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Seriously? 57.5K? You Think That is a Good Number?
It's a shame, a damn shame
by kariyanine
According to VG Chartz, Madworld sold 57,553 copies in North America in its initial week of release. I've been seeing people on both the blogs and the boards claiming this is a great victory for "hardcore" Wii gamers. Seriously folks, a victory? It's anything but a victory, in fact it is a damn shame because the game is a blast to play and quite the unique title (not just on the Wii but any system).
While I fully understand that the game has been poorly advertised and it was unfortunately positioned against Resident Evil 5, the game still should have sold more than it did. First week sales are driven by the "hardcore" gamer, the gamer that follows the industry and knows the release dates like the back of their hand. You know the gamer that I said isn't really representative of the Wii user base. For months now I have been arguing that developers had no reason to develop "hardcore" titles for the Wii audience because the "core" audience is relatively small on the system, Madworld's first week sales only go to further prove my point.
So for all you Wii owners who have been complaining that developers don't make games for you, please shut up. You don't support them anyway and honestly because of that you don't deserve them.
I'm going to go play golf with some zombie heads now.
Tags
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MadWorld
Wii
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Comments
Wii games are slow burners. They usually don't make the top ten, but sell steadily throughout their life span.
Look at Zack and Wiki: 25k on its opening week, now at 170k in NA (360k worldwide). No More Heroes: 35k to 240k (390k worldwide). De Blob: 13k to 350k (620k worldwide). All very respectable numbers.
No need to worry here. If anything, Madworld is set to surpass all of them; it may even hit the million mark.
I'd like to add that in my previous examples, all publishers expressed that the sales exceeded their expectations and two of those games are getting sequels.
Check out J-Man goin' all numerical up in this piece!
J-Man, while your numbers do show respectable sales, they are by no means blockbuster numbers. Madworld has been thrown out there by a lot of "core" Wii fans as one of the third party games that was going to prove to developers that they should be bringing their A listers to the Wii. Madworld will, in the end sell respectable numbers (and may even garner a profit and a sequel) but developers are not going to start making their triple A titles for the WII (I personally don't believe that even if Madworld sold like hotcakes that they would have anyway) because the "core" demographic just is not there.
VG Chartz is completely unofficial. They've often been caught flat out guessing sales number, and are usually way off.
those are some pretty paltry first week numbers but it will pick up, the game will sell a good amount.
I have to admit, I have not tried Madworld yet because of the fact that it is only on the Wii. I know it's supposed to be the exception to the rule, but the waggle thing has gotten to be old hat for me. That's why I like Boom Blox, or Tiger Woods on the Wii - the motion controls are purposeful.
i dont know if one gem can really entice the hardcore to flock back to the wii
I almost bought this. I ended up getting MLB09. Word of mouth will have to sell this as not many seem to have even heard about this game. There are so many good games out right now.
I could be wrong but isn't the game only 6 hrs? I know it has multi and a harder difficulty, but the core of the game is about 6 hrs. I can't justify dropping 50$ on a 6 hr game when I have chinatown to play and resident evil 5. If Madworld had come out a few weeks earlier, I might have gotten it, but as it stands now I might as well wait for a price drop in the summer and just keep playing res and chinatown for now. Bad timing is all it is imo