet? Sure it made some true fans, but It was a fad to the mass and it ran it's course. Nintendo focused to much attention on it's surface/casual crowd instead of building a solid true crowd first and then catering to the casual. Sure it built a new industry/wave on the "casual" crowd but casual crowds for anything tend to be fickle and always end suddenly. That's the whole point of a "casual" feeling towards something, it's destined to end when people lose interest. It's like putting a for sure expiration date on the product.
The only ones that are left are the ones that only buy during the holidays and the hardcore (not M rated hardcore) fans of the Wii. The kind of fans that will stay on a sinking ship no matter what anyone says. It had a few good rounds but I'm sorry, the Wii is over. It's a niche system now with a niche that doesn't even work that well all the time. What more is there to say? The xbox and ps3 have a better chance with the whole "motion controls" because they built a solid fan base before investing in the casual crowd but even then, they're going to have to do some serious work to breathe life back into the idea that the Wii ran into the ground with its poor performance and support.
Don't even get me started on the fact that the only games that are worth playing (for the most part) on the Wii are titles that are approaching their 35 sequel. Is there a reason the entire gaming community goes ape sh#% pissed over games the release sequels regularly but when mario or zelda approach their 30 game, everyone orgasms? I'm through Nintendo. You've ruined your rep to me.
Brad_Grenz
Ubisoft best get to work on port for the PS Move if they ever want to make their money back.
damnonion
I'm so over this crap about the Wii not being for "hardcore" gamers. These third-party developers think they can put out these games and not do crap for advertising it. Of course I'm skeptical about buying your game, you've either not done anything yet on the Wii, or whatever you've done thus far has sucked. Who cares if it's only sold 50,000 copies? If it's a great game, word of mouth will help sales. Look at the top selling games from week to week and you see a bunch of Wii games, many of which have come out many many months prior. I love my Wii, and often don't buy games right away, not because I dont want them, but usually because I have so many other games that I love and dont have the time to play all of them as much as I want, so what's the point in buying a game that I wont start playing for 3 months? If so many developers didn't release such steaming turds in the first months and years of the Wii, maybe people would be more likely to pony up the cash for a new title.
Stormtroopr
Maybe if they made an actual Red Steel sequel instead of "Western Samurai 2: Gunslinger", it would have sold more.
baeleth
Red Steel 2 came OUT?!? This may be part of the problem. I actually pay attention to this stuff and was interested in Red Steel 2 & didn't realize that it had already come out.
mattgindago
Red steel is out?? huh, never knew that.
TrustFall
I can't stand the motion controls. I don't want motion controls. I want to sit on my couch and push buttons and be able to control with pinpoint accuracy. And I still resent that the prix released an add on (for a price) that essentially made their controller better able to do what we were told it could do in the first place. Mario, Zelda, and Boom Blox, that is about the use I've gotten out of the Wii. Hasn't even been turned on in months.
stocker
I think everybody's missing the boat here. The problem is that Ubisoft has a massive drm problem here. The torrent sites are loaded with Red Steel 2 copies. I could download a copy right now for free. I bought mine to support the publisher. In stark contrast i searched for god of war 3 torrents and came up empty! Well I can get chains of Olympus but psp's drm problems are legendary. Also first party nintendo wii games are also hard to find. Why pay 50 dollars when you can get it for free.
Battlefields
I loved this game idk why really
dbeam308
I can't play 'core' games on the Wii. As someone who has the triple threat of next-gen systems (Wii-360-PS3), the Wii is something that's a novelty system (and the kid's system, my 7 year old daughter more-or-less owns the Wii, otherwise I'd sell it.)
That said, I've TRIED playing 'core' games on the Wii, MadWorld..Conduit..No More Heroes. I just get tired after an hour each time, unecessarily using Wii motion controls. Then I play a more 'core' game on one of the other systems.
Except New Super Mario Bros. NSMB FTW.
Nightshade386
Maybe these games just aren't conceptually what the hardcore gamer/Wii owner is looking for. I've gotta say, I'm not against the idea of a hardcore game on the Wii, but neither Red Steel 2 or Madworld interested me in the least conceptually.
RandyMercer
Whoa, I don't know what to say about that, it kinda makes me sad. There's almost no need for Hardcore 3rd party games on this system[Wii]. I don't know who was in control of the release date window but it was kind of blindly thrown out on store shelves and anyone could have told Ubisoft and Nintendo that March was the month for GoWIII, BF BCII, FFXIII and Pokemon. Somebody should have realized this and pushed it back to sometime this month. Another point I want to make is there was a pretty substantial amount of adverts on TV as I've seen. What else happened?
DriveShaft48
What does a hard core game need to make on the wii? It needs to be named Mario, Metroid or Zelda, that's what it needs.
GameFreak398
If developers wanna sell more copies then they need to put there game on systems that sell such as Pc, Ps3, and Xbox 360. If they keep puting good games on Wii only there going to go no were. I say put these games on consoles then port them to Wii. They need to go where more gamers. I bought a Wii for pretty much nintendo only games. If it's for 360 or ps3 and it looks good then i'll get it because i would rather use a real controller instead of one were you point and aim for everything
Straticus
First party big name games are the only thing I go back to my Wii to play, Zelda, Mario, Metroid. Every thing else is a rent while waiting for the big wigs. Sucks for the third party developers. Too much "shovel ware" on the shelf to see whats even good any more. Wii still sells like crazy though. It will be interesting to see how "hard core" motion games turn out on PS3 and 360.
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