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Forums - Sales Discussion - Is Epic Mickey a lesson to third parties?

Squilliam said:

Lesson 1: Use licensed I.P. Check! Notice how the game sold in the U.S.  compared to the E.U where Mickey is far more popular than in Europe?

Lesson 2: Good game design is paramount no matter what innovation you want to bring to the table.

Lesson 3: Legendary game designers can do well on any game system. Hire more of them. (If you can)

Lesson 4: A game worth buying is a game worth marketing.

Lesson 5: Wii titles do well if they have important keywords like 'Party, Dance, Epic, Wii, Mario' in them. Try to make up your title with as many as reasonably possible. In this case we have 'Epic' and 'Mickey', Mickey being almost as well known as Mario these days in the U.S. sure helps.

This

Another aproach that works is bringing back old games from previous Nintendo consoles



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So first... it was destined to be a bomb, then it was destined to succeed... then it was a bomb, then it sold amazing.... and now people say that it was expected @_@

Sometimes...... i dont get how this works x_X



My sister and niece bought this game because they're Disney addicts.  If this holds true for most of those who bought this, I'd say this is more a testament to the selling power of Disney than the selling power of third party Wii titles.



Pixel Art can be fun.

Squilliam said:

Lesson 1: Use licensed I.P. Check! Notice how the game sold in the U.S.  compared to the E.U where Mickey is far more popular than in Europe?

Lesson 2: Good game design is paramount no matter what innovation you want to bring to the table.

Lesson 3: Legendary game designers can do well on any game system. Hire more of them. (If you can)

Lesson 4: A game worth buying is a game worth marketing.

Lesson 5: Wii titles do well if they have important keywords like 'Party, Dance, Epic, Wii, Mario' in them. Try to make up your title with as many as reasonably possible. In this case we have 'Epic' and 'Mickey', Mickey being almost as well known as Mario these days in the U.S. sure helps.

Boom Blox Bash Party didn't do so well...and that was a quality innovative title from...EA



@rolstoppable I do find it strange, thats why i said that there kind of pointless, but as for Wii as we have seen in the past, it is also sure to post abysmal sales (for the most part) The Wii is not that much viable when it comes to arcade racers, as another poster said they generally do better on PSP anyway. As for the quality, thats kind of my point, if your not going to do something right they shouldnt do it at all. Would you really buy Split/Second on Wii if it was just as crappy as the PSP version??? Are Wii gamers that starved for a taste of what the HD consoles get that they would buy a game that they know is going to be of mediocore quality anyway?? I really doubt that.



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I wonder if these sales would be possible from a sequel.  The original Boom Blox sold really well.  However it's sequel, which added tons of new content, better controls, and pseudo online, did not.  Steven Speilberg was even a big name behind the game. Red Steel 2 had a similar problem(although piracy probably was the greatest problem in this case).  Whether it be sports titles, puzzle, or racing or any other genre, when wii fans have their quota they are content.



Torillian said:

Could be a lesson about all those things, or it could just be a lesson that when you base a video game off one of the most popular cartoon characters and most well known IPs of all time it's likely to do well unless you totally fuck it up, which isn't really a lesson.

At first I was going to agree, but then I remembered that this isn't exactly the first bite at the apple for Mickey.  While most of them have been stinkers, I double-checked the sales for Mickey's Speedway USA ( a pretty solid title with nearly the same metacritic rating as Epic Mickey), and while it didn't sell terribly, it didn't sell all that great either.  So there's more to it than just this.



oniyide said:

 The Wii is not that much viable when it comes to arcade racers...

?



RolStoppable said:
Degausser said:

 Looking at the VGC figures I don't think it's hard to see the PSP had a better track record at selling Split Second type racers though. Clearly it has an audience, even if software sales have dried up it's still shown on numerous occations these realstic (In the loosest sense of the word) type racers can sell, whereas the Wii has a list of half a million sellers and a few slightltly above that which were released close to the consoles launch. 

 Neither really boasted amazing selling opportunities - but a handheld game is still the cheaper option which requires less resources and people working on it. I can't really get into a debate on the technology behind porting a video game, but from what I've gathered these PSP games which are on 360/PS3 (Dante's Inferno, Split Second, Army of Two) arn't literal ports of the PS3/360 but indepentely developed games that share alot of resources and that doing a similiar thing on the Wii (At an acceptable quality) would simply cost more money.

 Fair enough if just Disney did it (PSP port) and it was a one off occation but we've seen it happen on numerous occations now from EA, Namco, Konami etc, so I'm assuming there's got to be some sort of technological logic in it.

I find it hard to believe that publishers would be oblivious to the fact that the average quality of a third party PSP racing game was notably higher than their Wii counterparts. If you are going to make an SD version of a HD game, you might as well release it on the Wii as a straight port from the PSP version. oniyide makes the point that these PSP versions of HD games are mediocre, but then again, when has it ever been an issue for third parties to release games of questionable quality for the Wii?

There is no technological logic behind this. The very same third parties had no problem to quickly port PS2 games to the Wii early on. It really doesn't take a lot of effort to port between PS2/PSP/Wii and out of these three systems, as time passed by, the Wii easily became the platform with the highest potential for sales. Once again, if you go through the trouble to make an SD version of a HD game, you might as well make it available on all viable platforms (and the Wii is more viable than the PSP).

 I know what you're saying, but this isn't a one off in Disney's case and so I'm leading myself to believe that there must be more of a reason that these games hit the PSP and not Wii. You said it yourself, publishers happily ported some PS2 / PSP games, so why not these ones? There must be more of a reason then simply because they hate the Wii or something - and I'm trying to reason that. 

 From what I've seen, with alot of the titles on every platform like movie tie ins, the Wii / PS2 / PSP version is often develoepd by an entirely different studio to the PS3 / 360 / PC. Thus my logic is whereas a small team of people at Blackrock can get a PSP version up and running on minimal budget - to make an SD version which runs on the console would require more people, more money and as shown in other instances may require the hiring of another studio altogether. 

 So my guess is whereas 'downscaling' from PS2 / Wii to PSP is cheap and easy, maybe going the other way isn't? I don't really know enough about game technology to say so can anyone with a better knowledge help? I'm going off what I read and see, and while lots of Wii / PS2 games appear on PSP, I can't think of many previous PSP exclusives going in the opposite direction - aside from a few Sony games which were likely developed with the plan for porting all along.

 Publisher like money, and if putting these PSP games on the Wii was as easy as you let on, then they'd port them just like they did with the various PS2 ports at launch and whatever else.



Mickey was always the type of character who, if he was put into a game that was made right, it would work very well on the Wii. Think Sonic and Rayman also fall into this category. If they were made into a SMG and NSMBW style and scale games, they would be likely to sell in droves.

(yes I know there has been a load on Sonic games on the Wii, but yet to be one that fits this description).