Sega Plans More Hardcore Wii Games

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Despite tepid sales of Platinum Games' hardcore Wii title MadWorld, Sega is not giving up on developing games for a mature audience on the platform.

"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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  • reply
    August 12, 2009 5:13 PM

    This just seems like a really poor strategic move. I liken this with "HItler planning more second fronts."

    • reply
      August 12, 2009 8:29 PM

      I liken this to a company making games that stand out in the market trying to hit a niche group of people and not being dismissive if it "only" gets 300k sales.

      I wish more companies had this attitude. I bet we'd see a lot more variety.

      • reply
        August 12, 2009 8:43 PM

        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.


      • reply
        August 12, 2009 10:14 PM

        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.

    • reply
      August 13, 2009 2:33 PM

      Yup, I would fire the person who is making this decision.

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