Capcom Community Manager, Seth Killian, answered a long post by a fan asking why Nintendo supporters haven't seen more titles from the Capcom on the Wii. The questions below have been paraphrased because of their length.
The Wii has some of the best selling games of this generation and one of the best selling games of all time, but some third party titles have not fared well on the system. There hasn't been a lot of support from you guys, does Capcom just not like Nintendo?
Seth: First I should say that I think Capcom's Wii line-up is as strong/stronger than any third-party publisher, so you should probably be asking these questions to every other publisher before you ask us, but... :)
If developers feel that the Wii is too weak to invest a serious effort in, then why was everyone so willing to put in such a huge effort for the Playstation 2? The Wii has an even bigger install base than the PS2.
Seth: Most of the answer to question #1 centers on the reality that third-party software was extremely successful on the PS2. It has only very recently declined as a sales force. As you mentioned, third-party software has not sold as well on the Wii. This is true regardless of anything about larger install base, etc.
Why haven't more developers made games for the Wii?
Seth: Almost everyone did develop for the Wii at launch, but most tried to play to the systems core strengths, which most people naturally identified as motion-control rather than processor-intensive graphics. It was expected that the games had to feature motion controls (a theory we've jettisoned for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, interestingly), and while they work fantastically for some titles, they are not always a great fit for many of the most popular genres. When publisher's Wii titles didn't sell to expectations, many decided to stop focusing their development there, and back towards their core gameplay competencies.
Games don't sell well on the Wii because they aren't advertised enough.
Seth: "You didn't advertise it, so it didn't sell" is a very common way to shift poor-sales blame to the publisher. This may be true in some cases, but the complaint in my experience very rarely has any kind of facts behind it other than anecdotal evidence based on someone's personal viewing habits. Although advertising and development budgets are proprietary information, I can say that in at least most cases of Capcom games, the advertising support IS on par with the sales expectations.
Beyond that, this is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Advertising support is based directly on sales expectations. If the expectations are not large, the advertising budget will not be as large. TV advertising is typically quite expensive, so it's only present for games that are getting a special push.
Something else to consider — because platform-centric discussions get very narrow, very fast, ask yourself this: just speaking theoretically, when *would* you accept the explanation "the game didn't sell because people aren't buying a lot of games on this platform"? This could at least be true in theory, right? A lot of times these platform discussions are particularly unsatisfying because it seems like proponents of [platform x] have enough arguments that no matter what the facts of the situation might be, it could NEVER be an issue with the platform, and the fault would always be somewhere else. That's going too far — publishers, advertising, platform trends, and the fans themselves are all relevant factors in sales.
