Gaming Did third party developers make good money on the Wii ?

Foxi4 · Apr 7, 2014

xxNathanxx said:
I think that also has at least something to do with the self-fulfilling prophecy that the Wii was a kids' console.

That may be. It definitely has a more family-friendly, casual line-up, that's for sure. Nintendo strongly stressed the mythical idea of "family gaming" at the time, so I wouldn't be surprised if developers were afraid to release anything that wouldn't fit that idea. Sure, there's some games for mature audiences on the system, but again, few and far between. Of course that being said, I think that their primary motivation was sales more than anything - if "mature" games did poorly on the system, they just didn't develop any.

Harsky · Apr 7, 2014

Can't find an accurate source but back in 2007, Ubisoft says the Wii and DS games sales help fund development of games for the 360 and PS3.

Foxi4 · Apr 7, 2014

Harsky said:
Can't find an accurate source but back in 2007, Ubisoft says the Wii and DS games sales help fund development of games for the 360 and PS3.

That's... pretty sad. I can already imagine that board meeting:

"Okay guys, Assassin's Creed 2 is almost ready, but we need an extra 2 million bucks to polish it nicely"
"Alright, halt production! It's time for another Imagine game!"
"What shall we make this time?"
"Hmmm... The olympics are just around the corner, how about... Imagine: Gymnast?"
"Fuc*ing.Nailed.It."
"IT PRINTS MONEY! ;O;"

:rofl2:

JoostinOnline · Apr 7, 2014

Foxi4 said:
That's... pretty sad. I can already imagine that board meeting:

"Okay guys, Assassin's Creed 2 is almost ready, but we need an extra 2 million bucks to polish it nicely"
"Alright, halt production! It's time for another Imagine game!"
"What shall we make this time?"
"Hmmm... The olympics are just around the corner, how about... Imagine: Gymnast?"
"Fuc*ing.Nailed.It."
"IT PRINTS MONEY! ;O;"

You know some people really enjoy those kinds of games.

Foxi4 · Apr 7, 2014

JoostinOnline said:
You know some people really enjoy those kinds of games.

I'm fully aware of that, I was just making a joke. :rofl2:

If there are people who enjoy Facebook games then there sure as hell are people who enjoy Imagine titles, and I'd imagine that they can be counted in the thousands - that's the whole reason for releasing this sort of thing.

FAST6191 · Apr 7, 2014

I am usually opposed to and pick on those that make such statements but... call it "you have to try it before you can knock it".

Surely one has to look no further than the last few years of the Wii where it was basically a game release desert; for all the malice falsely assumed to exist in many game companies they will still go where the money is, give or take nasty insults (stuff like Sony up and making the PS1 after Nintendo did a number on them and Square in the PS1 era).

Also "Nintendo was always a first party"... so of their commercial and critical successes the bulk were seriously augmented by third parties from what I can see (the GBA even appeared alongside the PS2). The sole exception was the Wii and now we have a thread like this. Bonus is most seem to have dropped the 3ds now andrios is viable, such a thing leading to me claiming "no ~~gaems~~ games" for the 3ds on more than one occasion (this is the third year of it after all http://gbatemp.net/threads/5-years-of-ds-roms-in-5-days-year-3.236882/ ).

Dork · Apr 7, 2014

Unfortunately, third-party on the Wii never fared well. The majority of Wii owners hardly even played video games in the first place and it was truly a "casual" audience.

If you want to look at this from a hardware perspective, multiplat titles were just better on PS3 and 360 anyway since you a multitude of features separate from the Wii, and of course you had better visuals. The 7th generation was mainly having a Wii for Nintendo games and a PS3 or 360 for multiplats and whatever exclusives offered on said platform.

JoostinOnline · Apr 7, 2014

Dark S. said:
Unfortunately, third-party on the Wii never fared well. The majority of Wii owners hardly even played video games in the first place and it was truly a "casual" audience.

You got some stats to back that up? I'd particularly be interested in some that said most Wii owners never used their Wii.

Dork · Apr 7, 2014

JoostinOnline said:
You got some stats to back that up? I'd particularly be interested in some that said most Wii owners never used their Wii.

Not that they never ever played games, but they got it for the motion-control fad and Wii Sports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

Take notice how Wii Sports sold approx. 81.99 million, almost as much as the entire Wii userbase.

Now take a look at more of Nintendo's core games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Very little in comparison. Obviously third-parties have done much worse in comparison to those (not implying that those are bad stats).

Foxi4 · Apr 7, 2014

JoostinOnline said:
You got some stats to back that up? I'd particularly be interested in some that said most Wii owners never used their Wii.

I have found some graphs, but they only indicate the first few months of the Wii's life cycle. They show that third-party software actually sold very well in the beginning, but I'm also reading that the so-called "Wii bubble" deflated over time. Even Iwata admitted that third party sales on the Wii are "especially low", so there you have it. Looking for more relevant charts that would take the system's whole life cycle into consideration, but so far I haven't found anything.

Wisenheimer · Apr 7, 2014

There were not a whole lot of big budget third party titles developed exclusively for the Wii, but then again, the same could be said of Xbox.

What the Wii was missing was a lot of AAA ports, unsuprising since Nintendo did not make its big GPU jump until this generation so it was just too slow to be worth releasing AAA ports for in many cases.

JoostinOnline · Apr 7, 2014

Dark S. said:
Not that they never ever played games, but they got it for the motion-control fad and Wii Sports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

Take notice how Wii Sports sold approx. 81.99 million, almost as much as the entire Wii userbase.

Now take a look at more of Nintendo's core games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Very little in comparison. Obviously third-parties have done much worse in comparison to those (not implying that those are bad stats).

Time for another list

That's an incomplete (and therefore inaccurate) list. You don't know what the actual top-selling games were.
Wii Sports came with almost every Wii (I don't know if it came with the bundles), so of course it's at the top. Nobody actually paid for it, because it wasn't for sale (except for used). It would be literally impossible to for it to not be at the top.
Enjoying motion control (which I happened to love, and I consider myself a gamer) has absolutely nothing to do with third party games.
You're once again pretending you know what everybody thinks by expressing "the reason" they bought something
Doing "much worse" (which you have yet to back up) than some of the best selling games of the generation isn't even close to meaning not making money.

PolloDiablo · Apr 7, 2014

how the fuck would I know that?

Wisenheimer · Apr 7, 2014

xxNathanxx said:
I think that also has at least something to do with the self-fulfilling prophecy that the Wii was a kids' console.

That seems doubtful. At least in the US, Wii sales were pretty even across the board with the exception of college aged adults, where it sold disproportionately well. PS3 sold disproportionately well among elderly people (those over 40) , and if I recall, the 360 might have done better in the under 18 crowd.

slingblade1170 · Apr 7, 2014

Its obvious that a good chunk of third party did well on the Wii such as Just Dance and Madworld but without the numbers we can't really tell how well.

Foxi4 · Apr 7, 2014

Source

Again, this is data from waaay back and I still can't find any more recent tie ratios, nothing beyond 2007-2008.

slingblade1170 said:
Its obvious that a good chunk of third party did well on the Wii such as Just Dance and Madworld but without the numbers we can't really tell how well.

According to Wikipedia, despite encouraging launch sales figures, MadWorld bombed (or, in fact, most of SEGA's "Mature" games on the Wii did), hence no sequel. Instead, Jack starred in Anarchy Reigns on the competition's systems.

Dork · Apr 7, 2014

JoostinOnline said:
Time for another list

That's an incomplete (and therefore inaccurate) list. You don't know what the actual top-selling games were.

Wii Sports came with almost every Wii (I don't know if it came with the bundles), so of course it's at the top. Nobody actually paid for it, because it wasn't for sale (except for used). It would be literally impossible to for it to not be at the top.

Enjoying motion control (which I happened to love, and I consider myself a gamer) has absolutely nothing to do with third party games.

You're once again pretending you know what everybody thinks by expressing "the reason" they bought something

Doing "much worse" (which you have yet to back up) than some of the best selling games of the generation isn't even close to meaning not making money.

What do you want me to do? Provide modern sales figures for every major third-party Wii game and perform multiple surveys to find out everyone's personal intentions for buying a Wii? I'm only talking about the general consensus at a very simple small level. If you want to get that deep into it, you're gonna have to do that research.

JoostinOnline · Apr 7, 2014

Dark S. said:
What do you want me to do? Provide modern sales figures for every major third-party Wii game and perform multiple surveys to find out everyone's personal intentions for buying a Wii? I'm only talking about the general consensus at a very simple small level. If you want to get that deep into it, you're gonna have to do that research.

No, I want you to have at least a tiny bit of proof before you start saying stuff. A huge part of your argument was based on a false assumption that most people purchased Wii Sports, when NOBODY purchased it (at least new).

Dork · Apr 7, 2014

JoostinOnline said:
No, I want you to have at least a tiny bit of proof before you start saying stuff. A huge part of your argument was based on a false assumption that most people purchased Wii Sports, when NOBODY purchased it (at least new).

What? Just look at that the stats I posted. Since Wii Sports was bundled with every console, every Wii owner must own a copy. Using that link that should be around 81.99 million. Now look at the next game on that list. New Super Mario Bros. Wii - 35.26 million. That's a pretty big gap don't you think? About 46.73 million Wii owners didn't buy the most statistically purchased game. Look at Call of Duty: World at War, only sold a little over 1 million. You can already see that gap.

Again that's not entirely accurate and if you want to get better statistics you can. I'm only securing that fact that a majority of Wii owners only got a Wii for the motion control fad (and don't take that the wrong way, I never insulted the Wiimote and I like it too.)

JoostinOnline · Apr 7, 2014

Dark S. said:
What? Just look at that the stats I posted. Since Wii Sports was bundled with every console, every Wii owner must own a copy. Using that link that should be around 81.99 million. Now look at the next game on that list. New Super Mario Bros. Wii - 35.26 million. That's a pretty big gap don't you think? About 46.73 million Wii owners didn't buy the most statistically purchased game.

There were more games on the Wii than on any other system of the generation. With so many options, it's surprising that even half of Wii owners bought that game.

Gaming Did third party developers make good money on the Wii ?

Did third party developers make good money on the Wii ?

Yea, they did well

Yea, they did fine

Most didnt do well

No, almost all third party developers didn't make good money

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