Reading a recent Joystiq article here, has me re-thinking Nintendo's dedication to the Wii. For a number of third party developers, the Wii has not been the most successful platform for attracting hardcore gamers. Some games, despite their overall quality and appeal, have been unable to find a market for themselves on the Wii. This is an issue that is being addressed in a number of ways, with a few developers stating they might pull out of the market altogether.
Nintendo is responding to this issue in Japan, by making a second redesign to their game cases (if you remember, New Super Mario Brothers Wii was the first, implementing a red case and selling millions). Now, through a new program, all games designated Mature for the Wii will be released in a black case. I hope that it works and makes those games, like New Super Mario Brothers Wii, gain more attention when a consumer looks up at a wall of white mini game collections. If you look at the weekly sales trends for the best Mature Wii games available (in my humble opinion: Dead Space Extraction, House of the Dead: Overkill and MadWorld) here, you can see why a serious changed needs to take place. It is difficult to imagine why any developer would put as much money into a game like Dead Space Extraction and see so little on return, to continue doing so. And this is hard for the Wii, who has struggled appealing to its core followers. If Nintendo Japan begins to see a change in the number of mature titles being sold, directly correlating, the certainly should consider bringing it to the U.S. Think about No More Heroes 2, who after 3 weeks of sale has only managed to sell a whopping 70,000 in North America.
*note: image courtesy of google image search
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