Mature Wii Titles Not Working for Sega
By Lawrence Sonntag
Sega Studio Director Constantine Hantzopoulos stated in a recent 1Up podcast that mature games for the Wii didn’t quite work out. According to Hantzopoulos, the company moved to develop mature titles for the notoriously minigame and kid-friendly platform because market research showed that there was a ready audience for it.
“I have to say that it was a space that was open and we took a gamble on it. It’s like, ‘Wow, there’s no mature games on the Wii. Is there an audience out there?’ We did some research, it said there was an audience out there,” Hantzopoulos said. “Are we going to do more mature titles for the Wii? Probably not.”
While the games have not performed well enough to warrant future investment, the titles Sega has already released — House of the Dead: Overkill, Madworld, and The Conduit — have eventually performed decently.
“It’s been slow burn,” Hantzopoulos said. “That’s the other thing you find out about the Wii. It’s not necessarily first 3 weeks like most titles. It’s a longer burn, actually. So panicked at first, but it’s like okay.”
Hantzopoulos also drew comparisons to as-of-yet slow sales of Dead Space: Extraction. Since the game had an established name, extensive marketing budget, and critical acclaim, the brass at Sega monitored how it performed.
“We were stunned. That was my litmus test. Basically, it’s like, okay, you got EA, who can put all the marketing muscle behind this, an established franchise that scored quite well on 360 and PS3,” he said. ”They should be able to actually hit this out of the park, right? We get numbers, real numbers aside from NPD, and I’m like, ‘Woah.’”
Discouraging news for the Wii hopefuls, though bear in mind this is off-the-cuff musing from one exec, and far from a declaration of corporate policy.
[1Up via Develop-Online]
