‘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!
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…”
So with ‘The House of the Dead: Overkill’ and cult action game ‘MadWorld’ not selling particularly well and The Conduit performing averagely, you might think that Sega have had enough trying to woo the ‘hardcore’ Wii crowd to buy their games and stick with the casual market that bought ‘Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games’ by the bucket load.
Fortunatey this is not the case as recently in an interview with wired.com, Sega President Mike Hayes and Sega Vice President of Marketing Sean Ratcliffe had some words to say about whether there would be further support of Sega’s mature titles on Wii:
“Absolutely. You’ll see more games in that genre coming from us.”
Short and sweet but that’s all we need to know! Head inside to hear more about there thoughts on why Madworld didn’t set the sales charts alight.
High Voltage Software are fast becoming a treasured Wii developer for Nintendo, similar to how Rare were during the SNES and N64 days. Their FPS ‘The Conduit’ has just been released and the developers are promising better and more ambitious follow-up games with ‘The Grinder’ and ‘Gladiator A.D.’.
Head Honcho of HVS, Eric Nosfinger, is feeling the pressure but says the studio is a talented one and they are confident for the future:
“We do feel the pressure to continue to make great games. One of the great things about High Voltage is the passion. The teams here are some of most dedicated people that I have ever worked with and I am continually impressed by how much quality work they deliver. This passion is what drives our studio and recently we have only seen it increase. More than anything, we want to be known as the studio that makes fun games that push the perceived limits. Although we have accomplished a lot over the past 16 years, it really feels like we just graduated and now it is time to apply what we’ve learned and prove we are great developer. We are only just getting started. We have so much more we want to do…We want people to play the game because we think that anyone who does is going to enjoy the experience. As to sales estimates, we humbly hope it outsells every game ever made. [laughs] Seriously, we sincerely hope we have earned Wii owner’s support in our efforts. The more support we receive, the more we will funnel those profits into even better original games for them.”
So onto the future, what plans do they have for The Grinder? Matt Corso, HVS Art Director explains after the break (Playtest videos through there too!).
We already know that The Conduit developers, High Voltage, have some exciting new technology that they say push the Wii’s capabilities to the limit. The only problem is development of The Conduit was too far gone to include this tech in that game. All is not lost though as the developers will be unveiling their new IP at E3 in a few weeks and promise “that we are continuing to push our technology to the absolute limit in order to deliver experiences that are beyond jaw-dropping.”
If you’re as excited as me you may want to read the full press release after the link. Read more…
For those of you in Europe that haven’t pre-ordered High Voltage’s FPS The Conduit, you may want to do so from play.com who are now offering this Special Edition version. It will set you back £29.99/EUR 38.99 and as well as the game itself includes embossed silver-effect slipcase packaging, hints and tips guide and three unlockable items: re-skinned all-seeing eye, agent skin for multiplayer and drone skin for single-player.
You can order your own copy over at their website. Happy days!
Up until now all the footage we have seen for The Conduit has involved big guns and explosions and it would be easy to forget that there is a point to the gameplay! This trailer helps fill in some details.
Following on from Sega’s press day showcasing The Conduit from High Voltage Software comes this new multiplayer footage of the games online action. There’s also a few more tidbits following the link. Read more…
High Volatge’s Matt Corso, the head honcho behind the upcoming Wii FPS ‘The Conduit’ has said there is a long way to go as far as maximising the Wii’s graphical output is concerned.I am quite excited to see the Wii getting some decent looking games at last such as The Conduit and Dead Space which both look gorgeous.Read more…
