In a recent report in the New York Times, author Jeff Muskus discusses a rather surprising problem with the Wii: the fact that not many games have been major sales successes. Muskus reports that even though there are over 20 million Wiis out there, only three Wii games managed to crack the NPD sales numbers for the first four months. Super Smash Bros.: Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, and Wii Play are all putting out strong showings, but even they have been struggling as of late. While Smash Bros. sold 1.4 million copies in its first week, sales have now slowed to a crawl, and adoption rates have plunged over 90% from first-week sales.

So why is Nintendo having such trouble driving sales? Muskus speculates that it’s because casual gamers, who make up a large chunk of the Wii’s ownership, don’t buy games at the same rate as those who primarily play the Xbox 360 or PS3. John Greiner, CEO of Hudson Soft, agrees with this assertion, claiming that, "The kind of person that buys a Wii is not the same kind of person that buys a PS3 or an Xbox."

Analyst Michael Pachter believes that shoddy marketing is to blame for a lot of the failure. He speculates that, "Advertising on GameInformer and 1up.com just isn’t reaching this audience... When you make a game like Zack & Wiki or Boogie, which turns the hardcore off and doesn’t reach the masses, then you’re in trouble.”

What this could ultimately mean is that while Nintendo is raking in the money with strong first-party sales, third-party developers may soon become just as disenchanted with the Wii as they were with the Gamecube. If the only games that sell on the Wii are Brain Age clones and Sudoku simulators, then it’s likely that these super-casual titles will be the only thing seeing the light of day on the little console that could. In that case, the chorus of boos from hardcore fans wondering why the Wii only caters to "nongamers" is likely to get louder and louder.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/te...in&oref=slogin