Rail shooters wouldn't sell well on any platform. It's not because Wii owners don't like M-rated games, but because the games themselves are bad or too shortsighted (like Madworld). No More Heroes sold respectably well, and so did Resident Evil 4. It's not about the M-rating, it's about the quality of the games.

I think rail shooters are just uncommon enough for most people to not know what "rail shooter" means. If they did, they'd probably buy them more often.

With all due respect to my ex-colleagues, Dead Space: Extraction was _bad_. That is probably has more to do with it not selling well than the perception that the Wii audience isn't interested in M-rated games.

Also, on-rail shooters have a wide range of unexplored possibilities. Just making an average shooter into rails doesn't make a good game anyway.

All games are not created equally and not all games can command top dollar. I did not avoid Darkside Chronicles because it is an M rated game on the Wii or because it is a rail shooter. I avoided this game because I believe it is a $20 - $30 game priced at $50.

A developer gives a console owner a garbage game mechanic and then expect them to play it. And if they don't bite then they say "its obvious that the Wii gamer has moved on" Well let see how obvious it is when the next LoZ hits the market. The problem is not that the gamer isn't there, the problem is the developer isn't there. If the developer spent some quality time on their game mechanic and design and the mechanic or design was not trying to make the gamer look like a fool, or one who isn't interested in games, then they could get some good results. But no, instead the developer would rather spend tons of money on making HD games and have to release a DLC just to recoop the cost, and next to no money on developing Wii titles, not using the full potential of the motion controller. So exactly when are third parties going to stop using their C teams and start using their A teams to make Wii games?

If they had made the Dead Space Wii game design more akin to Resident Evil 4 I know it would have sold better. It should have not been an on-rails shooter. Dead Space sold well on PC, 360, and the PS3. Word of mouth killed Dead Space on the Wii. Every where I went on the forums everyone was screaming about it being an on-rails shooter. Ill conceived game design killed it before it was put to market.

Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles failed in the same way. Too bad for Capcom and Wii owners both.

It's not that these games are bad. The rail shooter is a good fit for the Wii but maturing players are moving to the 360 and PS3.

What does "good fit for the Wii" mean?

Does it mean "Wii users are inferior and need crappy rail shooters", followed by pondering at the poor sales?

I asked some gamer friends of mine, "What do you think about the Wii?"

Some replies:

"its fun, but there are a serious lack of developers who take it seriously as a games platform"

"there are full price games for it that wouldnt look out of place in the playstation 1 era"

"there are pretty much no new games for wii in years."

And guess what... A lot of my gamer friends _own_ Wiis.

The users base is there, however developers outright refuse to take it seriously.

They fence it off as "not for real gamers", develop distinctively crappier games, then point at the bad sales as evidence of that gamers don't have Wiis, even though sales figures strongly suggest a hell of a lot of people have Wiis.

@ Chris Sykora

I don't now anybody, who owns a Wii and "has moved on" to a XBox360 or PS3 in the last years. All the people I know, that wanted a HD console bought one without having a Wii before and the people, that bought the Wii, got the console, cause they didn't wanted the PS3 or XBox360. They found the Wii games much more interesting then the PS3/XBox360 games, which in my opinion are PS2/XBox1 games with textures in higher resolutions and more shader effects, displayed in a higher resolution (only if you have a HD TV Set of course).

@ seemly heated posters:

Please don't read into the "good fit" comment as an attack on you, your family, religious alignment, or what have you. The control scheme is set up that you point the wii-mote at the screen. I don't need to explain this any further.

Dead Space and Resident Evil were great rail shooter games but represent a trend for the Wii. They had awful sales figures. Selling barely over 10,000 units is considered a flop. It was a great experiment but it is a very glaring sign.

I have a younger brother who was actually made fun of at school for playing the Wii and not playing CODMW2. It is really stupid but it would appear the Wii is considered a little kids toy compared to ultra violent, graphically intense games. As if the FPS is some rite of passage. Ah children. :)

The Wii has a lot of potential but won't be utilized for quite some time. Until this medium moves from it's hit driven nature; we will continue to see lame mini-games.

i always felt that DS:E depended too much on its predecessor's name, when most people owning a wii probably have not heard of the Dead Space.

just my opinion..

And there we go with the same old, same old comments that we ALWAYS get whenever the words "Wii" and "Mature" appear together in a news.

Y'know... it's funny. When on-rail shooter (Capcom's Umbrella Chronicles - 1.2 million sold if you believe VG Chartz; Sega's House of the Dead 2&3 has similar sales figures), appeared to be doing well, people pointed to these games as examples of "mature" content on the Wii.

Now that Capcom's latest effort has flopped (at least for now), people are shouting loudly "well, on-rail shooters are bad!"

A lot of companies seem to have thrown a lot of money at the Wii's "mature" market, but noone seems to have found the magic spot. Perhaps there simply isn't one: looking at Amazon's best-selling games (i.e. ignoring hardware-only items), the list consists of
1) EA Sports Active
2) Wii Fit Plus
3) New Super Mario Bros
4) EA Sports Active Special Edition
5) Just Dance
6) Mario Kart Wii
7) Wii Sports Resort
8) Wii Fit Plus
9) Wii Play
10) The Biggest Loser (weight loss/keep fit program)
11) EA Sports Active: More Workouts
12) My Fitness Coach
13) Cabella's Big Game Hunter
14) Jillian Mitchell's Fitness
15) Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
16) Lego Star Wars
17) Your Shape
18) Walk it out
19) Gold Gym Cardio
20) Carnival Games

Admittedly, the list is likely to be heavily skewed by post-Christmas guilt trips. But still, it makes for depressing reading for game developers - unless you're Nintendo (and possibly EA - though one fitness program does not make for a sustainable business model. There's distinct limits to how many variations you can release and as per above, there's a lot of competition)!

This does show that there is money to be made on the Wii - but it's all focused around very specific IP and genres.

I'm surprised Jenny McCarthy's fitness is not on that Amazon list juice uk. I went to get that game at my local target before Christmas and there was only one left.

Maybe the arcade likeness of a ORS is what throws people off of them. What if a developer pushed the real aspect of gun use. Gave the Wii a game centering around Cops and Robbers. Something where you had to develop you skill and knowledge in what types of guns you need to bring to a situation. Or even maybe a decent hunting game where you felt like you where actually hunting. My point is that undead creatures, and zombies don't make for a kind of realism and so people may just feel like ORS are just point and shoot without thinking. Creature don't change patterns, different things done occur so it feels dumb down.

@juice uk
" Y'know... it's funny. When on-rail shooter (Capcom's Umbrella Chronicles - 1.2 million sold if you believe VG Chartz; Sega's House of the Dead 2&3 has similar sales figures), appeared to be doing well, people pointed to these games as examples of "mature" content on the Wii.

Now that Capcom's latest effort has flopped (at least for now), people are shouting loudly "well, on-rail shooters are bad!""

I don't think it can be denied that there is an element of novelty to rail shooters. It's likely that the people that bought Umbrella Chronicles partly out of curiosity, enjoyed it but didn't feel the need to play another game like it. In other words one Resident Evil rail shooter was enough for them, because rail shooters inherently lack in strategy and the immersion due to the fact that you don't control your movement. They are a good for a bit of fun on occasion.

I for one am not interested in gambling my money on a rail shooter when the concept sounds so boring to me. Especially when the real fun of arcade shooters is true light-gun aiming without a cursor. I would be VERY interested in an new Resident Evil game for Wii where I was given greater control. I don't think I'm alone in this.

I think it is down to developers not trying hard enough on the Wii. And perhaps that makes business sense if more people will buy the type of game you make on other platforms anyway. However, we will never know until someone other than Nintendo makes a truly honest (and well funded) go at it.

The industry has grown to a size where Wii has it's own thing, and 360 and PS3 have theirs. Knowing these systems fall into specific demographics makes it hard to compare, but M titles certainly have not faired well on Wii, which is understandable considering the core demographic of that system. I wish publishers would just accept this and not keep trying to sandwich games onto systems they may not belong. Capcom can do a great Wii game no question, it's just finding the key title that sits well with Wii's demographic that is the challenge.

@Prash: personally, I found both HOTD 2&3 and Umbrella Chronicles to offer a poor gameplay experience. The key problem with these games is that you're not aiming at the enemies: you're aiming at the Wii's sensor bar. It's a subtle but important distinction.

However, HOTD Overkill did an excellent job of tailoring it's gameplay to the Wii's controls, strengths and weaknesses, whatever people may think of the "mature" storyline and voiceovers. Sadly, I haven't yet tried Dead Space, so can't comment on that one...

To be honest, I'd guess that Darkside Chronicles suffered from three factors:
1) Heavily flooded market
2) Inconsistent naming - if it had been called "Umbrella Chronicles 2", then more people may have spotted it in the shops. To me, Darkside Chronicles sounds like yet another generic J-RPG!
3) Limited marketing: I've seen very little publicity for DC (though to be fair, I don't tend to bother too much with Wii-specific games)