Sega’s lesson: We probably won’t be making mature games for the Wii anymore

January 3, 2010

It appears that Sega has chosen its New Year’s Resolution for 2010: stop making mature games for the Wii. The publisher has previously been very determined to try their hand at cracking the said market on the wholesome console, but now it seems that they’ve snapped out of the fairy tale and is moving on.

In the latest edition of the 4 Guys 1Up podcast, Sega’s studio director, Constantine Hantzopoulos, revealed how they now feel about making mature games on the Wii given the less than encouraging response by the public.

“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.

… Sega took a gamble, we put out some pretty decent content. I mean, House of the Dead: Overkill and MadWorld are great Wii games. They really are, especially House of the Dead: Overkill. That game is funny… Yes [it did better than MadWorld]. I mean they’re both doing okay and at the end of the day we’ll make our numbers, that’s good. Conduit‘s done quite well for us. It’s been a slow burn. That’s the other thing you find out about the Wii. It’s not necessarily first three weeks like most titles. And DS. It’s a longer burn, actually. So panicked at first, but it’s like okay.

But that begs the question, are we going to do more mature titles for the Wii? And it’s like, probably not. Look at Dead Space. 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. They should be able to actually hit this out of the park, right? We got numbers, real numbers aside from NP, and I’m like, ‘Whoa.'”

I’m guessing the numbers he saw were all rosy. Well, at least they gave it a shot. And now they know: bringing mature games on the Wii wasn’t for them.

To listen to the whole podcast, you can check out the link below.

[1Up Podcast via Nintendo Everything]

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