Wii games must sell 1m to make a profit

via Eurogamer


Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has said Wii games don't start making money for their publishers until a million copies have been shifted.

That's according to an article in the New York Times, which also reports the average budget for making and marketing a game these days is USD million (GBP 17.5 million / EUR 18.8 million). However, the majority of titles only sell a maximum of 150,000 units.

Fils-Aime "said publishers of games for its Wii console needed to sell one million units of a game to turn a profit", according to the article. That might sound like a lot, but "he said that was a lower threshold than for the other consoles".

It's all thanks to the fact Wii games aren't in high-def, and are therefore cheaper to make - which Reggie reckons Nintendo took into account when developing the console.

NPD figures show that of the 486 games release for Wii, just 16 have sold more than a million copies - and nine of those are Nintendo first-party titles.