Top-Selling Games of 2007: Social Gaming Rules

Feb. 14 1:46 PM by Lynxara

Here's something to spend today thinking about. The New York Times took a look at the ten best-selling titles for 2007 and found only one, Assassin's Creed, that was a traditional hardcore title. The rest? Mass-market social games like Guitar Hero and Wii party games.

Wii Play was the No. 2-selling game of last year even though it received an abysmal score of 58 out of 100 at Metacritic.com, which aggregates reviews. Mario Party 8 for the Wii made the list at No. 10 with a similarly bad Metacritic rating of 62. Both Wii Play and Mario Party 8 are basically collections of mini-games, like table tennis, portrayed through simple graphics. To someone steeped in game lore, that's pretty lame. To someone who just bought a Wii for the family, that's pretty cool.

What's interesting is that NYT takes this as a sign that games as a medium are finally maturing, pointing out that critical darlings are rarely sales darlings when it comes to movies, TV, or books. This is still an ugly situation for hardcore games, which tend to demand bigger budgets than more casual titles. If they can't make a return on investment, then it's inevitable that fewer will be produced.

Comments

Actually I wonder if this is more good news for the Wii than just what it appears on the surface. If hardcore games can't make back as much of their profit, and the Wii has the cheapest developments cost by far, does that mean even more that the Wii is the future of indie hardcore gaming?

 

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