Why don't "hardcore" Wii games sell?

I've been seeing this question over and over while browsing the blogosphere and various gaming forums, and it never seems to get conclusively answered. Certainly, there is no one answer, but I'd like to throw my hat into the ring with a couple of thoughts.

Many seem to speculate that games marketed towards "core" gamers simply do not sell on the Wii. This is supported by the fact that sales are dominated by "casual" games such as Wii Play and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics. The argument would logically continue that the entire base of the Wii is populated with young kids and old ladies (the casual crowd) and games like No More Heroes are wasting away on the system because no core gamers play it. There is merit in this, regretfully, but I don't think it's the crux of the issue. True, Nintendo has been increasingly courting casual gamers with the Touch Generations series for the DS and Wii staples like and Wii Fit and Wii Sports, but at the same time it hit the core gamer market with it's Zelda, Metroid, and Mario franchises. I don't think that it's Nintendo digging it's own grave with the core market--particularly not with games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl on shelves.

So why are fantastic games like Okami, No More Heroes, Zack and Wiki, etc., languishing in sales hell on the Wii? The best answer I can come up with: Marketing, or rather the lack of it.

I simply am not seeing TV spots for 3rd party Wii titles, and even internet ads seem to be few and far between. I can't speak for magazine ads, but I can only imagine they're just as rare as their TV counterparts. Gaming websites and magazines are raving about these games, but if nobody knows what they're about then nobody is going to buy them.

Let's take No More Heroes for a second. It is an excellent title in which a nerdy gamer attempts to become the number 1 bounty hunter in a blood-soaked open world experience--based purely on that one-sentence description of the game, they should be printing money. Now, to clarify, we're not talking about GTA level sales, but it should be a million-seller at the very least. Problem is, there seemed to be absolutely no advertising budget to support the game. In fact, the only ads I saw for the game at all were on IGN, a website that was basically giving the game free advertising in the first place by putting the review on the front page. There was no opportunity for the game to gain a mass-market appeal, because there was no attempt on the publisher's part to appeal to the mass-market at all--AND THIS GAME SCREAMS MASS-MARKET! Give it a couple of Adult Swim timeslot ads, maybe a couple during a Fox Family Guy episode and the gaming community should've been eating it up, the system it's on be damned.

3rd party publishers have been digging their own grave on Nintendo systems for years (Handhelds being the exception). It's a terribly vicious cycle: First, third party publisher puts out game on Nintendo console with no marketing budget, game doesn't sell at all. This in turn leads other third party publishers to be wary of publishing titles for Nintendo, so they downsize Nintendo development teams which leads to poorer titles with, again, no marketing budget. Even amazing efforts continue not to get ad-support, and they fail. The Nintendo 3rd party support falters, publishers move to other consoles and the cycle moves as it ever has.

I suppose the moral of the story is just that if publishers want games to sell on Nintendo consoles then they need to let gamers know that the games are there and what they're about.