Despite lackluster sales of games like MadWorld and The Conduit, Sega isn’t ready to give up on making “adult” games for the Wii just yet, says president Mike Hayes.
Speaking with Wired, Sega president & COO Mike Hayes that even though MadWorld and The Conduit had underperformed, “You’ll see more games in that genre coming from us.”
That isn’t to say that Hayes isn’t disappointed in the numbers he’s seen for MadWorld – he’s just not ready to write them off as just being due to Wii owners not wanting to play more mature-oriented games:
The thing that we’re saying is, Sega would be extremely arrogant to have a title that didn’t do as well as we thought on a platform and then say, ‘Those kind of games don’t sell on that platform’ … MadWorld sales were very disappointing, but was that to do with the platform? Was it that people didn’t like the art style? Or that people didn’t like the way the game played through? It could be many things, which we’re obviously researching.
There are two main reasons Hayes and Sega aren’t ready to write the Wii off just yet. One of them would be the console’s large “install base of some 34 million in Europe and America (maybe half of whom don’t own Xbox 360s and PS3s)… So even if you took half of those where they’re not into those (core) games, you’ve still got 8 million consumers to go for.”
The other reason is that it’s simply less pricey to develop for the Wii – which means it’s easier to recoup one’s investment. “[B]ecause the development costs can be less on Wii, that means you can sell less to be successful…. We can take more risks on the Wii,” said Hayes.
(via Edge)
