Wii is 'fools gold' says high profile member of an industry-leading developer, Michael Pachter says MetaCritic scores aren't that important, 2D Boy says they are

“A lot of these games that you think are the perfect game for Wii don’t sell because companies don’t have the money to market them. Whereas Nintendo is spending gazillions of dollars marketing their games. It’s fool’s gold, the Wii. It looks great, but it’s very hard to get money out of it. It’s an empty mine for most software developers, including the big ones. It’s Nintendo games that people buy on those platforms, and a few others. If you spend the money to go after the audience on Wii, it’s pure risk.” - unnamed high profile member of an industry-leading developer

“I think that Metacritic scores are irrelevant for people who don’t look at them - how’s that for obvious? While there are many Wii owners who are hardcore and who care very much about scores, there are many - perhaps half - who are quite casual, and wouldn’t know Metacritic if it fell on them. Clearly, somebody’s buying Carnival Games, Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum, etc.. A well positioned game with an interesting concept can sell well on the Wii regardless of review scores, and I think that is what Peter’s talking about.” - Michael Pachter

“…for indie guys like us, Metacritic and review scores matter a lot. In fact we link directly to them from our web site. So does Steam. It makes a lot of sense - potential players don’t feel comfortable dishing out cash for some random unknown indie game without an aggregate thumbs-up from solid reviewers.” - World of Goo developer 2D Boy