Sega Plans More Hardcore Wii Games
"MadWorld sales were very disappointing," admitted Sega president Mike Hayes to Wired, "but was that to do with the platform? Was it that people didn’t like the art style? Or that people didn’t like the way the game played through? It could be many things, which we're obviously researching." Hayes said that the company considers the release of High Voltage's shooter The Conduit a success, with 300,000 copies of the Wii game being shipped to retailers and recorded sales of around half that number.
"What we can say is that we'll still do mature games for the Wii market because with an install base of some 34 million in Europe and America (maybe half of whom don't own Xbox 360s and PS3s)," added Hayes. "So even if you took half of those where they’re not into those (core) games, you've still got 8 million consumers to go for."
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This just seems like a really poor strategic move. I liken this with "HItler planning more second fronts."
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Technically, it 'only' got 150k sales.
"Hayes said that the company considers the release of High Voltage's shooter The Conduit a success, with 300,000 copies of the Wii game being shipped to retailers and recorded sales of around half that number."
Frankly, the draw of the Wii to developers is the huge install base, as they say in the article. But if only 150k people of those 34 million buy your game... well, it suddenly becomes a little bit less of a great move.
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It is perfectly fine to make games that are expected to sell only 300k copies if you build games that don't cost anything to make. Or will have lots of DLC. Or a subscription. EVE Online is a great example. With, I believe, approx. 300k subscribers CCP is quite profitable.
I don't necessarily think Sega was thinking "hell yes, 150k sold to consumers." But I'm not on their team so I have no clue.
Variety is great if it pays the bills. If not, your company goes under.
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