San Diego (CA) - A new study seems to go paradoxically against the Wii's success, claiming that "Mature" games sell better than less violent titles.

The Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) group, a new firm tracking the video game industry, released a report on the impact of video game ratings.

According to the report, games with an M rating received higher average review scores and higher average sales than any other rating.

The study, which looked at 406 games (219 retail titles and 187 downloadable titles), also said that "highly rated titles" sold on average five times more copies than those with lower review scores.

The M rating is much more selective than other ratings.  Low-budget publishers tend to steer clear of the gore and violence that warrants an M, leaving mainly high cost, high profile games to carry the restrictive rating.

Despite what the EEDAR's report shows, the Wii has continued to be the best-selling console all year.  The Wii currently has less than 10 M-rated titles.

What needs to be considered

Sep 11, 2007 06:44     

They only briefly mentioned this, but low-budget games usually aren't M rated. This means the floods of "Office Max Software Isle" quality games that come out, the games that nobody outside of people's mom are going to touch are the games that are being ignored, while high-budget and high quality games like Bioshock or Halo, or MGS, or what have you are selling well. Put into context, it's probably like that for good reason...

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But does the wii sell games?

Sep 11, 2007 09:09     

Everybody who bought the wii, played wii sports to death, and after that what? The wii is lacking games, it has lots of casual but low quality games, the only AAA games so far are Zelda and Metroid (which isn't selling that well, because, the wii isn't for hardcore gamers- surprise!) Smash Bros will sell millions though, it's to be expected. Wii gamers are hungry for a AAA casual game, so it'll fit perfectly.

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Wii-Wii

Sep 11, 2007 09:38     

The Wii is CHEAP ($250) geared toward women & children and those with short attention spans. Without the controller (i.e. the gimmick), it really isn't much. It can play normal games (which may not look too great), but that doesn't seem to be the focus. The Wii is selling a lot of systems but how many GAMES is it selling? Most of these people are just fiddling with WiiSports.
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Pyschology at work

Sep 11, 2007 13:47     

There may be an aspect of psychology at work here. If you make a game which has the highest potential for sales in the 17 age group, and it gets a rating of "E" or "T", how many titles will you sell? I suspect that the number will be lower than if you introduce some violence, blood, and/or gore to get the "M" rating, even if it does not contribute to the game as a whole. Movie companies do the same thing - I recall seeing several movies with "R" ratings that received the rating for including one (1) instance of the F-word. Without said "profanity," the movies would have been rated "PG" or "PG-13," and the adults who were the target audience would not go to see them.

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