With a strong star t, the Wii is now in the homes of over 13 million people worldwide, and this to within a year of launch. There are currently more games being released for the Wii than that of the PS3, and in some instances than the XBOX360, however what exactly is the future of Wii games?
Take for example a game which
Capcom had hoped would have done extremely well, and whilst it hasn't been a complete flop it hasn't been that successful either. The game in question is
Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure. Having sold 30,000 copies in the first week in the US, and only a further 15,000 a week after, it was hardly breathtaking figures, especially when you consider the fact that the US has around
5.5 million of the consoles in total. It's not only in the US that the game has done poorly, with similar results in the other two territories as well.
Now you may think that this isn't a big name game, however if you've read the reviews leading upto the release, it was very much a big-name title of a sort, with IGN going on about it for four months and giving it a 9/10 come review time. So if it got good reviews, then what was the cause of the game to suffer? Was it simply not enough advertising? People saving their money for another game? Or was the game just simply too difficult?
The fact is that many players found the game hard, and whilst the developers moaned that they weren't paying enough attention, at the end of the day, they must not have made it clear enough for gamers to complete without help.
Now let's step back a little and look at another title, this time a game that is more widely known -
Super Mario Galaxy. A much more simpler game for the Wii, and in it's first week of release in Japan it managed to sell 251,000 copies, to which
Zack & Wiki doesn't even close to. However don't get lost in the big number, since it's predecessor,
Mario Party 8 had in fact managed to sell 265,000 games in the first week alone.
Could it be that with the Wii, players want more Party Games and not something that's "Epic"?
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I don't believe it really shows that Wii gamers no longer like single-player games. Galaxy hasn't sold particularly well in Japan, but it has supposedly performed extremely well in North America.
Again, I don't believe this is an issue. Zack and Wiki wouldn't have done particularly well on any console, it seemed like a sleeper hit from the start. I still plan to buy it as soon as possible, but I don't think it will sell very well. We've still seen many single player games sell very well, however.
2. Mario Party 8 isn't a predecessor to either Galaxy or Zack and Wiki, so I don't get that either.
By Predecessor, I mean it was RELEASED BEFORE these particular two games