The Conventional Wisdom

The sales of MadWorld and GTA: Chinatown Wars say very little about the prospects for "mature" games on Nintendo's consoles. But what are the real lessons we can learn from these games?

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What I learned from Mad World: Stuffing guys into trashcans THEN impaling them on a spike nets much more points.

I don't know about Chinatown Wars though, Have yet to play it.

You messed up on your tropes.
It's "PS3 has no games"

Low Frost:
You messed up on your tropes.
It's "PS3 has no games"

I thought it was "A Blu-ray player that occasionally runs games?" ;)

Doug:

Low Frost:
You messed up on your tropes.
It's "PS3 has no games"

I thought it was "A Blu-ray player that occasionally runs games?" ;)

That, too.
And 360 doesn't play games, it's to busy getting the RROD.

I want to say something on the case of the Mature games. Considering how poor the devs worked on this it is no suprise to me that they didn't sell well. GTA Chinatown Wars, was put together with the old formula that made gta 1 and 2(and all those before 3) that nobody is willing to buy now, thats why Rockstar gives the games as freeware on their site.

Madworld, not much to say other than watch the ZP review, even if Yahtzee is tough on all game, what he is saying is the truth, even if i/you don't like what he says(In my case Spore review)

DS -> Flashcard + microSD for games = around €15
Wii -> Lot of exploits to use.

There is no decent security against piracy on Nintendo consoles. Which is very good for the homebrew scene, but bad for the sales.

A friend of mine, who was a DS reviewer on PALGN until recently, pointed out that DS games nearly always sell over time and not all at once on launch day. By comparison with other successful DS games, Chinatown Wars had a strong start and looks set to keep selling slowly but surely. I hadn't thought to connect that with the success of the DS itself, as the article does: a slow start building up to mega-popularity.

The DS seems to be the tortoise where everyone expects it to be the hare.

I think Nintendo calls this "evergreens". Depends somewhat on the audience of a game, on the WiiWare charts we've seen some games spike high and drop fast, others get into a place and stay there forever. The spikers tend to be games heavily hyped by the gaming press (Bit Trip Beat, LIT).

Anyway, from what I've seen some publishers are aware that sales patterns on these systems differ and already take the patterns into account when reading the first week sales reports. The ones that are aware tend to be the ones who had success with the "casual" audience and I'd suggest that's because they're paying more attention than others.

I just hope you're right about Chinatown Wars. Because I want a sequel.

Madworld was awesome. I thought about getting it second-hand (through Goozex or whatever) but eventually bought it new at retail because I wanted to do my part to jack sales figures and promote similar Wii games in the future. Looks like it didn't work too well...

Mad world was half decent GTA wars was not..... one of these you can gleem something important about sales on a supposedly kid focused system.... the other is such a niche in a niche compounded by bad "quirky" gmeplay...