Sega Not Planning Anymore “Mature Titles†For The Wii
It’s long been the stereotype: Wii players don’t like videogames. And it seems Sega agrees, by this week saying it is unlikely that it will make anymore “mature’ games for the Wii.
Following weak sales from MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill, Sega studio director Constantine Hantzopoulos said that they were ‘œstunned’ by the low sales figures for their own titles as well as EA’s Dead Space Extraction, which received favourable reviews but only achieved 10,000 copies sold in its first month.
Speaking to 1UP’s 4 Guys podcast, Hantzopoulos said that EA’s space-shooter was his ‘œlitmus test’, pointing out that Dead Space’s sales suffered despite the marketing brunt that EA has. This comes at the same time as Amazon publish their top gaming sales for 2009, which features a huge amount of Wii games and peripherals, showing that it’s not just a general slump in Wii sales. Wii-related items would have taken the entire top ten list if it wasn’t for Modern Warfare 2, which despite its incredible sales only made it to number nine.
Hanntzopoulos said: “We get numbers, real numbers aside from NPD — and I’m like, ‘whoa’” highlighting his disappointment with the sales figures. He went on to say that ‘œare we going to do more mature titles for the Wii?… probably not.”
This could be a dangerous trend for the Wii, except of course Wii players (who are largely ‘œnormal people’) don’t want to play violent or non-family games. As mentioned above, Dead Space and MadWorld had pretty good scores but ‘œgamers’ just aren’t playing the Wii over their other, more “hardcore” machines.
Another interesting point was raised with Hantzopoulos pointing out that Wii titles don’t experience the sudden burst of sales that their Xbox/PS3 counterparts do. He said that Wii titles experience a ‘œlonger burn’, meaning that despite the lack of sales Sega will ‘œmake [their] numbers’.
EA have already expressed their concern over the problem of Wii sales, or more correctly its audience. Little kids, (including my little brother and sister who got a Wii for Christmas) don’t want to play survival-horror games set in space, they want to play Wii Sports which isn’t a ‘œproper game’, but does drive a lot of sales. The lack of mature titles being made for the Wii could result in an increase in shovelware, which we already see a lot of. Nintendo also run the risk of alienating developers, especially third-party devs. We shall see if any more game-makers speak up about the Wii’s poor performance and if it even makes a blip in Nintendo’s almighty sales.
Via: Gamasutra
Nintendo has been pigeon holing it’s consoles in a way where violent games rarely succeed for over a decade now. The last one to really succeed what what, RE4 on Gamecube? Its where they want their boxes positioned, so I really wish Nintendo would drop the facade that they have mature content on the platform, and that publishers would wise up and move on.
The Nintendo old guard can only really be relied on to buy titles made by Nintendo, and the casuals can only be relied on to buy mini game collections or games that come with gimmicky peripherals. Sega’s mature games don’t really fit either.
If they made a chainsaw peripheral with Madworld and filled it with more instanced mini games, it would have sold bonkers. Not really though, but the mental image of grandparents swinging peripheral chainsaws is too amusing not to mention this.
light gun on rails shooters seem to be doing slightly better but only just so.
The Conduit kinda did me in.
It’s a shame more Wii owners won’t give non-casual games more of a chance, (unless it is specifically a first-party game made by Nintendo)..
Perhaps it is because of “age appropriateness” ..while some Wii gamers would love to play and buy more mature titles, many gamers are actually denied doing so by their parents.