That really sucks. I bought this new at BB a couple of months back and it is sitting in my "To Play Next" pile right now.

Lack of marketing is what is endangering the Mature Wii market--combined with the awful US distribution system that does not support long tail sales. I wish Nintendo would share the info and spotlight of their successes with titles that still sell for original MSRP 3 and 4 years later.

Good luck to all of them. I hope they can find a job in this economy.

"Developer Deep Silver Vienna has closed its doors after only one game, due to financial issues. Probably because they developed an interesting Wii game, meaning nobody bought it. "

http://www.destructoid.com/review-cursed-mountain-148035.phtml

@ donssword: "I wish Nintendo would share the info and spotlight of their successes..."

Its pretty easy for Nintendo when the games they're selling are from the same franchises they've been milking since NES days. I mean, here comes another Zelda, Metroid, Mario game or some sort of spinoff from those games. Not hard to see how they're managing to sell. Everyone already KNOWS these series.

It's not surprising nobody bought it. The game got little coverage, the box art makes it look like just another piece of Wii shovelware, and reviews were mostly average, so why the hell would people buy it?

Well, the game wasn't good. I suppose that has something to do with it. It's not really because it is a Wii game.

It has NOTHING to do with being a Wii game. Fanboys are rquite out and about today.

That blows.

Cursed Mountain would have sold poorly no matter what console it was released on. It has nothing to do with the Wii.

It really makes me sad to see people let go. It's really crushing.

@KingFaisal94

Get down and give me 20.

I alway see this at Walmart, but never buy it.

so, now we're complaining about mediocre titles not getting the sales they deserve? if i'm a game dev trying to make it on wii, the first thing i'm going to do is try to duplicate the polish of the nintendo titles. not one third party game that i've seen has been up to nintendo standards. wait, that's not quite right, no game that is until tats v capcom. that game is amazing (even though i blow at it), and should be purchased by every wii owning dtoid member.

@Nevi

The fan translation of Project Zero 4 does not require you to mod your Wii. All that is needed is a copy of the game and a 1GB SD card. The translation patch will take care of the region lockout.

@ Cowboy TTop "Leave Wii to die, or it will kill you."

Amen to that.

The Wii has absolutely NOT done good by the games industry and will be the death of many, many things. If you don’t believe Cowboy TTop and myself just watch how many Game Crazy’s, GameStops and Mom and Pop’s close up this year and then let’s talk about who’s to blame.

@bauhouse, your blaming the wii for gamestops closing, the same wii console with it's limited online distribution system?
If anything it's services like psn,games on demand and the app store driving brick and morter stores out of buisness, not nintendo and it's multitude of peripherals.

I liked Cursed Mountain. A very pleasant surprise and fun to play for a horror affectionado like myself.

I'm saddened by this now

I've really enjoyed Cursed Mountain, it was one of the most unique games, thematically, last year. I would have loved to have seen more from Deep Silver. It pains me to think that the Wii has lost another creative and passionate developer. If there is any justice, these guys will get picked up by other companies and hopefully spark something else just as refreshing as Cursed Mountain.

did i mention that this is the first nintendo games developer that went down while there was 20+ hd development studios that went bankrupt - yes, they didn't just went down they simply bankrupted.

@Poe

I didn't buy it because it wasn't that good of a game.

I'm not surprised by some here at all, Sheppy, Bauhouse and co.

Its the boxart
Its lack of advertsising
Its the moon falling to the earth

Some still can't see the harsh truth, which is that Wii terrible spec system, (it has ahell of a lot to do with devs hating to work with it) and is not enough for hardcore games any more, while its on shaky legs. The very fact few of you with Wii's, didn't buy CM is testament to that, such games are made but don't sell or sell well enough on Wii. And these same people want Sega to do Shen Mue on Wii. Please, that would be another Sega suicide waiting to happen, and would indeed ensure, that they never touch the series again. Nintendo are in the money boat and prepared to watch others drown, which is why many devs do not like to work with them (laced with some natural envy, for they are talented bastards, Nintendo), but won't say so openly, because you gotta keep the industry pot sweet, full and serving. So much for keeping up appearances.

@Tomasz

Dude, these are difficult financial times at best, and besides that, devs open and close ever year in the industry, for various reasons. Sure, other studios have closed but for different reasons. Pandemic didn't close because of HD games, they closed because their last few games weren't good enough, so they were cut loose by the suited ones, in charge of the money bags. That's totally different, as they had far better financial backing but just didn't deliver good product (Mercs 2). Other devs shot too high with expensive PS3 development, which in a similar way to Wii, is a dangerous, expensive place to be, if you don't get it right on your game.

@AdrianWerner

Had Deep Silver been also developing this game for 360/PS3 or PC too, like someone said, sales might have been better. However, it was their choice, and perhaps a poor one at that, to target the Wii alone, looking for the big break. Then, that might have been hit by piracy anyway, such is the nature of PC games.

Unless a game can meet that 70-80% (in other words the silent majority) of casuals on Wii, as well as the 20-30% hard core crowd, its nothing but heartache waiting to happen. And sure, its always sad to see a dev/pub die, but they are like a phoenix from ashes, and their talent will go on to feed the industry circle of life.

@ThomazJaro

Actually, Midway, towards the end, got a huge boost from MK vs DC and their party games on Wii/DS were among the first to feel the shovelware backlash. Of course Midway's closing had absolutely nothing to do with game sales considering the only game Midway released in the past six years at a loss Area 51. While it's true none set the world on fire, they were still operating in the black. It was their massive debt and Sega-like tendacy to spend more than they made that lead to their eventual downfall. Of course you KNEW all this, right? After all, what kind of person talks so matter of factly with a single sentence if they didn't know what they were talking about?

@PEICanada7

Do you REALLY think all those people were in house? You DO know there are entire studios who's sole existance is to handle outsourced requests, right? For example, why should Infinity Ward pay a 3D artist $55K a year for two years modeling barrels, crates, parking cones, tvs, etc when they can pay another studio $100 per model or less for the exact same thing. Do you really think a small time developer wouldn't take advantage of outsourcing when all the major players do?

"Do you REALLY think all those people were in house?"

No I don't think those people were all in-house. In fact if you read the story in the link I gave, it says they weren't, but those people still had to be payed for outsourcing either way. The development time frame they gave was 10 months of per-production and 18 months of actual development. So developing a game for almost 3 years is expensive no matter how big, or small the team was from in-house to out-sourcing.

If you ask me, I think Deep Silver just bit off more they could chew. They shouldn't of started off with such a ambitious project for this new development team to handle. Like the article from IGN says, managing all those people would be hard on any studio, at alone a start up one. Either way its a shame that they closed down, but blaming it on the platform was only a part of the problem, not the full story!

The Wii is killing gaming! LOCK UP YOUR CHILDREN!

On a more serious note, the game probably would have sold more if it got good reviews. And the Wii isn't going to kill gaming :P

Some one dropped the ball with market research somewhere I'd imagine. I would think a game developer should have some educated guess on how well they'll sell on which system... or else they go under.