Wii Overwhelmed With Crappy Games

There are too many crappy games on the Wii.

So says the global boss of 2K Games, Christoph Hartmann, and at least in the opinion of video game critics, he's on to something. Using figures from review aggregation site Metacritic.com, almost half of Wii games released since the console launched in 2006 have scored below 65%, compared with about a third of Xbox 360 and PS3 titles....

Raise the bar to 85%, and the difference is even more pronounced: 360 owners can play twice as many games rated above 85% as Wii owners, while the PS3 nearly triples Nintendo's numbers.

***

Fortunately, this situation isn't lost on most consumers. According to game sales authority NPD Group, the top ten best-selling Wii games -- titles like Mario Kart, Wii Fit, and last year's number one game, Wii Play -- accounted for about 44% of all Wii game purchases in 2008. The remaining 56% spanned over 400 other titles.

That's not the worst of it. Sales of Wii games that reviewed poorly (including 2K Games' own Carnival Games, which aggregated a dismal 56%) eclipse those of many of the Wii's real gems, including the breathtaking Okami, the superb Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and even the lighthearted, family-friendly Steven Spielberg project Boom Blox, which should have been a perfect fit for the Wii's unprecedentedly broad audience. The Wii has a curious ability to make big hits out of low-scoring games.

http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/...ntial-/1281752

Quote:

---

Sales of Wii games that reviewed poorly eclipse those of many of the Wii's real gems ... which should have been a perfect fit for the Wii's unprecedentedly broad audience.

---

Isn't the main marketing push of the Wii is towards people who don't normally buy videogames?

Why is it surprising that people who normally don't buy videogames aren't buying Wii's videogames?

Hasn't movie licenced games from the past three decades among many other examples shown us that there is a fundamental disconnect between a game's quality and its sales?

Nothing in this article hasn't been said before, not just this generation but years before.

Threads about gamerankings.com suck. Threads about NPD charts suck. This thread combines both.

this just in: first party games on nintendo systems typically better than third party games on nintendo systems

REAL NEWS!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RoleTroll

Raise the bar to 85%, and the difference is even more pronounced: 360 owners can play twice as many games rated above 85% as Wii owners, while the PS3 nearly triples Nintendo's numbers.

---

PS3 has 50% more 85+ games than 360? How is that remotely possible? Almost everything comes out on both, and then PS3 has maybe 5 exclusive games worth a crap.

I was wondering the same thing. Only reason, I can think of is the few exclusives are generally good. Lower # of overall releases allows games to score a smidge higher due to smaller pool.

A big fish looks bigger in a small pond.

They just got the systems mixed up.

Yep. 38 PS3 games and 54 360 games at 85% and above. Also Wii is terrible.

Apparently, I was wrong. I didn't have the ambition to go verify their claim. I just took the info and tried to make sense of it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dog$

Isn't the main marketing push of the Wii is towards people who don't normally buy videogames?

Why is it surprising that people who normally don't buy videogames aren't buying Wii's videogames?

---

Word. This was the intended theme for my earlier rant about Punch-Out, and some posters tried to be clever and respond with insightful comments like "different games have different target audiences" but failed to realize that this does not apply to the Wii. There is only one target audience and you just identified them. You can release whatever the hell you please aimed at whatever target group you imagine may exist on that platform but if it's not geared towards the Wii's clearly identified target audience, it will rot on the vine.