The console(Wii) itself has been selling like hotcakes. In Japan, it's clobbering the PS2, which in turn is outselling the PS3 and X360. In the US, it's more of a neck-and-neck type race. And as new shipments of the thing sell out almost instantaneously at a price that B3Ders think is crazy high, it's obviously a very high-demand item. But the games aren't selling. Oh sure, if you look at VGcharts, 3rd party games have mostly bombed. Godfather tanked, Sonic was ignored in Japan but did OK in the US, Elebits was a colossal failure, and so on. This is what a lot of people expected, but the real news is 1st-party software.
In Japan, Twilight Princess is the worst-selling Zelda of all time, selling under a half-million units on the Wii (Windwaker sold 2.6m). Warioware sold less than 1/3 the Gamecube version, which was merely a port of the GBA game. Fire Emblem bombed as well. The new Pokemon battle game sold around a quarter million units...down from 2 million on the Gamecube. Almost the same thing has happened in the USA, with the exception that Twilight Princess outsold Wind Waker (GC and Wii combined) and did fairly well in Europe, too. But almost nothing is hitting the top ten charts in any country, except...
Wii Sports and Wii Play. That's about it.
This is not just a case of "Nintendo gamers don't buy 3rd-party games," because they're not lining up to buy Nintendo games, either. My theory: the problem with all these non-gamers is, well, they're not really interested in video games in general. They're interested in Wii Sports. Wii Play is artificially high because of the controller. I think that "hardcore" gamers aren't picking up the Wii as fast, and when they do, they might mess around with a few games, but their money is more likely to go to the Virtual Console and whatever platforms they own (PS3 or 360) because the big-production games are there...or released there first, often without broken controls.
