Also Wii owners are also people that play on the PC and own PS3s and 360s. Wii owners do not simply equal casual. That shit comparison needs to stop.
It's kind of pointless to consider multi-platform owners in this, isn't it? Why would you buy a Wii port of a PS3, 360, or PC game if you could play it on those?
I did not mean to imply that all Wii owners are casual and won't buy these games, I hope I was pretty clear on that. It's just that the huge Wii install base may be misleading, since we'd all expect devs to focus on Wii first. I think
a lot of those
are casual and probably aren't interested in these games to begin with. The Wii didn't sell a ton of units because of its popularity with gaming enthusiasts, it broke into a larger market that isn't necessarily interested in games like Assassin's Creed or Bioshock. I think both the Wii and PS3 have inflated hardware numbers (relative to software buyers) because there have been a lot of people buying those systems who aren't particularly interested in games. I see this in real life, and we all see it on sales charts.
This is super YMMV and eye-ball data, but if I walk into a house with a Wii, I feel like there's about a 70% chance that they'll have nothing but Wii Sports and a dancing game. If I walk into a house with a PS3, I feel like there's about a 30% chance that they'll only be using it for Blu-rays and Netflix. If I walk into a house with a 360, I 100% expect to see some kind of collection of games. Obviously this isn't actual data, but that's the point I'm trying to discuss.
The question is this:
If it's obvious that developers should spend the time and money on making a Wii U version of these future games because they'll
certainly make money off of it, why hasn't it been the case with the Wii? I assume it's because they don't think that Nintendo-only owners, however large the number, are part of their audience. It's a genuine question, they could be looking at something else, and they could be wrong.