Looks we can dismiss all of those arguments about why The Conduit would sell better than MadWorld, because it really didn't. Probably the biggest disappointment from a month that was otherwise big news for Nintendo is much-hyped The Conduit pulling only 72,000 copies. Granted, it wasn't on sale for a terribly long time in June, but... well, clearly MadWorld's problem wasn't its M rating. A hardcore game for the 18-35 crowd with a T rating isn't doing much better.
There's good news underlying The Conduit's big disappointment (depending on your personal definition of "good"). Electronic Arts's two big Wii gambles have paid off. EA Sports Active pulled 289,000 copies to come in third place for the month while Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 sold 272,000. The top-selling game for the month, Prototype, sold 419,000 copies to give those numbers some perspective.
In terms of hardware, DS blew away all other systems sold this month with a whopping 776,500 units with Wii coming in second at 361,700 units. More interesting is the 374,000 Wii MotionPlus units sold in June, even though Wii Sports Resort wasn't out yet. 169,000 of those units were stand-alone and the rest were bundled with Tiger Woods 10. Nintendo may very well have duplicated the success of Wii Fit and the Balance Board here, while also giving a third-party game a major shot in the arm.
This month's sales seem to say something very definitive about the Wii's identity as a console. If you want to make a game a hit on this hardware, you don't do it by selling the sort of games that appeal to, well, the sort of person who's reading GamePro or Blogfaction. You appeal to their moms and dads, basically. Tiger Woods 10 is a classic father's day game and EA Sports Active was designed to appeal to twenty and thirtysomethings.
On the one hand, it says great things about the video game industry that a console for older folks is even viable, let alone the industry leader. On the other, this puts several horrible nails in the coffin of hardcore gaming on Wii. The console's cheap development costs will ensure indy games like Muramasa head to it, but anything like a Halo or inFamous equivalent appears doomed to failure.
