A month or so ago, just before GTA: Chinatown Wars and Madworld hit the shelves, I was a tiddly bit worried about how these games would perform on consoles that, to be fair, haven’t really been tailored towards mature audiences.
How have these games fared? Find out over the jump…
Way back in March, when I first voiced my concerns over the sales performance of games such as GTA, Madworld and House of the Dead on Nintendo consoles, the few Nintendo fans (the Sep-Wii-tists?) on SG emerged from the woodwork to leap to the defence of their console of choice. Understandably, of course.
- “i’m really convinced about the wii and its games but when i look to the Ps3 i wanna play ONE Game and thats it”
- “only sony or xbox fanboys think Nintendo is for babies”
And so on. You get the idea. Generally, the Nintendo fans of this community figured that the M-rating on the front cover of each of these games would do nothing to dent their sales figures, even if placed next to Imagine Babies on the shelf of their local GameStop.
Well guys, the results are in. And I hate to say I told you so but…damn, I told you so.
House of the Dead Overkill sold 45,000 copies in its first month of sale; not bad considering that the game was pretty unhyped and unadvertised. Obviously, a lot of folks still love House of the Dead and to be frank the game was awesome. That said, it could’ve sold far, far better.
Madworld, in the UK at least (where sales tend to mirror those of the US), didn’t fare brilliantly. It sat at number 34 in the multi-format charts for a week, then vanished off into cut-price obscurity. Proper shame.
And Chinatown Wars? 200,000 units in the first month in the States. Sound great? GTA IV sold 926,000 in the first five days. In the UK. We have less people to buy games over here, even if the game in question is spread across multiple formats. Put that into perspective!
So then, Nintendo fans: with figures like these in mind, are Nintendo consoles really cut out for mature games or are publishers better off diverting the money into projects for other consoles?
Have your say!
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Sadly, I had a feeling that those games would sell poorly. I think the people who would have been likely to buy those games got fed up and sold their Wiis a long time ago. :/
“in the UK at least (where sales tend to mirror those of the US)”
“GTA IV sold 926,000 in the first five days. In the UK. We have less people to buy games over here”
Uh, contradiction…?
But about the GTA CW sales being 200k, another analyst says 450k. so who really knows? I think it’s closer to 200, though, and I don’t say it’s because it’s a mature game on a Nintendo console. The game was marketed very poorly, with the horribly-stereotypical Japanese “music”, and the game itself is fairly immature and stupid in the story department. Reading the dialog is painful, almost like they weren’t trying to be serious at all.
It’s no surprise to me that M rated games aren’t flying off the shelves. The Wii has a huge install base, but the only games that sell are first party titles. I’m sure the Conduit will do much worse than expected as well.
Nintendo has stated that they cannot compete with 360 and PS3 on the same grounds. To solve this, they grabbed a new audience and a tighter grip on children. Anyone still insisting that Nintendo is still a choice for hardcore gamers is fooling themselves. Nintendo only cares about raking in money from naive casual gamers, and frankly it isn’t in their budget to make mature titles which barely sell.
Saturo Iwata, Nintendo’s big kahuna has stated that the Wii is not doing well at the moment. Sales are at an all time low in Japan. He refuses to have a price drop for the console because he thinks in the current economic climate a price drop wouldn’t do anything for the sales figures. Games like Animal Crossing and Wii Music haven’t sold as well as they thought they would and they’re now hoping that Wii Sport Resort will do the job.
meh
wii resort = wii sports 2
I don’t even know why people consider the WII to be a console. Based on it’s top games, it’s basically the extension of a board game. Hard core gamers need not apply to such drivel.
I actually feel very worried about this. With so many Wiis out there and the majority of games played being crappy kids’ games does this mean that developers would rather make a crappy game and advertise the hell out of it than make a good game? It seems to me that the first option is giving them the most money. So does this mean that the Wii is going to kill gaming? Will all we have to look forward to on the Wii be kids’ games and will developers not doing very well move to the Wii to make crappy games?