Gamerace said:
What I'm getting at, and many here are missing the point, is that while there's nothing wrong with making Wii Music, nothing wrong with the 2-5m sales it'll likely get, eventually, what's wrong is that clearly Nintendo was expecting this to be the next Wii Fit or Wii Sports and from the looks of it, it won't be. They could have and probably should have launched this in February (or this fairly empty summer past) and put another major seller in for the holiday season instead. Mind, I'll say it first, Wii are still selling out so what does it matter? Yes, Wii's will be sold out all over except Japan as usual for Christmas. It's an image thing people. The mass market is heavily influenced by image. Right now Wii is this cool, innovative, fun, must have thing. By putting so much empathize on Wii Music and it underperforming it can be made by competition to give the illustion that 'the fad is ending'. That could be utter rubbish but that's what FUD campaigns are. Releasing often misleading information (or even blantantly false - like PS2 having Toy Story graphics) to create Fear, Uncertainy and Doubt. The fact that due to higher production levels Wii's may finally be widely available on store shelves after Christmas may falsely add to such a FUD campaign. That leaves it to WSR to move all those Wiis off shelves again to counter such (ridiculous but possibly effective) claims of fadness. The problem with that is avg consumer thinks the Wii already does what WiiMotionPlus is adding. Therefore they won't see it as new or novel, just having more Wii Sports type games. Which is fine on one hand but doesn't create the buzz Nintendo was clearly hoping Wii Music would. Now this may never happen and people have correctly commented that Sony and MS are poorly positioned to capitalize on this. I am merely noting that Nintendo has made there first misstep or incorrectly judged their own market for the first time since the Wii began. Wii Music will be successful in and of itself, it's just not the universally loved game Miyamoto was aiming for. And that gives the competition an opening to spin FUD. Most likely Wii will cruise until WSR comes in to boost interest again. But if WSR doesn't and interest starts to fade and the Fad FUD begins to take hold; remember you heard of it here first. |
If the competition has that good of marketing then they would already be winning. Otherwise sales generates success and if we both agree that Wii Music will still sell well enough to be considered a success then there's not much the competition can do.
Now as for image of Ninty dissing the core gamers then this was an issue. It's funny because a few months ago... before E3 maybe... I wrote an article talking about how Ninty needs to give more attention and PR to the core gamer as it could hurt them in the long run. My suggestion was to bundle a core game with the Wii package alongside Wii Sports to show to the media and gamers they support all. Funny how everyone dissed that as silly and Ninty not need it. And then later on the backlash after E3 that Ninty doesn't support core gamers and eventually Ninty changes their stance and makes it a part of their PR. People should just listen to me more often... I can be quite useful haha.
