Silent Hill: Shattered Memories designer on poor sales of rail shooters on Wii
“Without badmouthing people, a lot of the games they’ve been complaining about are rail shooters and a rail shooter wouldn’t have sold no matter what platform you put it on because it’s a rail shooter and that’s a niche genre that had its heyday back in the Dreamcast era. Ultimately the way we looked at it was that there’s a huge audience who own Wiis, we own Wiis and we know that amongst that audience there is a sub-sect who love dark stories, thrillers, mysteries and horror movies and so the development [of Shattered Memories] was all about removing the obstacles to those people enjoying this game. If they really enjoy a good horror story, they should enjoy this so we’ve tried to create a product that has broad appeal but does something really good and unique.” – Sam Barlow, lead designer of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
I’ve definitely seen a lot of Wii owners complaining about the amount of rail shooters that have been released for the system. But the unfortunate thing with Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space Extraction is that they’re high-quality games. In the future, perhaps developers and publishers will understand that the core Wii audience simply isn’t interested in rail shooters at this point and would like to try out a different type of experience instead.
