According to the most recent data obtained by the NPD Group, a market research company that tracks the sales figures of videogames, the Wii-exclusive first-person shooter Red Steel 2 has managed to sell approximately 50,000 units during the 8 days the game was on sale in the United States in March. In comparison, God of War III, which was on sale for 16 days in the United States in that same month, sold more than 1,1 million units.
Michael Pachter, analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities stated that while it is common for ‘hardcore’ titles to start off slowly on the Nintendo Wii, he did expect the game to sell more. When compared to the sales figures of titles of the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360, Wii titles tend to have a much longer lifespan that exhibits a more constant sales figure.
However, if the long-term sales of Red Steel 2 continue to be disappointing, this installment may have been the last in the franchise. In the past, the creative director of Red Steel 2 has stated that “tt was obvious that, if Red Steel 2 came out and it was not well-received by the fans, we were done. There would be no Red Steel 3. There would be no point in continuing that: once is an offense, twice is a pattern.”
Another title aimed at the ‘hardcore’ Wii audience, Dead Space: Extraction, which was launched in September 2009, only managed to sell 9,000 copies in a similar timeframe.
HURR DURR Why is it that all the consumers seem to realize that hardcore 3rd party titles don’t fare well on Nintendo platforms?
What he said.
Red Steel 2 is a sequel to a bad game that forces you to use wii-motion plus… which I don’t know a lot of hardcore gamers that got the peripheral.