Madworld needs Gordon Ramsay
It was raining the other day. I was meant to go trainspotting with my friend Dwayne, Dwayne Dibley. But he forgot his thermos, and Dwayne never goes anywhere without that. What to do? I got all my old VHS tapes out and re-classified them according to the date I recorded their content. Once that was done I was at a loose end, so I went to vgchartz and had a look round.
They have a lot of sales data there. It may or may not be accurate, but lets assume it gives a half decent idea of what sells.
The Wii has just over sixty titles that have crossed the million mark. From Wii Fit at twenty-odd million down to a Hannah Montana game that has just kissed the mill. The core Nintendo games are there, Galaxy, Zelda, Mario Kart and Brawl. Metroid Prime 3 is the least successful of these at around 1.3 million. Is this why the series is moving on with Other M?
These core Nintendo gamers know what they like then. One thing they don’t like is games like Madworld, The Conduit and Dead Space Extraction. Admittedly, its early days for Dead Space but the signs aren’t great. All these games are new, not part of a series, and perhaps that explains their lack of success. These have only just scraped the 300,000 mark so far.
Sequels don’t do that well. House of the Dead 2&3 is into the millions but House of the Dead: Overkill is way behind that, in spite of being made for the Wii and well-received. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 nearly made the million, but the superior sequel PES 2009 is way behind. Tiger Woods ‘o8 is the best-selling Tiger game. The updates from 2009 and this year’s outstanding MotionPlus version are nowhere close to that, despite being better.
Two Nintendo games in the not-so-big department are Battalion Wars 2 and Excitebots. Both well-received, both left on the shelf. They didn’t even bring Excitebots to Europe.
Best-selling 3rd party effort is Guitar Hero 3, over 3 million for that. Again, the sequels haven’t gone down as well. Call of Duty games have done more than a million each. A familiar name helps sales.
Several Sonic games have sold into the millions in spite of their lukewarm reception. Resident Evil games are good at shifting boxes too. Little Kings Story – great game, no name, no sales.
Are you ready for the punchline? Brace yourself. A Barbie game has done over 400,000; Petz Horses 2 is at 340,000 and Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen game has sold over 300,000.
The solution is clear. We need Gordon Ramsay’s Madworld. An edgy, black and white game set in a restaurant where an implausibly rude, sweary, philandering chef executes kitchen staff on minimum wage with an ever-increasing array of kitchen utensils. Spend most of the development cost paying Gordon to stick his face on the cover and I guarantee more units shifted than Sega’s effort. Sigh.
Good news to finish. No More Heroes is close to half a million. So when Desperate Struggle arrives next year give it some love.
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November 29, 2009 1:43 pm No Comments
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