I know the usual trend is to claim that the Wii cannot sell core games. I am going to take a slightly different track.

I am not considering the sales of mainstream core games such as Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil or the like. If it comes from a franchise or studio with a history of million sellers, then it may not be mentioned in this thread. Not by me, not by you.

I am only considering niche, core games, which I believe the Wii is better at selling than any console ever before.

All sales in millions of units

All numbers taken from VGChartz

Example 1 - No More Heroes

Sales 0.39

Previous games in the franchise - N/A

Previous games by the developer - best seller is Contact for the DS on 0.09

No other games have been tracked.

Good to see Suda51 has finally found a system on which to pour his creative genius

Example 2 - MadWorld

Sales 0.08 after 2 weeks of data

Previous games in the franchise - N/A

Previous games by the developer - best seller is Okami for the PS2 - 0.15

Shall no doubt be the best selling game ever for this brilliant studio

Example 3 - Okami

Sales 0.21

Previous games in the franchise - Okami for the PS2 - 0.15

Previous games by the developer - depends if we consider the dev to be Clover, who made the PS2 version, or Readt at dawn who handled the port.

Comments - a port of a last gen game outsellling the original - wow

Anyone got some other examples to add? Anyone want to disagree?

Fatal Frame IV. 80k sales in just Japan, and I'm pretty sure I've read that those 80k are more than the previous games in the series have sold worldwide.

@ Majin - it's hard to know for sure, the Wii Fatal frame is the only one that has been tracked by VGChartz. Although that in itself does imply that you are probably correct

Yeah, but you might wanna hold out on that one until a comparison could actually be made. Pretty sure I saw some sales numbers for the earlier titles way back when FF4 was released in Japan and everyone cried "flop".

@ scottie Are you trying to say that niche games don't sell well on ANY system?

Are you saying that a game like Madworld wouldn't have sold 10 million copies on the PS3 or 360?

Tell me that you're joking.

Is there any other game like MadWorld? What 5 hour beat 'em up with 3 colors has sold 10 million copies on any system?

@Amp... Madworld would have done similarly on any system.... If on BOTH HD consoles though it could probably have 1.5* what it's lifetime sales on Wii will be, on about the same userbase.... so yes I think MW would have sold better if on both those, instead of just the Wii.

I do see a flaw in this though... Okami on the PS2 sold more than that... that is only Japan sales.
I think I worked it out from various sources... an the PS2 version is somewhere between 400 and 500k I think.

The Wii version also sold more than you said too though... as that is only American data (no Europe and it hasn't released in Japan for some reason) so it has sold just under 300k I think.

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I do agree with you to some extent... No More Heroes did well, Okami did good too for a port. At the moment Madworld sales are not good, but we shall see where they get to. I think they will end up around 700-800k... which is the maximum I would possibly expect on either HD console.

Niche games don't sell, thats why they are niche games.

You know that I was kidding around.  Right?

I was just saying that it would sell relatively low on any system.   

OMG, 3 cherry picked Wii games are outselling similar games on older consoles which either have incomplete data or none at all!

Yay!