House of the Dead: Overkill only sold 45,000 copies in its first month. MadWorld sold 66,000. The numbers paint a dismal picture, but as Sega's MD of European Development Gary Dunn explained to GamesIndustry.biz, the first month is but a few strikes in the overall profitability painting.

"House of the Dead: Overkill was a profitable title for us...Whilst it had a rather sharp tail at full price, they do bubble away at a lower price point for a long time. You get your money back and a bit on full price, but over the years, if we do the final product return on investment, profits come from the lower price point."

His response to MadWorld sales is a bit less chipper, but nonetheless hopeful.

You have to push boundaries and explore. I think whilst MadWorld commercially didn't sell what we were expecting I wouldn't say it's game over for mature Wii titles from Sega.

I don't know. If I were Sega I'd be developing a bit of a complex by now. They create Sonic-themed drek we claim we don't want and it sells in droves, while games like MadWorld that we seem to enjoy barely make a drop in the bucket. What exactly is it we want from Sega?

Sega: It's not game over for mature Wii titles [GamesIndustry.biz]

The Hand Cannon attachment, from peripheral maker Venom, is available for pre-order for UK customers via retailer Amazon. It looks like our friends Down Under will get dual-wielding Overkill options courtesy of the "Bang Bang Box" bundle, which comes with two Wii Remote shells and the limited edition version of the game. Consider me jealous of Australian game releases for once!

No word yet on this coming stateside, but given the more realistic nature of these bright white plastic toys and their influence on our impressionable youth, we shan't hold our breath.

Official House of the Dead Overkill Hand Cannon (Wii) [Amazon via Wii Fanboy]

The publisher will have some of its more promising games — Madworld, The House of the Dead: Overkill, The Conduit — on hand when the show hits the Jacob Javits Center in New York City during the weekend of February 6th to the 8th. It's even importing folks from PlatinumGames and High Voltage Software for ogling and harassing purposes.

That's right, you'll play this stuff before even we do. No fair!

The developer, formerly known as Kuju London and responsible for both Battalion Wars releases, is upping the shock factor for the Western audience targeted House of the Dead. The game has blood mapping, giving bullet wounds plenty of flow, spatters on clothes and the environment. And the bosses, at least the one we saw, veer from the fantastical to the... fucking creepy.

The team at Headstrong is going for that grindhouse look with Overkill. That aesthetic isn't limited to the cheap film treatment — overexposed lighting, green-washed blacks, speckles, dust and scratches — it's also getting some "really good intentionally bad dialogue", according to Crooks. Suffer like G did?

Maybe, because Agent G is in the game, a prequel to the Sega AM1 developed series of arcade light gun shooters. He'll star with Detective Washington as a fresh from the AMS academy graduate who ultimately makes a career for himself shooting thousands of the undead.

That shooting can all be done with the Wii Remote, with flicks of the wrist for reloading and pans to the left and right with the remote's targeting reticule. It's still an on-rails shooter, but you'll be able to pan about 45 degrees beyond your normal view — not unlike the Wii's other popular zombie shooter, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.

In Overkill, you'll have more than just one gun to shoot all those zombies with. We saw a sub machine gun and magnum pistol, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. You'll be able to switch between them to mix up your strategy. With "more zombies on screen than you can shoot in a second", The House of the Dead Overkill ratchets up the tactics. You can slow fast moving zombies down by shooting out their knees, reducing them to a crawl.

Crooks also confirmed some gesture based attacks in the final version, making sense of the grenade power up he passed on during our demo.

Overkill has at least one other power up in the "mofo slo-mo" — name probably internal/tentative — that further overexposes the look of the game, slowing the action down to about half-speed. This makes it that much easier to boost your combo count and pull of brain evacuating headshots. It's cool.

Based on what we saw, including the disturbing glance at the level's boss, we're certainly excited about what Sega and Headstrong are doing with the series. It's certainly an interesting deviation, one dripping with rancid guts and style.

And wait until you see the press pack....

There's a lot of Wii fans worried about the decline of decent hardcore games on the system. No, guys — we're not making a 30 hour-plus RPG here, but we are making something you are going to have a complete blast playing. We are making it with a nod to one of the greatest arcade series of all time and we hope you'll just purely enjoy teaming up with buddies and posting those high scores on the forums with the rest of us...It'll beat the shit out of grooming a horse.

Don't ever accuse Sega of not knowing which of the converted they're preaching to.

GC 2008: The House of the Dead: Overkill [IGN]

Black. Magic. VIOLENCE.

"They've come for brains, you'll give them bullets" [NeoGAF Thanks, Ishaan!]