Wii Music Not Doing Too Well, Nintendo Crosses Fingers

[Shrygue]

via Gizmodo


As part of a series of core titles that include the wildly popular Wii Sports, Wii Play and Wii Fit, Nintendo was expecting big things from Wii Music when it hit the shelves on October 20th.

Sales figures so far do nothing to back up these ambitions as in the first 11 days just under 81,000 units were sold, according to raw NPD data.

'Flop' would be too harsh a term to use at this early stage, but when you consider that Wii Fit sold just under 688,000 units in a similar period earlier this year it must be causing concern in the Nintendo camp.

Reasons for the low sales figures are that unlike the other key titles there's no innovative new hardware supplied with the game. The rhythm gaming market is also well covered by best-sellers like Rock Band and Guitar Hero and perhaps consumers are deciding that there's just nothing special enough about Wii Music to justify the expense.

Nintendo isn't panicking and uses the example of games like Brain Age, which started slowly but went on to sell 2.5million copies, as a more comparable model than its traditional best-sellers.

[lipnox88]

that's because the entire core audience has left and nintendo has absolutely no word of mouth advertising anymore infact most Nintendo fans are going on anti wii advertising word of mouth promoting the 360 after its price cut. The fad of the wii only works with wii fit and wii sports, Wii music is a horrible game, got bad reviews, and I feel sorry anyone who picked it up. the mono sound alone makes it seem like a bad tech demo.

[mcdougall57]

The whole game mechanics of that title seem so half arsed, I'm glad I didn't buy it.

I can't wait to hear how many consoles Nintendo sell this christmas, it's almost like an epidemic.

[goshogun1]

Doubt it will hurt Nintendo in any way considering their sales. As long as they have Zelda, Mario, Kirby, Fire Emblem, etc they will be fine in my "hardcore" book. Glad Nintendo tried something new wii wii music, even if it didn't pan out too well in the end.
Also, Lipnox, Wii Music isn't mono sound. You got it mixed up as it was Guitar Hero III wii that had the mono sound prob. Also, I love my 360 and my Wii.

[grossaffe]

Haven't looked for it, but am I right in guessing that it costs $50? The whole standard-pricing on games is bad because people will not gamble on games when they cost that much. If I'm dropping $50 for a game, it had BETTER be good. I'm not gonna take a chance with that kind of money.

[havoc_012]

The difference between casual wii games like wii sports and wii music is that wii sports is actually pretty entertaining.

Wii music is a game where you follow a metronome and try to play along to midi songs. Its a crappy concept and it deserves to sell poorly.

[lipnox88]

this is from the ign review. "The end result is that the songs sound only slightly better than a MIDI song, and I don't know how much of that I could take over the long run. Yeah, it might be funny to play a new wave version of the Smurfs theme song, but I doubt anyone will take any music recorded here seriously since everything winds up sounding like a ringtone.

The music creation options are fairly powerful, but the finished songs have poor audio quality. "

sorry not mono just bad sound.