The Wii doesn't do so well with Mature games

There's no denying that the Nintendo Wii has been wildly successful and while it may not be the prized console for hardcore gamers, it's reached a wide audience as people are drawn to its social gaming concept. Let me tell you, it's wonderful to have around for parties since the games are easy to pick up and very entertaining. The motion sensor remotes feel new and it's just more fun.

However if there's a downfall to the Wii, it's the console's slant towards family/kid games. I'm guessing that since the GPU isn't as powerful as the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, game makers have to make their 3D models more cartoonish, and due to the controllers - which are more likely to appeal to kids than Joe the Gamer sitting in his mom's basement (who wants 18 different button configurations).

There has been ventures into Mature-rated games but they have largely failed.

...according to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board database. Some, such as Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, haven't even been released yet. Compare that to 168 Mature-rated games listed for Xbox 360, or 126 mature-rated games for PlayStation 3, and it's clear where the majority of the industry's grown-up releases end up. But publishers remain intent to trying to make it work on Wii.

Earlier this year, a substantial amount of pre-release hype and critical acclaim followed the most hopeful attempt: Platinum Games and Sega's hyper-violent action game MadWorld. Japanese developer Platinum Games was founded by former Capcom designers Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya. The theory went like this: with that kind of gaming pedigree, hardcore gamers would flock to MadWorld, and its over-the-top violence and Sin City-esque art style would attract Wii owners looking for something different. That theory didn't hold, and MadWorld failed to make a splash.

Even Sega doesn't know exactly what went wrong.

"It’s difficult because it was a critically acclaimed title; it was extreme but good," said Sega of America president Mike Hayes in an interview with Wired. "The thing that we’re saying is, Sega would be extremely arrogant to have a title that didn’t do as well as we thought on a platform and then say, 'Those kinds of games don’t sell on that platform.' I think if you take our slew of more mature games -- House of the Dead Overkill did really well in Europe, and for some reason even though it’s a big (intellectual property) it did less well in North America. So that’s kind of like a win and a miss that’s kind of come out neutral. MadWorld sales were very disappointing, but was that to do with the platform? Was it that people didn’t like the art style? Or that people didn’t like the way the game played through? It could be many things, which we’re obviously researching."

I think for the most part, hardcore games - the ones who buy these Mature titles - go for the powerful machines like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Hence, you're marketing to a smaller market of your core consumers on the Wii. It's just set up to fail from the beginning.