Nintendo Games Make Up Nearly Half Of Wii Sales In 2009

We keep hearing over and over again that third parties are struggling to create hit software on the Nintendo Wii, but every once in a while we get some startling data to back up all the talk. The latest evidence comes courtesy of industry analyst Michael Pachter, who posted his findings on gaming forum NeoGAF.

From breaking down the NPD results of 2009, Pachter discovered that 27.5 million Nintendo-published Wii games were sold last year. In terms of unit sales, that's 38 percent of all Wii games sold, but in dollar amount it's a whopping 47 percent. Pachter explains that the improvement in dollars sold versus units is because Nintendo titles sold for an average of $55.63, while third party titles sold for an average of $37.85.

This insane success on Nintendo's part isn't terribly surprising after news of how wildly popular New Super Mario Bros. Wii has been, even when compared to other Mario titles on the Wii.

The top 20 Wii games of 2009 featured only seven third-party titles, which Pachter listed in his post: EA Sports Active, Lego Star Wars, Madden 10, Tiger Woods 10, Deca Sports, Game Party, and Rock Band 2. Pachter also mentions that Mario and Sonic was in the top 20. He counts that one as a Nintendo game because "Mario" is in the title, but technically it was published by Sega in North America.

Pachter ends his post by suggesting that the split between hardcore and casual consumers on the Wii might be something like 25 percent hardcore versus 75 percent casual. He then asks the NeoGAF community what they think struggling third-party publishers should do to succeed on the Wii. I'll throw that same question out to you guys: How can companies other than Nintendo make some money on the Wii?

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]