SEGA marketing mushroom (he is made out of mushroom bits) Alan Pritchard has dug up MadWorld -- otherwise known as The Corpse That Never Dies -- claiming, like so many before him, that perhaps the Wii was not the right place for a violent, black-and-white beat 'em up.
"Going back 12 to 18 months when we released those titles, it was a risk," he tells Game Informer. "Nintendo was supportive of the strategy. There was an intent to take the Wii console a little older, and make a more core machine. So games like MadWorld, House of the Dead and The Conduit fit that strategy. House of the Dead is a more established and casual franchise, and that did very well. Conduit 2 is getting a good buzz.
"It was a huge risk that we really believed in at the time, but the title did not sell well. Was it on the wrong platform? I don't know. Would it have done better on 360 or PS3? Possibly"
Pritchard isn't the first SEGA representative to suggest that MadWorld may have been more successful elsewhere, which leads me to ask -- why are we talking about it and not porting it? Release it on the PS3 or 360, or even throw it up onto the PlayStation Network or XBLA.
If other publishers are willing to try it with No More Heroes, you might as well try to make some cash off of MadWorld.
Sega: 'Madworld would have been better on 360, PS3' [Game Informer]
Contest:
10:01 AM on 12.15.2010 | 
Your comment suggests that madworld had some kind of intellectual, region sense of humour attatched to it. Having played (and loved) madworld I thought the humour was rather base, I liked that.
(Hint: Not too much.)
Bayonetta faired a tad bit better with 700,000 units sold on the PS3, and 800,000 on the 360, but neither one reached a million. So its not exactly like there were run away success either. Like Marvelous did with NMH, I think Sega should of had more reasonable expectation for MadWorld. If they did, than maybe they'd of realized that selling 600,000 should be good enough to make a sequel, like Marvelous did with NMH2!
i don't think it's the gamer's fault. i, for one, am a huge japanese game fan. i love muramasa, sin & punishment, little king's story, and to a lesser extent, no more heroes, but it was the gameplay that turned me off to madworld. that, and the constant swearing/middle school behavior in the game made me wonder, who is this game for? i bought the game for it's japanese pedigree, and i sold it because it didn't live up to the hype.
I loved this game (bought it for $50 new and did not regret it), but it really cried out for some kind of online support/stat-tracking. And that's coming from someone who almost exclusively plays single player games. That kind of crap would not fly with the HD crowd.
If they added online support and uprezzed the visuals and threw it on PSN/XBLA, it *might* sell for 10 dollars. It was a little silly to ask Wii owners to pay 5 times that for a local-only, standard def affair. But I wholeheartedly agree with able to think regarding motion controls being a huge part of the fun. My point is that it's the game, not the platform, that was the problem--as Salvathras pointed out, just look at Vanquish.
Some games just aren't million-sellers. There's a good chance that if a title isn't an established IP, it won't be.
It was also annoying that the character you were playing had motivations that you weren't aware of until the very end. that felt weird.
Now House of the Dead: Overkill is one of my very favourite games, and I hope like hell it gets a mot^&E*ucking sequel.
If they remake it into an HD format, add online multiplayer, and add a few missions, I'd buy it again.
So you're trying to suggest that people just didn't "get it"? Madworld? Seriously? WTF. Are we pretending like the game is deep or something? The gameplay was total shit. The overall problem with Madworld was that it just wasn't very fun.
The game was pretty crappy which leads me to believe that wii fanboys are horribly deprived of games.
No, the game wouldn't do better on any other system.
I agree that MadWorld belongs on another system.
I would definitely buy it again on either system.
You really think that Madworld is the best game on the Wii? You're entitled to your opinion, I'm just surprised by it.... I know of several excellent Wii games that are generally regarded as better than Madworld, not saying that Madworld is bad, just not the 'best Wii game'.
Oh, also, SEGA has a skewed definition of hardcore. Gore & violence =/= hardcore.
Cuz it wouldn't sell unless it's a XBLA or PSN game to make it cheap, simply put it's short, repetitive and with casual difficulty (unless you beat it once, then you can play in hard mode) so even on the HD twins it still wouldn't appeal to "core gamers", same with The Conduit, it's an ok shooter but there are way superior shooters on X360/PS3 that overshadow it easily (Bioshock anyone?).
On an unrelated note, I think Madworld wont do much better on HD consoles because a lot of its target audience have probably already brought, Bayonetta a game by the same developers as Madworld but a superior game in almost every way except it could be argued that Madworld had a better aesthetic. And Bayonetta didnt sell that much anyway so the target audience is small.
tl;dr No need HD Madworld cos Bayonetta better
The fact is that even thought the graphics are very pollished, the gameplay was not very pollished.
STFU, do Madworld 2, do HOTD: Overkill 2 (yep, theres a new rumor that HOTD:O2 will be released soon on wii). And now that the wii has more "hardcore base" since this year, start doing some fucking advices on TV, you did nothing to promote those 2 games.
Ok, im done...
janoDX
Do I think it could have sold better on 360/PS3? Maybe. But if it were primarily designed for those consoles, the game wouldn't be exactly the same as the Wii version. So, it's difficult to say one way or the other.
I'm not saying it should not have been on the Wii. I'm just saying it was incredibly retarded to make it a Wii exclusive.
And Enslaved was realllll fucking good.
If lazy devs woud bother to put out good games on the wii rather than half-done, poorly conceived cash ins, maybe, jst maybe their game would bloody well sell! But, y'know, as usual, any excuse for devs to put the boot in on the wii when they haven't made the effort.