Fils-Aime – Wii games must sell 1 million to turn profit

Seems over for third-party Wii development.

Nice tag!

That is shocking. Absolutely crazy.

I want whatever boiled sweets Reggie sucks on.

Not the same sweet itself covered in Reggie goo. Just the same brand.

In over-excitable speculatory news: OMG there’s a picture of Kid Icarus behind Reggie. KID ICARUS FOR WII CONFIRMED!! We love you ‘tendo!!!!11one

I think he’s over-simplifying, though. Surely the number of units you need to sell to make a profit is based purely on how much you spent actually making the game. I refuse to believe that some of the complete shit I’ve has the misfortune to play on the Wii has cost more than about a tenner to produce.

Rubbish.

If he’s right in saying it’s ‘a lower threshold than for the other consoles’ then how the hell are the majority of 360 and PS3 games meant to turn a profit then?

I’d imagine the percentage of games on the high-def consoles that reach one million in sales is probably a bit higher than that on the Wii, but it won’t be massively different, especially considering the difference in installed user base.

Very odd thing to say indeed and hardly encouraging for struggling third party developers.

I sat about three seats away from him in Miyamoto’s GDC keynote a few years ago. His eyes are amazing. Like they’re on stalks. I’ve got some pictures of him somewhere.

Blerk – Yeah. It does seem a little “pulled out of ass”.

Reggie its bat shit crazy but god hes interwebz gold

I agree Blerk. Some of that shovelware has to be very cheap to produce, and nearly every game on the shelf receives little or no marketing either.

I think he’s probably talking about Nintendo’s own games. Either way, I’m sure that figure’s nonsense, and it certainly doesn’t apply across the board. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that your average PS3/360 game needs to sell 500,000 copies to break even. And what about No More Heroes? Sold well enough for a Wii-exclusive sequel, but I bet it’s not even close to a million.

Industry exaggerating figures again? Whatever next?

Bit of a gaffe that.

Didn’t Konami famously say that MGS4 would need to sell 1 million copies in its first week in order to recoup the development costs? And I imagine the development costs for that particular game were ‘quite high’, shall we say.

My understanding of the Wii model was that it was far cheaper to produce stuff so you didn’t actually need to shift as many units in order to turn a profit. I’m not entirely sure what Reggie’s trying to achieve here, aside from putting people off even trying.

Yes. Blerk. That was a famous misquote. A correction was issued but a lot of people prefer fiction to fact.

Besides, it suggests that any sales after the first week wouldn’t assist in recouping development costs. Not sure how that works but I’m sure an INTERNET EXPERT can enlighten us all.

Ah, really? Damn the media. To Hell. And that.

Cool!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but NPD only covers the US, I’m fairly sure that there are a damn sight more than 16 games that have broken 1m units on Wii worldwide…

I wouldn’t be so sure…

Hmmm… Assuming the UK accounts for somewhere between 10 and 20% of the World wide market, then a title will only need to have sold 100-200k here to have done 1m worldwide, and there are a reasonable number in that ballpark. ELSPA lists 64 titles that have reached Silver status (and its slightly out of date too), and 26 of those that have reached Gold.

And like Blerk said, there’s going to be a big difference in development costs between a Mario Galaxy and some of the Wii Sports tyle rip-offs…

Erm, what.

Sorry, Silver means 100k units sold and Gold means 200k sold (iirc) according to Chart-track sales.

Ignore me, I got a bit carried away…

It’s interesting that it’s not a direct quotation. It’s probably a bastardisation of what Fils-Aime really said. Like maybe the average game would have to make £1m in revenue to make a profit on Wii. (Though, as ever, I’d imagine the truth is actually somewhere in between.)

The original article is full of indirect quotes. This summary is quite a distilled version of the whole thing which takes one point from the original article and shines a spotlight on it.

As for bastardisations, I tend to find that’s common when you get the journalistic equivalent of chinese whispers going on. I tend to give more benefit of the doubt to non-english spokespeople when there’s scope for ‘lost in translation’ than for english spokespeople. Particulary those that are directors of PR.

I was in GAME buying an XBox 360 the other week and almost bought Noel’s Telly Addicts on Wii. Now THAT’S a 1m seller.

I was saying “erm, what” at the story.