Well toss your hands up and walk away, if you want... Sega is basically done pushing Mature content to the Wii. The publisher took a chance last Spring by releasing both MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill for the system they have in your grandmother’s nursing home. The games basically bombed in sales, despite solid critical reception.
I’ll go as far as saying that the games are among the best of 2009 for the Wii, especially if you consider the fact that they’ve now achieved crazy-low prices because of initially lack-luster sales.
What did it for Sega? Dead Space: Extraction, an EA game. Extraction was, yet again, a critically praised, Mature title from a major publisher within a successful brand and it still sold poorly. How poorly? 9,000 copies during its opening days.
Here’s what Constantine Hantzopoulos, Sega Studio Director, had to offer during the latest episode of 4 Guys 1 UP:
"Look at Dead Space. We were stunned. That was my litmus test, basically... you got EA, who can put all the marketing muscle behind this, an established franchise that scored quite well on 360 and PS3. 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'."
And I’m like, ‘Damnit’. Don’t get me wrong, the editors here at Crave love everything about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but we like shooting zombies in the face and stabbing people with caution signs just as much.
Cruising news sites on the net and reading comments from within have lead me to believe that internet nerds blame advertising for the sales missteps. I'd just like to note that I can remember ads for each of this games being plastered all over my comics and gaming mags. I can also specifically remember Hulu running Dead Space: Extraction ads constantly.
