Well, it happened once again.  The “hardcore” Wii fans kick and scream for a “hardcore” title for their little girly system.  A big boy M-rated title releases and receives generally good marks across the board from all the major reviewers out there.  Finally, the monthly sales numbers come back, and everyone is shocked at how poorly it does.

The latest victim of the curse is Dead Space: Extraction, the Wii port of the popular Dead Space for the 360, PS3, and PC.  Again, looking at the reviews from major gaming news publications, most of the major reviews were overall supporting and gave it above average scores for it being not much more than a lightgun rail shooter. 

So the NPD market research numbers come back this week and show that Dead Space: Extraction sold a measly 9,000 copies in September, with the game looking to barely clear 20,000 sales for October.  Granted, that was only the last week of September, but to give you an idea of how bad that is, Halo: ODST released on the 23^rd-ish of September and sold over a million and a half copies in September. 

How many rental stores are there in the world?  Blockbuster Videos and Gamefly warehouses and Mom-and-Pop video stores and whatnot?  I imagine 9,000 is about right; actually, it might be a bit light.  So I imagine three quarters of those sales went to rental places. 

And so, the cycle continues.  So who’s next?  What hardcore title wants to step into the meat grinder that is the Wii?  What company in their right mind looks at titles like Dead Space and MadWorld, and wants to step in line to be the next victim, pissing away millions of development dollars and thousands of man-hours grinding out a video game that will be lucky to make back the money the company will spend in take out Chinese over the development of the game?

You see, Wii, this is why you will continue to get fat plumber games and party game collections. This is why we can’t get you nice things, Wii…you always break them.

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