No marketing? No success on Wii

If publishers commit to long-term marketing of their titles they can most definitely succeed on the Wii, Nintendo’s American boss Reggie Fils-Aime has stated.

The record-breaking sales of many Wii titles have always challenged the notion that success is hard to come by for third party publishers on the platform. Now the outspoken exec has tried to be a little more specific about why certain titles don’t seem to perform on Wii.

I think the one difference in our consumer base vs the competition’s platforms is that our consumers don’t rush out to the store the day a title comes out,” he told Industry Gamers.

The sales curve, whether it’s our titles or third-party titles, tends to be over a much longer time period. What that means from a publisher’s standpoint is that you have to be prepared to support a title over a longer-time period.

You look at when publishers have done this with everything from Rock Band, Guitar Hero to EA Sports Active, and the sales are there. The sales don’t tend to be there if a publisher takes an approach of let me try to do a big launch and then move onto something else; that experience has not been positive.

I keep coming back to the fact that the game’s got to be stellar, you’ve got to be focused against the right consumer target (whatever that might be for the title) and you need to support it beyond day one. If you’re able to do that, the results will be there.”