Please, Sega, give MadWorld another chance on 360/PS3. More people need to hear Greg Proops and John "Bender" DiMaggio's commentary.

Since you're up, Jim, Deadly Premonition is todays Amazon Deal of the Day for $15.

Also, I think they're right that the game would have sold better on the 360 or PS3.

I'd be willing to bet that even though the install base of the Wii is significantly higher than the other two, the amount of people that actually BUY any games other than Nintendo games is probably significantly lower that those that buy games for 360 or PS3.

I know this is just circumstantial, but I know 1 360 owner and 1 PS3 owner who don't really buy but a game a year (and tons of each that buy like crazy), and I know at least half a dozen Wii owners who haven't bought more than two games for the system entirely.

Part of Madworld's lack of critical success was the fact it wasn't marketed at all. It got one commercial that I saw once, and even then it shared the commercial with The House of the Dead: Overkill. Bayonetta's commercial got aired several times a day for several weeks.

And this is Sega talking, I want to hear what Platinum Games themselves have to say on the matter.

I really don't believe it had much to do with the Wii or it being an M rated game. It just a bland game.
Do you really see this game getting a more positive reception on the 360 or PS3? I'd think it'd actually be worse. It's just the game to me, and not so much about the system or the people having a problem with it being a "mature" game. House of the Dead: Overkill; now, that was a shame that it didn't kill in sales (on top of being the most pirated, but that's another story) as that was an interesting game with much stronger gameplay.

A situation like with Little King's Story is a little more puzzling on not selling than Mad World. Maybe that's just me, though.

Now let's not start another WII IS A SYSTEM FOR GRANNIES RABBA RABBA NO ITZS HARDCORE AAAAAAAAA thing, this is not IGN or GameFAQs.

But yeah I really didn't see much marketing about it. Even if I personally didn't like it, I have to say that consumers had to fix their perspectives regarding it too.

i liked madworld it was a flawed yet enjoyable action game, to be honest i expected something more hack n' slash-ish, but i cant say i didnt like the end result, the game simply had a lot of personality

what happens with mature games on the wii is a matter of demographics, thats all, i mean have you seen nintendo's advertizing?


they either have a family or an anorexic chick doing exercise

@T3h Kaiser

its not a matter of how many people own a wii, its a matter of what KIND of people own a wii

I neglected Mad World because it's just not my kind of game. A horror title like Silent Hill, or an M-rated RPG would be right up my alley. But this just wasn't interesting to me, because it's not my kind of game. Heck, mature games in general always seem to be beat-em-ups or shooters, and I just find nothing appealing about those games. But hey there were plenty of M rated games on PS2 and lots of players on that console weren't interested in them either. Maybe it's, y'know, that publishers continue to push Wii users away by this kind of smack talk, instead of embracing it and trying to promote their title as being Wii exclusive.

@Matt Welch

what are you talkin about?

very few GOOD mature games on the ps2 sold poorly, yet nearly all mature efforts on the wii end up like this

On Nintendo's console it's gotten a decent rating because Wii reviewers generally set their standards low when reviewing Wii games. It would have gotten lower scores on the better consoles, 360/PS3, thus selling less than on Wii.

I gave MadWorld a try on the Wii.

I personally would not give it more than a 6/10. The controls were mostly unwieldy, and it didn't pass the Fun Test. Having fun is the most important part of any game; that is why it's a game. I don't care if it's critically acclaimed.

It's true, developers will react badly to the Wii if their shit doesn't sell well.

The question is what is considered "selling well"? My opinion is that a game sells well if it makes you a profit. It costs between 5-10 mil for a developer to make a game on the Wii. That's including distribution costs, publisher costs, shipping costs, retailer share, etc. Madworld has sold around 450k copies so far. If Sega only made an average of $25 from each copy sold, (this is a guess on an average based off of price drops and assorted costs) then they would have made about $11,250,000 from Madworld sales. So even if the game costed them the high end of $10,000,000, Sega still made over a million off it.

"They put awful games on the Wii, and awful games won't sell."

Exactly ...mostly. Mad World isn't completely garbage, but getting a headline is more than enough for this game.

I understand there's audience for a game like Mad World, but the only way I relate to news like this is with another Wii game called Oneechanbara. Not a great game by -any- means, but dammit, I love it to bits.
However, even then, it really doesn't warrant a headline in any way, either.

@Pinhead;
That's what I felt, too. The Wii does have some more mature franchises (Alone in the Dark (I think), Dead Space, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, just to name a few) but it's a market that really isn't being tapped into in any large degree.
Shame really.

I agree with masterjedi
what is considered good enough sales? On the subject of madworld I just think it was a unapealing game to begin with and would not have sold well on any system. Honestly I think the right platform might have been the ds and psp. Such a game would be a revolution on a handheld but they just thought a mature bloody title would sell well and stopped there. I was interested in the game myself. I do have tons of "hardcore games" on my other systems. I tried it the gameplay was there the art style was there but the story was bland and over the top because they thought the art style of the game would sell it alone. In the end the game was just boring and tried to hard. Then again I'm not a fan of no more heros either becuase I'm not a fan of quirky for quirky sakes.

Remember folks, if a title doesn't sell on the Wii, blame it on the Wii's audience. Always.

That's why Okami didn't sell. Not because of a lack of marketing, that would be far too sensible. It's because the PS2 crowd was just too... casual. All of the world's evils can be blamed on the casual gamer! Global warming? Casuals, no doubt! Damn them and their evil ways!

Yeah Sega, because a 4-hour Japanese beat em' up with a niche artstyle and no strong multiplayer content would have sold 5 million copies on the HD twins, am I right? You know what else was a mismatch? Platinum (Clover) making GODHAND for the PS2.

I think it's more of a gameplay problem. I thoroughly enjoyed the commentary and visuals but got bored with the game after the first hour. Brawlers tend to be repetitive and exciting; MadWorld is just repetitive.

I always felt like Madworld got a free pass in the press because it was a Wii game. Not that I'm accusing the gaming media of bias like a moron or anything, I just think the system it was on was taken into account in the reviews... as in "It's great, for a Wii game." We just wanted to encourage more developers to make M-rated games for the Wii.

Taking it out of that context and just looking at Madworld as a game, rather than as a Wii game, I think it comes up short. Sure, it's a top notch title compared to a lot of the kid games and shovelware on the Wii but it's not in the same league as the top notch titles on the HD systems.

The real problem is that the new licenses it doesn't work too well as many expected, even sometimes in the hd consoles, that is the example, why RE : Umbrella and Darkside Chronicles sells well, Nom More Heroes (New in this Gen, The Conduit (New in this Gen), Madworld (New in this Gen, and some times is the lack of visual charm, the piracy, and the lack of hype.

So MadWorld, an obviously low-budget black-and-white five hour game with an extreme emphasis on gore, sells 450k on one console with a reputation for not selling games of this type, around just over a third of those selling with varying degrees of discounting (I remember because I followed its progression on VGChartz). It is considered a failure.

Now Bayonetta, a vastly more expensive and somewhat more mainstream game with an infinitely larger marketing budget (I saw ads on TV in the UK all the time, which has yet to happen for any Wii game), sells 30k more on 360 and 80k more on PS3 than MadWorld did on Wii. Bayonetta has also been discounted for a few months, albeit not to the same degree as MadWorld. Bayonetta is considered a huge success by SEGA.

If anyone knows anything about PR, you'll know why SEGA are making these clearly ridiculous claims that MW = failure and B = failure. Chances are that MadWorld made Sega more profit than Bayonetta, which may not even have broken even (it's said that HD games need to sell around 1-1.5million to break even on development costs alone, so you can add another 500k to that for the large marketing budget). However, a golden rule is that you never, ever admit that your big investments were a failure. It undermines confidence in the company and reduces its profile to investors and in the marketplace.

A game like MadWorld is low-budget and experimental. Especially given the Wii's uncool reputation, being seen to take an honourable failure on the chin can actually enhance reputation. It shows that the company are willing to take artistic risks, but learn from the mistakes if they go wrong. Not only that, but the unfortunate truth is that the company will gain kudos amongst the 360/PS3 markets by slagging off the Wii, which is seen as the antithesis of everything those gamers wrongly see themselves as standing for. Saying that MadWorld did badly for them actually loses the company less face and puts them in a stronger commercial position than admitting the truth, which involves admitting that they did better on a disliked console and alienating players on the HD consoles where conventional thinking says there's more money to be made.

Obviously, when I said "you'll know why SEGA are making these clearly ridiculous claims that MW = failure and B = failure", I meant B(ayonetta) = success.

MADWORLD bites shiny metal ass.