JBoc924Of course the following is indicated by sales, some games are superbly crafted but sometimes that doesn’t transition well in regards to sales especially if you’re releasing said game on a platform with a more casual-oriented audience. This seems to be the case with the Nintendo Wii, where third parties are finding it hard to push the amount of copies they want of a game. Take the two games listed here for example, while both serve as great survival horror experiences in their own merits, they just don’t translate well into sales. Nintendo Power magazine recently ran a list of 10 games that Wii owners should be playing but instead are ignoring for the sake of other big name releases. Among the games listed are two survival horror titles: Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.
But wait, Resident Evil and Silent Hill, those ARE two big name franchises right? Yes, but seeing as how these titles are on the Wii and not necessarily pushing the series foward, they’re not really situated on gamers’ radars. What do I mean by being on the Wii? Nothing harsh of course but just what seems to be true: The Wii has a strong casual-gamer following with the core gamers among bunch only being catered by first party releases the likes of Mario and Zelda. It might as well be a proven fact that games of the survival horror genre aren’t going to sell up to standards on the Wii. But this also could translate into something else, we’ll use Capcom as an example.
On the Wii Capcom has given us 3 ports, and 2 light-gun shooters all under the Resident Evil umbrella (see what I did there). Critical acclaim is one thing, and when your name is Resident Evil 4 you’re bound to get it but in order to truly succeed you need the commercial success as well and seeing as how this was basically just a port with new motion controls, alot of people would have preferred a brand new game in the style of re4. Capcom even stated how they’re considering putting an end to the Resident Evil light-gun games on the Wii because of the lack of commercial success brought about by Darkside Chronicles. So this could, and really should, serve as a wake-up call to give us full fledged sequels on the platform and not just simple cash-ins on established properties. Now don’t get me wrong, Darkside was an awesome game and far more than just a cash-in, here’s why.
Obviously one of the things that makes this game so awesome and more than just a ‘rail-shooter’ is the fact that it includes the greatest tease ever at a Resident Evil 2 remake. We now have updated character models, environments, enemies, etc now with all those assets give us a full on 3rd person remake Capcom! By making us play through portion of Resident Evil 2 in first person Capcom is just going about their evil ways and teasing us with a taste of what a full blown Resident Evil 2 re-imagining could be like. Hopefully we will see that day sooner rather than later but who knows, because now all eyes are on 3d-> 3Ds-> Resident Evil Revelations.
Sorry for the long rant, I just didn’t find it appropriate to quite simple list Resident Evil Darkside and Shattered Memories as two games worth playing and be done with it so you got some of my insight towards the whole situation with the Wii’s current market and of course how survival horror fares on the platform.
source: http://gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=128626
