‘The Conduit‘, ‘Madworld‘ and ‘House of The Dead: Overkill‘ did not exactly set the sales charts alight when they were released last year, far from it in fact!
Now Sega are attempting to milk a bit more cash from Australian gamers by compiling the three titles together in a pack called ‘Welcome To Violence’. Nice idea and the best part is it will only set you back about the price of one Xbox 360/PS3 game.
No word yet if this pack will see release outside of Australia yet but we wouldn’t be surprised.
Head inside for Sega’s press release if you feel that way inclined!
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On the latest 1Up podcast, SEGA studio director – Constantine Hantzopoulos, was very open about his companies stance on mature Wii titles.
With the dissappointment of low sales for ‘The House Of Dead: Overkill‘ and ‘Madworld‘ in 2009 followed up with underwhelming sales of EA’s ‘Dead Space: Extraction‘, it seems the end of support from SEGA for this type of content has been confirmed, even though in the past SEGA pledged they would continue support, it seems sales of EA’s shooter was the final nail in the coffin.
“I have to say that it was a space that was open and we took a gamble on it. It’s like, ‘Wow, there’s no mature games on the Wii. Is there an audience out there?’ We did some research, it said there was an audience out there. I won’t comment about Nintendo, they did champion The Conduit as a ‘this is a Nintendo game.’ And, you know, I think they did okay by us. At the end of the day, I just think that you’re seeing kids are skewing much younger towards next-gen. And that’s what I saw out of Conduit. Because not a bad game, visually it’s appealing, right? AI wasn’t that great. High Voltage’s first real effort as an indie developer, creating their own IP. And it was a good effort, right? And there’s always Conduit 2, right? …Anyone past 12 years old was playing 360 and PS3 shooters. And at that point, you can’t tell a 13 year-old, ‘But it’s on the Wii.’ Forget it, you know? That’s not what they see or hear. They’re not really interested in any techno-fetishist aspects of look how great it is on the Wii…And, you know, the effort that we put behind multiplayer on that game to basically get by friend codes and provide worldwide match-making and so on and so forth, I actually thought we dove too deep…”
More after the jump…
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Sega put their neck on the line with ‘House of the Dead: Overkill’ and ‘Madworld’ which were both mature titles developed specifically for the Wii that failed to do well at retail. The company have to be given credit for their efforts, especially for taking a big risk with these games on the console. You may think that would be it for Sega with mature Wii games? Luckily no, as Gary Dunn, MD of European development for Sega has this to say:
“House of the Dead: Overkill was a profitable title for us. Whilst it had a rather sharp tail at full price, they do bubble away at a lower price point for a long time. You get your money back and a bit on full price, but over the years, if we do the final product return on investment, profits come from the lower price point.”
The news wasn’t quite as good for Madworld but Gary remains upbeat. Head inside for the rest…
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