You do realize that Madden 08 sold past 700k on the Wii even though it was a terrible buggy mess and Wii constantly has the best selling Golf game every year? Now that isn't PS2 level yet but it's far from the Wii demographic not caring about Madden. The Majority of all consoles don't care about Madden as it only sells around 6-7 Million between all consoles a year. My point is that Wii games usually sell better over time than the other consoles because of the insane amounts of new buyers every month so you can't dismiss any genre as "not appropriate for Wii's demographic" because we have rarely ever seen a quality well made 3rd party game the likes of Assasins Creed, Bioshock or hell even Mirrors Edge or Dead Space grace the console yet.SuperBonk said:
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NPD Sales Numbers for November 2008
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Omar Ismail
Banned
Shaheed79 said:
You got the first part right, but not the second.
Crappy games sell well, so there's no motivation for developers to increase quality. While they may see some slightly improved sales, the MARGINAL COSTS are not worth it from an ROI perspective.
Especially when you're taking resources away from launching a new IP on an HD console which is VERY quality sensitive.
Omar Ismail
Banned
SuperBonk said:
MC and GameRankings are the best we have, so we make do with what we have. And if you average it out across such a large number of titles, any individual bias gets smoothed out pretty well. Using MC to compare Game-A vs Game-B doesn't really work, but an en masse analysis like this should be statistically relevant.
Well it's good that Madden 08 was able to sell 700k but that doesn't really change anything. The 360 one still sold better and Madden 09 is still selling better for the 360 (according to this month's NPD). Is Madden 09 for Wii a buggy mess? I'm willing to argue that the 360 version of Madden 09 can't be much worse. But that's an entirely different argument.Shaheed79 said:
Please try and understand that I'm not insinuating anything negative about the Wii and its user-base. I'm merely pointing out the fact that the Wii being the best selling console but not having the best sales of this one particular game is very strange and has never happened before.
I agree that people who don't respect the Wii has a game machine are ignorant and uninformed but people do have to understand that by its very nature and design, the Wii is drastically different from the PS2.
Saint Gregory
Member
Shaheed79 said:
I think that's roughly (although he didn't call them crappy) what liuelson was trying say earlier in the thread. I think what they're both missing is that while kids may not notice the difference between crappy licensed games and good ones teens and adults certainly do. They'll only tolerate being burned so many times by shitty games. I don't know how many of you were around for the VG crash of the early '80s but I was front and center and the flood of crappy games that 3rd parties put out were the major culprit there.
Nintendo knows that they have to improve the baseline quality of Wii games at some point or their new audience is going to find something else to do... maybe "graduate" like MS keeps preaching.
Saint Gregory
Member
Dude, please stop. Your agenda here is as transparent as can be.Omar Ismail said:
On a side note I just noticed that the Z&W sales number didn't include European sales as it hadn't been released there yet.
boiled goose
good with gravy
Omar Ismail said:
this is a better theory than what you have been implying...
Im sure some developers feel this way...but i think it is very tricky to prove if this is ACTUALLY the case... why? no high budget third party games on the wii yet...
it might be true, but most likely its not... it could be though what some publishers/devs think
If madworld sells the same as manhunt 2 then you have a case..
if the conduit reviews well and sells the same as farcry wii then you have a case...
(might have chosen bad examples but you get the point)
Now THAT is a very common straw man argument when Wii agitators bring up the sales of those games. The notion that, Wii should never see games with the quality and developer talent of Mirrors Edge, Dead Space, Assassins Creed, Bioshock ect. because games like Boom Blox, Z&W and NMH didn't sell 1 Million plus copies, is simply ridiculous and they know it.amtentori said:boom blox, ZandW, and no more heroes all have sequels coming...
de blob will probably have a sequel and im sure we might see more trauma center on wii.. (there have been 2 so far on wii and 2 on ds)
edit: Z&W might not have one soon afterall....
Can someone post that list of top selling Wii games of 2008 from IGN again? I remember seeing Force Unleashed on there.
I was being funny but you are serious? Wow :lol .Omar Ismail said:
Let me give you my take on it. So many crappy games sell because consumers have very limited choices of actual good games. Go back and study the sales of PS2 games and its shovelware. The shovelware on both consoles are selling pretty much the same it's just 3rd parties are refusing to fill the huge void left by traditional quality games.
Saint Gregory
Member
I know that the focus of this debate is the quality of 3rd party games but it's curious that Wii consumers seem to be able to tell the difference between quality and crappy Nintendo games. You didn't see Warioland: Shake it flying off store shelves did you?
I wish my sense of quality had been working on that one
I wish my sense of quality had been working on that one
Omar Ismail said:
I think this definitely is some of what's happening, and it really is an unfortunate vicious circle for Wii owners. Using this logic -- which again, I think has some merit to it -- there is essentially no outcome that could produce better games for the Wii.
If the games they make sell well, they will continue to make relatively poor quality, low budget software for the Wii.
If the games they make sell poorly, then obviously they won't make anything at all.
At some point as the user base continues to grow, the absurdity of the Wii's situation has to break. Western publishers are losing too much money not to try something (and yes, almost all Western publishers are losing money).
Omar Ismail
Banned
amtentori said:
This is what I have been espoucing since the beginning, and started bringing in other theories to back it up. I apologize if I confused the matter in the process.
Anyway, you get the general gist of what I'm saying, and see how it will be proven/disproven.
Though I'd argue that decent-budget Wii games have been released...
Godfather Wii, Metal of Honor, Call of Duty. You can choose to avoid those examples, but I point to them as evidence. And so I'll probably be far less surprised than you if The Conduit and Mad World don't set the charts on fire.
The 360 version is currently the lead next-gen madden console because of the high percentage of hardcore gamers on the console. Just like the PS2 however only a VERY SMALL portion of PS2 owners actually gave a damn about Madden. So if the Wii continues to sell as it has (above PS2 levels) and 6/10 360 owners care about madden and only 2/10 Wii owners care about Madden then eventually the Wii will have either equal to or more Madden fans than the 360. The Wii is making up for it's lower ratio of hardcore gamers by having a userbase many many times superior to either of the other consoles. The PS2 had the exact same advantage.SuperBonk said:
Somehow I don't think this is true. Does anyone have the PS2 Holiday Madden numbers from 2000-2002? I'm willing to bet that the majority of the Madden fanbase stayed on the PSX for a couple years after PS2 released just like they currently have with PS2. Userbase will move much slower from last gen leader to current gen leader. In 2 more years I expect the Wii Madden sales (If EA treats and markets the Wii version correctly) will look a lot more favorable for EA.
I do believe that the Wii is different from all other consoles before it but I also think the hardware numbers are telling us that the Wii is where the bulk of the PS2 owners are going. In fact there was a poll report a little while ago that confirmed this.
Saint Gregory
Member
Opiate said:
There seems to be quality Japanese games on the way next year. If they start to do well there may be hope yet. If not then Nintendo will continue to claim the whole pie.
Omar Ismail
Banned
Opiate said:
Well, in the short term just get your B and C teams to make shovelware on the Wii while trying to establish franchises on the HD consoles.
Eventually you'll either:
1. go broke
2. get a hit franchise on the HD consoles and have massive success, port like crazy to everything, and be rich
3. survive and try to capitalize on the next two outcomes:
3a. Wii's userbase get so massive it engulfs the hardcore and regular games start selling extremely well
3b. the PS360 userbase grows enough that it starts supporting non-massive hits, similar to how the PS2 supported a ton of 2nd tier devs
For a publisher like EA, I'm not too worried about them. The past couple of years has been a refocusing on quality, and while sales/profit has suffered as a result, it is my belief (hope) that it will pay off for them in the long term.
The middle-tier publishers/devs are going to get rocked, and they already are. So you're seeing a stratification where the big guys are going to consolodate and get bigger, while you have a ton of indies feeding off of the Digital Distribution ecosystem.
Shin Johnpv
Member
manueldelalas said:
I don't know about the inclusion of Rock Band, mostly cause while it is a new name, it really is the next GH. Plus it seems to be pretty near a million on Wii so if it's included on 360 may need to include it on Wii also. What about Rabbids, I know they're from the Rayman world, but it's so different, and the style of game is so different.
Just food for thought, 360 was out a year longer, and the HD twins have had much more development time, money and marketing put into new IPs than the Wii. Yet they're only a few up on it here.
Also when did a game like Madden become considered a Hardcore game. I'm sorry but back in my day, it was shit like Madden, and all the FPS that were the casual centered titles ruining gaming. It was that casual mainstream crap that was driving away all the 2D fighters, and vertical shooters. Since when did the casual games of 10 - 15 years ago become the hardcore games?
This is basically what I have been getting at. They are literally tightening the nooses around their necks. People brag about the West stealing gaming back from Eastern publishers but they may lose the whole enchilada if they don't divide up their talent more towards the market leaders direction.Opiate said:
boiled goose
good with gravy
Omar Ismail said:
the decent budget ones you mentioned were ports...
and they received lower scores than the other versions.
they also most likely had underpar graphics and features for what the wii can offer..
call of duty 3 on wii sold decently from what i can remember.. it also got very mixed reviews... some calling its controls unusable...
obviously COD WAW wii is not lighting the charts on fire... but i think it will do ok by the time its all said and done..
godfather was decent, but a late port and got C reviews...
medal of honor #1 (cant remember title) on wii was terrible ... reviews said it had worse controls than cod3.
medal of honor heroes 2 was good. i bought it and enjoyed it. i offered the good online for wii at the time and had the best controls... but it had its own set of problems i would say. (problems about perception mind you)
it had a psp port
it had the quality of the previous medal of honor game haunting it
it was a sequel to a game not on wii before (or gamecube even)
another WWII game, etc, etc, etc... its a shame really bc it was a decent game
as you said these were decent... not really bioshock, assassins creed, etc..
im sure they did decently
anyways.. do we even have LTDs for these games???
Link
The Autumn Wind
They've already screwed it up with this All-Play crap.Shaheed79 said:
Considering the financial troubles so many publishers are going through right now, it looks like choice 1 is the most likely.Omar Ismail said:
I'm not sure why you're so willing to give the HD consoles the benefit of the doubt while so easily dismissing the Wii, especially with the way publishers are hurting right now. Obviously, they're doing something wrong.
Eh, what? They'd just ignore a huge userbase? How does that make sense? Using "this logic," the only reason devs don't try harder is because their weak efforts sell; lacking this, why would they treat Wii any different than HD and More Expensive HD? If anything you'd think they'd favor it, since dev costs and time are lower, and it's a direct sell to a bigger audience. Plus it's got that quirky waggle thing going, and since launching something new is supposed to be the main goal, that might be very useful.Opiate said:
SouthernDragon
Member
Just'd like to interject:
A hardcore gamer would be one that goes deep into his or her niche, learning about the systems in their preferred genre or game of choice until they become experts at said game. See: Fighting games, shoot 'em ups, racers, FPSs
Playing MSG4, Gears 2, Galaxy, or any other popular game among gamers does not make you a hardcore gamer, just a mainstream one.
A hardcore gamer would be one that goes deep into his or her niche, learning about the systems in their preferred genre or game of choice until they become experts at said game. See: Fighting games, shoot 'em ups, racers, FPSs
Playing MSG4, Gears 2, Galaxy, or any other popular game among gamers does not make you a hardcore gamer, just a mainstream one.
:lol at madden as a hardcore title. People who have been gaming for a while remember the days of when madden was the wii sports. All the"hardcores" would bitch about how the cool kids are getting into video games because of madden and how it was ruining the industry. I love people who have no sense of history.
Saint Gregory
Member
Link said:
Pretty much. The entire argument that high quality 3rd party games sell better on HD consoles would be far more compelling if there were a competent selection of high quility 3rd party software for Wii owners to choose from.
Apparently you missed that anything that sells well on PS3/360 is automatically hardcore. Conversely, anything that sells well on Wii is shitty crap.MoogPaul said:
What you say about the Wii sales of Madden catching up to the 360s could happen but I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that the PS2 didn't need to have a sales cushion large enough so that it countered the "high percentage of hardcore gamers" on other consoles.Shaheed79 said:
What you say about the PSone beating the PS2 during those few years is irrelevant because not only does it involve 2 different generations but also two consoles that were both market leader.
And I agree that the Wii has taken most of the PS2 owners from last gen. The numbers show it and I guess surveys show it as well. But I'm saying there is still a clear difference between these two userbases.
Omar Ismail
Banned
Link said:
Because continuing your current strategy is more often than not LESS RISKY than adopting a new strategy. That's the whole point of a strategy... you choose one, and you stick with it even if the early results aren't encouraging.
At a certain point you have to cut your losses and examine alternatives, but companies like EA aren't at that point just yet. If the 2nd generation of their new IP products don't do well, THEN it's time to worry. However I'm confident that games such as skate 2, and the eventual sequels to Mirror's Edge and Dead Space will do very well for themselves.
SuperBonk said:
It's an indicator because Madden is the pure definition of a casual title. You jump in to play a game or two with friends every now and then, people a little more serious play franchises. The core gamers will buy multiple systems, it is always the casuals who make up the differences in who leads the system wars. Therefor, whoever sells the most maddens YOY has the most casuals and sells the most consoles.
Saint Gregory
Member
SuperBonk said:
The Genesis would contradict that statement.
Omar Ismail said:
Recognizing this you don't see how terrible that is for the games industry? HD has been a double edged sword where it has turned console gaming into a high cost/high risk prospect where there is little room for failure. If it didn't happen this generation it was going to be even worse next-gen in the direction we were headed (concentration on graphics and power). Nintendo was one of the few companies who saw this coming and decided to try and do something about it by slowing down the tech race.
We all want beads of sweat to be rendered with half a million polygons but our push for better and better looking games will eventually crash the industry if not checked and slowed down to the point where development costs begin to decline and consolidate into something that won't bankrupt anyone but the biggest publishers.
Hardcore gamers don't want to hear that though and all we want is bigger and better and we don't care how you do it or if you go down doing it. The reality is the VG industry as a whole is in the worse shape it's ever been since before Nintendo revived it. This isn't the typical "next-gen realignment" that we see every generation and if they want to lessen the sting of the bat that is going to "rock" them in the back of the head then I would suggest more high quality lower cost development on the market leading console. But hey we all have our principals don't we?
Shin Johnpv
Member
SuperBonk said:
This statement was only true for the PS and PS2, and even PS I would say check sales data. Only because anecdotally at my college every dorm room had a N64 with Goldeneye and Madden.
I'm not sure you understood what I was trying to say. The Madden userbase always took a few years to transfer to the next generations lead console and I was simply stating that since the Wii is this generations lead console (which means mostly casual and new gamers which was what the PS2 had and the PS1 before it) then it would be a few years before we saw the same number of Madden fans on the wii than the HD consoles which have a much higher percentage of core gamers.SuperBonk said:
There are differences between the Wii and PS2 differences just like there were differences between the PSX and Super NES userbase and differences between the PS2 and PSX userbase. The newer lead console always seem to drastically expand the gaming market. I would argue the new markets that the Wii is reaching out to is no more different than the new markets that the Sony consoles reached out too. The Wii just took the next logical step in expanding the market with the only difference being the Wii is a pure games machine.
Aaargh...I'm not making any claims about its quality or labels. I don't give a shit if its casual or hardcore. They don't mean anything to me. The only subjective thing I said about Madden was my distaste for the latest one.MoogPaul said:
And then you go on to prove my point with your logic. You say Madden is casual. The console that leads the system wars attracts the most casuals. These casuals buy Madden and show that "whoever sells the most maddens...sells the most consoles." I merely pointing out that this isn't happening with the Wii so the Wii's situation is different! History is great and all, but it doesn't mean exact scenarios will be replicated over and over.
And to the person that said the Genesis proves me wrong about my Madden statement, was Madden even on the SNES? Regardless, I have to plead ignorance with regard to the Genesis/SNES Madden situation. I'm happy to modify my statement so that it starts with the PS1. (to the person that said the N64 may have led the PS1 in Madden sales, I'm 99% confident that it did not).
Saint Gregory
Member
SuperBonk said:
Yes, it was availible for both systems every year but for whatever reason the Genesis was the console of choice for sports games.
Alright, guys, NPD article finished for Gamasutra. Nothing blockbuster, perhaps, but there was just so much to discuss. And I did get y'all LBP, so that's something.
As for the article...a couple of interesting LTDs, perhaps. Also a stray comment on titles in the platform top 10s. (Did those get released yet? I may do something with them later this week, we'll see.)
I'll pop a thread up on Monday when the article gets posted. Meanwhile, I'll have time tomorrow to ACTUALLY PLAY A GAME. Can't wait...
Edit: I didn't put it into my article, but if we assume $500M of software revenue was Nintendo Wii (I believe this to be fairly close) and ASP for Wii software to be $45-$50, then that gives ... 10 to 11 million units of software for the Wii? Does that seem about right to y'all?
Also, looks like Xbox 360 sold around 6 million units. I don't recall the exact figure. The disparity between the Xbox 360 and the figure I estimated for the Wii seemed extreme ... but then look at the hardware figures. Oy.
As for the article...a couple of interesting LTDs, perhaps. Also a stray comment on titles in the platform top 10s. (Did those get released yet? I may do something with them later this week, we'll see.)
I'll pop a thread up on Monday when the article gets posted. Meanwhile, I'll have time tomorrow to ACTUALLY PLAY A GAME. Can't wait...
Edit: I didn't put it into my article, but if we assume $500M of software revenue was Nintendo Wii (I believe this to be fairly close) and ASP for Wii software to be $45-$50, then that gives ... 10 to 11 million units of software for the Wii? Does that seem about right to y'all?
Also, looks like Xbox 360 sold around 6 million units. I don't recall the exact figure. The disparity between the Xbox 360 and the figure I estimated for the Wii seemed extreme ... but then look at the hardware figures. Oy.
amtentori said:
DIGRESSION
I'm actually playing through CoD3 for Wii right now, as I move my way through my Wii backlog. The controls are good. I never have a problem during actual combat, and the shooting and stuff all feels smooth. Far from unusable, I find them way better than dual analog. The only thing that's really bad is that the devs decided to sprinkle some motion controlled minigames in for no reason, and the controls for THOSE suck.
Sometimes you have to get into a car and drive. You hold the remote and nunchuk vertically like they're opposite sides of a steering wheel and pretend to turn the wheel. (This is the least offensive one.) Every once in a while, as you're going through a house, a German will ambush you and you'll be sucked into a "push the rifle to gain control" deal where you have to alternate pushes of the remote and nunchuk to keep the other guy from overpowering you and knocking you out. It's retarded. Then, whenever you plant explosives on something, you don't just press a button to plant the bomb. You press a button, then you push the nunchuk forward to insert a pin, spin the nunchuk to turn the pin, and pull the nunchuk back to complete setting the charge. The last part rarely actually works.
That said, those dumb minigames are such a small portion of the overall game that they're not that much of a nuisance. I still never really want to go back to using dual analog for FPS controls. Keyboard and mouse or Wiimote and nunchuk, or I probably ain't playing it.
/DIGRESSION
Actually I find that most reviews tend to underrate Wii games since they don't have the HD sparkle of games on the 360 or PS3.
Saint Gregory said:
The "whatever reason" was the fact that Sega marketed the shit out of their own sports games and third party ones, and that's what people associated the system with. They also did a hell of a good job of marketing to the teen/young adult males who were interested in things like football and boxing.
boiled goose
good with gravy
-MB- said:
i was talking about MOH heroes ...
heroes 2 was on the wii... not heroes 1... i fill it was weird they included the 2 in the title... they should have branded it as something new.
*** glad to hear COD3 is decent on wii... it was after a launch title or close.
That is EXACTLY where I put Wii's November software 2 days ago when the numbers first came out and all I did was multiply the number of Wii consoles sold by Wii's 2008 average software attach ratio (5.5). Good to know that number is still holding up.jvm said:Alright, guys, NPD article finished for Gamasutra. Nothing blockbuster, perhaps, but there was just so much to discuss. And I did get y'all LBP, so that's something.
As for the article...a couple of interesting LTDs, perhaps. Also a stray comment on titles in the platform top 10s. (Did those get released yet? I may do something with them later this week, we'll see.)
I'll pop a thread up on Monday when the article gets posted. Meanwhile, I'll have time tomorrow to ACTUALLY PLAY A GAME. Can't wait...
Edit: I didn't put it into my article, but if we assume $500M of software revenue was Nintendo Wii (I believe this to be fairly close) and ASP for Wii software to be $45-$50, then that gives ... 10 to 11 million units of software for the Wii? Does that seem about right to y'all?
Also, looks like Xbox 360 sold around 6 million units. I don't recall the exact figure. The disparity between the Xbox 360 and the figure I estimated for the Wii seemed extreme ... but then look at the hardware figures. Oy.