In some ways it's been a bit of a rough start to 2010 for the Wii. Yes, 18 million Wii games were sold in the UK last year and the console passed the 20 million mark in Europe, but the way some people have been talking you would have thought the console was in trouble.
Apparently, Wii owners just aren't interested in proper mature games. There's no market for them, y'see. Well, what a load of nonsense. The reason these games didn't sell is that they were either niche titles or simply weren't good enough.
House Of The Dead, Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space are all perfectly good games but they're all on-rails shooters - a genre that a lot of gamers struggle to get too excited about. None of these games took more than about four hours to complete, and while they offer solid, mindless fun, none provide deep, nuanced and sophisticated gameplay that's worth coming back to again and again. It's not a genre that is ever going to shift millions of copies of a game, especially on the Wii where there are so many similar titles vying for consumers' attention.
MadWorld didn't sell because it was a bonkers, obnoxious and insanely violent concept, that wasn't entirely successful. The Conduit flopped because, well, it was rubbish.
Instead of whining "Look! Nobody bought our content-light on-rails shooter! Wii owners clearly don't want to play proper, meaty, challenging games then!", why not actually make an effort and see how we take to a genuine AAA, 90%+ game?
Sure, it's no secret that many people buy Nintendo products predominantly to enjoy the reliably brilliant first party efforts, but if a third party developer makes a genuinely awesome game, it sells. Look at Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition. Look at the Call Of Duty games. Look at No More Heroes. It's not all about blood and violence either. Going back to the Cube days, you've got SoulCalibur 2, Prince Of Persia, Eternal Darkness, Timesplitters 2, Burnout and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, to name but a few.
Stop making excuses. Just give Wii owners some first class, fully-realised, commercially-minded, well-marketed games and they'll fly off the shelves.
