Jokeropia said:
There were a ton of games that "should" have sold more on PS2 as well.
Difference was that the purchase diversity of hardcore/mature titles more than made up for a lot of that slack, whereas here, it's not the case.
Just imagine attempting to understand what makes a million seller on the Wii, go out and produce a few titles to see what works. Your colleagues do the same. You compare notes, and find that given the investment, it made a modest amount of money.
Then you hear Activision got $70 million from DLC across the HD twins. So you think, well shit, why not take some of the resources away from the new Wii title, and push that into DLC. Even if you don't make $70 million, you might turn more extra coin, because that's a market you know.
I think that's something that's overlooked sometimes, if you have a performing title, you can max it out via DLC with minimal development time, release it on two similar systems and charge for it. Wii is the odd man out in these scenarios because it's an audience that they can't monetize further.
And honestly, in some cases, just flat out don't get, and thus, don't care. Chances are, if you fall in the "Core" demographic you have a PS3 or 360, and thus I can make one game that covers both areas.
The other portion is that Nintendo's marketing pitched the system as 100% non-hardcore, family-friendly party machine. That market does not buy Borderlands, Heavy Rain, Bayonetta, Mass Effect. They might buy COD, Gran Turismo. Will probably buy Banzo, LBP, party games. And the niche market on that system wants the Bayonettas, but all relevant data says that won't sell on the platform.
So you have a system that sells a lot, but can't really be monetized beyond the initial sale, does not have a large hardcore audience that buy games consistently. And on the other side, two twins that have a large hardcore segment, can be monetized beyond the initial point of sale, and is an easily justifable decision to the guy above you.
No one wants to be the guy who has to write a report that explains why the Wii game bombed, and why they didn't authorize an action game for a proven demo across two systems with a combined huge userbase.
I will say that while the Wii is not my thing at all, I do lament that type of thinking, because its part of the reason why you get say, Tom Clancy game #9 as opposed to Beyond Good and Evil 2.