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Why were third party sales on Wii so poor?

Infernal Monkey said:
There were no $60 games on the Wii (unless we're talking about Canada, Australia or New Zealand). Also the retail port of NBA Jam which arrived months later on PS3 and 360 was priced exactly the same as the Wii version.
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Australian here so I assumed $60+ for retail

I didn't remember a retail version for the other consoles, just a downloadable game with more features than the Wii release. Also wasn't it originally planned as a free bonus game to help entice people to buy another NBA game?
 
EA said it was because the market was unpredictable.

http://kotaku.com/5412385/ea-backing-slowly-away-from-wii-development

"The Wii market is a little bit unpredictable these days."
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Basically random shit sold because of box art and little else. Huge successes (Boom Blox) would have flopped sequels (Bash Party) because the original selling well was 100% a fluke.

The market wasn't a normal buyers market.

They've all moved onto cellphones. They're the people that made flappy bird a hit, 4 years after it came out, and now they've all moved onto Threes.
 
1) Most sales of WII systems were by non-gamers, just for Wii Sports. Sorry but grandma was never gonna go out and buy The Last Story.

2) Most 3rd party software on the Wii was shovelware trying to exploit the WIimote in some way or another to cash in on the fad.
 
Kosma said:
IIRC 3rd party games made bank on Wii.
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Our company subscribed to NPD for a lot of the last console lifecycle.

Wii sales of third party games were mostly horrible apart from a few standouts.

There was massive sales dropoff outside of the top 10.
 
Here's a hypothetical question: if the Wii U was released in 2006 in place of the Wii, Nintendo would be in a pretty baller position today, right?

The real reason no one played key 3rd party games on the Wii is because it was an inferior machine.
 
GQman2121 said:
Here's a hypothetical question: if the Wii U was released in 2006 in place of the Wii, Nintendo would be in a pretty baller position today, right?
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I doubt it, it would have been the most expensive console on the market by some distance given the gamepad inclusion. Wii launched at impulse buy price territory.
 
Boss★Moogle;114818605 said:
1) Most sales of WII systems were by non-gamers, just for Wii Sports. Sorry but grandma was never gonna go out and buy The Last Story.

2) Most 3rd party software on the Wii was shovelware trying to exploit the WIimote in some way or another to cash in on the fad.
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Before even getting into the continually ridiculous fad argument, I can't believe people still make statements like these, with the attach rate and amounts of first pArty titles sold are publicly available data.

Hint: Wii sold more software than ps3 by volume last we saw Sony's data. Not just Wii sports ;) the most popular systems also have the most shovelware, too. Just like the ps2 before it. Surprise, right? People are still salty it seems.
 
3rd Party games actually sold pretty well the problem is the Industry never really attempted to cater early on the core and instead was focused on the casual.

It paid off for them as far s casuals because casual stuff sold great but they alienated the core owners. A few attempts were made at the core and they were generally successful but then follow ups never happened or they tried to go a total different direction from what sold well.
 
Thirdpartys made a lot of money on the Wii. For the reason why traditional games sold poor, the answer lies in the first few years, when the thirdparties didnt give the console any real games, and when they did, it was to late. They betted against it and hoped it would be a fluke, and for that they left tons of customers to only be served by Nintendo. This is also the main reason why they all lost so much money during this whole gen.
 
StevieP said:
I can't believe people still make statements like these, with the attach rate and amounts of first pArty titles sold are publicly available data.

Hint: Wii sold more software than ps3 by volume last we saw Sony's data. Not just Wii sports ;)
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It's kind of annoying that you've got enthusiast on a place like GAF who are completely out of the loop about the Wii's third party situation, yet they really want to discuss it.
:P
 
Let's be honest here the Wii was a generation behind and the Wii looked bloody awful on HD TVs

The controller required you to wave your arms in the air and those achievements were a big thing on the 360 and the whole headsets and xbox live left the wii behind

I can see the Wii U picking up now the xbox one and ps4 are out but only if the 1st party remains strong. As at the moment mario kart 8 and mario 3d world holds upon the Xbox one and ps4 graphics with them been more cartoon style

I don't expect the upcoming 3rd party ps4 and xbox one games to sit on the Wii U though
 
StevieP said:
Before even getting into the continually ridiculous fad argument, I can't believe people still make statements like these, with the attach rate and amounts of first pArty titles sold are publicly available data.

Hint: Wii sold more software than ps3 by volume last we saw Sony's data. Not just Wii sports ;) the most popular systems also have the most shovelware, too. Just like the ps2 before it. Surprise, right? People are still salty it seems.
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You know what sales figures I look at? The ones for Wii U and they pretty much say that Wii was indeed a fad. This time Nintendo didn't have a killer app like Wii Sports to go along with their gimmick and so non-gamers didn't buy it and we can clearly see the results of this. Fanboys are still delusional it seems.
 
StevieP said:
People are still salty it seems.
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Not only that, we also have a lot of misinformation still being spread.

You know, sometimes it feels like people really, really wanted to erase Wii from console history, as if it had never actually existed.
I've seen tons of people almost literally hating PS1/PS2 (how can you "hate" some silicon is beyond me by the way) but Jesus, the vitriol thrown at the Wii never stops to amaze me. And not in a good way. :-\
 
If you're talking about the original Wii I would assume it was because 70%-90% of third party games were shovelware that couldn't even confuse super casuals into making a purchase.
 
A good chunk of responsibility lies with Nintendo as well, I believe. For example, the technical side of things.

At least for a good chunk of Wii's lifetime their SDK was incredibly barebones. The toolchain was a mess, the documentation substandard, their support lagged (NoA was overworked, understaffed and not knowledgeable enough, so they had to translate most of the issues, forward them overseas, and then wait for a reply, which meant delays between a night to several weeks even for trivial stuff). Their debugger in particular must have sucked shit.

And that is a major problem, really. Development of a game is harsh and unforgiving work, and that's when everything is working (which admittedly never happens). If your staff spend more time battling the SDK or twiddling their thumbs waiting for support to call back than actually doing something productive, then you're pretty much fucked. Involuntary downtime due to no fault of your own drains people's will to live. Nobody wants to subject themselves to that, so they flee or at least try to avoid the platform. If they have to work on it, they will cut out features to accommodate the downtime they are expecting. They will do their job, but they will do it to the letter.

In gamer terms: Think of it as discovering your 30-hour save file has been corrupted AGAIN, or that the game crashes two steps before you reach the save point after an incredibly hard boss battle AGAIN. Times ten, every day. Why would you ever subject yourself to that. And once you have switched to another game and become proficient at it, why would you ever go back to the older game, even if it was patched.

You think Ballmer's infamous "developers developers developers" jig at that windows dev conference was funny? Think again. There is a real reason why he hopped around on stage sweating like a pig. MS knows that if you own the devs, you own the market. What good is the best selling console if you have no one willing to code for it? Nintendo found out. Once the coding divas and star teams were firmly in Sony or MS's camp there was no going back.
You don't tell a seasoned 360 dev with one or two games under his belt to drop everything he's doing to develop a Wii game unless you have a really good reason. His skills would be wasted with re-learning the new APIs and tricks of the new hardware, and he'll be vastly less productive and motivated while that goes on. So you'll make do with new hires and the people you won't miss while the big boys continue doing what they're good at.

More devs also means more engines. More tools. More libraries. More peer support. More bug testing.

This self-reinforcing developer situation is part of the reason why many games were released like they were, and it fed into the self-reinforcing third party situation on the Wii. They're two interconnected vicious cycles.
 
The Wii had an attach rate of over 8 games per console (pretty much the industry average), had 103 different games that made it over the 1 million or more sales mark, and had sold near a billion total software units by the last count.

This idea that people bought the console for Wii Sports then let it collect dust is a myth. The Wii had a very healthy software ecosystem. Sure, most of the biggest sellers were Nintendo games, but the console also provided a viable avenue for B-tier games that simply wouldn't have existed on the other platforms.

It had shovelware, yes, but that's true of any console that becomes a market leader. The PS1 and PS2 have mountains of shovelware so bad, they make Gingerbread Man look like Shadow Of The Colossus. You don't judge a system by its worst games, but by its best. And plenty of the Wii's best games were smaller scale B-tier third party games that sold well enough respective to budgets.
 
3rd parties simply didn't understand what kind of userbase they were dealing with. There were a few huge hits like Just Dance, Carnival Games and Raving Rabbids + multiplatform successes like Guitar Hero and Skylanders. All kids/social games.

Developers need to want to create child friendly games first to ever be successful on a Nintendo console. A game like GTA would probably only reach about 2% of PS3 sales. The audience is not there, and those who are own multiple systems, and since Wii was far inferior to the competion both in graphics and online features, the games had to be either exclusive or in other ways somehow better on Wii - or as in most of the success stories, the kind of game where graphics don't matter.

The story for Wii U is a continuation of this, where there is no reason to buy the Wii U version if you already own a PS3, PS4, X360 or XOne, which most do. Even if the Wii U game had a slight visual edge vs PS3/360 it would still lose due to existing user bases preferring current systems.

It all boils down to a few key factors:

• It cannot have a age rating higher than 12 (movies manages this just fine, why can't games?)
• It has to be exclusive or the superior version (to the point where it's the only real choice)
• It must be a AAA high budget game or a "social phenomenon" type innovation
• Fantasy is preferred over reality (style, setting, story)

If a 16/18 rated game should have any chance on a Nintendo platform at all, exclusivity and AAA is a must. Think Halo for Xbox, or maybe RE4 for GameCube. It has to be on that level.
 
Boss★Moogle;114821608 said:
You know what sales figures I look at? The ones for Wii U and they pretty much say that Wii was indeed a fad.
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The touch screen system struggling means motion controls were a fad?
 
If a 16/18 rated game should have any chance on a Nintendo platform at all, exclusivity and AAA is a must. Think Halo for Xbox, or maybe RE4 for GameCube. It has to be on that level.
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I think Nintendo themselves need to start producing such games if third parties are going to have any hope of success with more adult themed games.
 
1) Over 103 titles sold over a million copies and a good portion of them are third party.

2) During 2005/2006 third parties banked on MS and Sony bringing them heaps of cash. So every big title they did have was in development for 360/PS3 and they had no back-up plan for Wii except for scraps. That bit 'em in the ass when the adoption rate of the 360/PS3 was pretty weak and software underperformed. But hey, the Wii was still selling, so time to finally look into that segment with some hastely developed segment.

3) Even with titles like Red Steel, Resident Evil 4 and Call of Duty 3 performing well, no third party actually followed up with those types of games except for the yearly Call of Duty release. Third parties kept on betting on the other machines, which had a negative influence on the releaselist. 2008 anyone?

4) more importantly, third parties gladly helped Nintendo into puppytraining Wii customers to buy Nintendo software. A lot of consumers (attachrate of Wii is pretty good, about eight pieces of software sold for every Wii system) were eventually burned out by the poor quality of third party titles in general.
 
Quadraphonic said:
EA said it was because the market was unpredictable.

http://kotaku.com/5412385/ea-backing-slowly-away-from-wii-development



Basically random shit sold because of box art and little else. Huge successes (Boom Blox) would have flopped sequels (Bash Party) because the original selling well was 100% a fluke.

The market wasn't a normal buyers market.

They've all moved onto cellphones. They're the people that made flappy bird a hit, 4 years after it came out, and now they've all moved onto Threes.
Click to expand...

Boom Blox was a success because it was something completely new and interesting. It's not really the kind of game that can be serialized. It's not fun because of the story. Bash Party was just more of the same with less appeal because it's already been done. So many AAA titles rely on the ability to swap in a new story and a few token new mechanics in the sequels that I think developers, and more importantly publishers, have forgotten how to make NEW games. Outside of a few oddities like DS Extraction EA never actually tried to put out story based games that could warrant a sequel with minimal changes in gameplay on Wii.
 
The Wii is the console I've bought least games for (except for PS4 of course, but only because I haven't had it for very long yet).

Interesting third party games were either not released on the platform, or had inferior graphics, or were late, or were not something I'd imagine playing with the Wiimote, or would suffer from poor online.

It ended up being a Nintendo box at home. We had the Mario and Zelda titles basically. This means platformers, racing, fighting, RPG - it's a great catalogue. Still, PS3 was a better option for most, if not all, multi plats.
 
Schryver said:
Casuals who bought the console for Wii Sports didn't buy games period
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Exactly this. Many of the Wii owners did not buy it to play games, they bought it as a QOL thing. Think of all the Wii's in the lunchrooms of business, in gyms, in old folks homes. A large percentage of Wii's were bought for places like this, and they never had any intention of buying any games for it other than the "fit" games.

It's a very important statistic that Nintendo themselves forgot to factor in, because all of these places also have no desire at all for a Wii-U. Their good old Wii works just fine for what they bought it for. They have no need for the gamepad, or better graphics on newer versions of Nintendo games.

The Wii was lightning in a bottle, but not for gamers per say. I'd say it's partly why N is now looking to pursue the whole QoL angle too.
 
Mengy said:
Exactly this. Many of the Wii owners did not buy it to play games, they bought it as a QOL thing. Think of all the Wii's in the lunchrooms of business, in gyms, in old folks homes. A large percentage of Wii's were bought for places like this, and they never had any intention of buying any games for it other than the "fit" games.

It's a very important statistic that Nintendo themselves forgot to factor in, because all of these places also have no desire at all for a Wii-U. Their good old Wii works just fine for what they bought it for. They have no need for the gamepad, or better graphics on newer versions of Nintendo games.

The Wii was lightning in a bottle, but not for gamers per say. I'd say it's partly why N is now looking to pursue the whole QoL angle too.
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Enough posters pointed out that people bought 3rd party games, and that Wii was a healthy system.
Constantly repeating the urban myth that everyone bought Wii Sports and nothing else, doesn't make it true.
 
Wasn't the Wii version of Tiger Woods the highest-selling version?
 
There was also a lack of promotion for Wii games across the board (Nintendo and 3rd parties). Companies were assuming the audience was so huge they didn't need market their games much. First party Nintendo games didn't need it as much and for the most part did fine without them. Though Punch-Out could have used the marketing.

I'm sure there exceptions, but the only commercials I remember for games on the system were all the exercise titles, Just Dance and Epic Mickey. And oddly enough Epic Mickey sold 2 million copies in NA. Correlation there? Maybe.
 
Altered Juice said:
the only third party games that were successful were the ones that involved fun family activity.
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The only ones? No.

Monster Hunter and epic Mickey disprove that.

Most of them though did fit that bill for the million+ sellers. If you look at those that sold less than a million some wetter still successful relative to their budget like No More Heroes or House of the Dead.
 
Oersted said:
Enough posters pointed out that people bought 3rd party games, and that Wii was a healthy system.
Constantly repeating the urban myth that everyone bought Wii Sports and nothing else, doesn't make it true.
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These types of posts though (collecting dust/only bought wii sports) are troll posts that are the same now as they have been for the past 7 years. It's a battle you can never win, no matter how many people correct them with facts such as 103 million sellers, an attach rate of over 8 games per console etc etc.

As soon as someone makes that kind of factual statement, the next comment is almost always some fool repeating the same mantra of "lol dust".

War never ends.
 
Chairmanchuck said:
I dont think that is true. IF enough good 3rd party Games for traditional Gamers would have been released during the beginning of the lifecycle and if the Wii would have gotten more multititles I am sure the sales wouldnt be that bad.

I mean even Red Steel 1 sold like over a million short after release so there was some demand there. But then nothing came besides some shitty Ubisoft Scam Games like Farcry. During that time a lot of people were thinking if they should buy a PS3/360 for exclusives and multigames that cater to their taste.
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Why would anyone have bought games like Call of Duty on the Wii? That person is right, Nintendo was never serious about online gaming and the hardware lacked the punch the compete on the same level. Which meant Nintendo games were the sole reason why people bought the system and the few good exclusives did ok.

Nintendo has gotten themselves into a bind now, they are not seen as a serious competitor when it comes to the hardcore gamer. The hardware has become weak due to their insistence on having different hardware while being affordable to families. This is the area Nintendo has gotten into, the family oriented console and most third party publishers do not want to take the time to scale their games to meet Nintendo's vision of how we should play games. That's the problem when you try to go your own separate path. You need third party games made specifically to take advantage of your unique hardware. Just take one look at Kinect, Microsoft faced the same dilemma, no real good support but they chose a more expensive path. Now they have been forced to drop it, Nintendo might have to do the same thing now on the Wii U.
 
It's because people who wants to play 3rd part games uses their Xbox or Playstation for that, and only has their Wii U for 1st party games (unfortunately).
 
Because 90% of then didn't give a shit.

Even the good ones like RE Umbrella Chronicles had a taste of "...you follow the AMAZING RE4 controls with ... this ?"
 
Not to mention 3rd parties looking at the Wii like it was a goldmine just from its install base

They didn't realize that a large majority of casual buyers bought it for Wii Sports alone and would likely only grab 1-2 more games (Wii Party, Wii Fit and whatever else)

Some shovelware titles found a niche and several third party studios were able to find plenty of success though as shown in this thread
 
Platy said:
Because 90% of then didn't give a shit.

Even the good ones like RE Umbrella Chronicles had a taste of "...you follow the AMAZING RE4 controls with ... this ?"
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Umbrella Chronicles still sold over a million copies on Wii.

A game like MGS Peace Walker or the GTA games on PSP would have sold multimillions on the Wii and they still could have HD ported it to 360/PS3 a year or two later if they really wanted to.
 
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