68soul said:
Your examples are totally correct and well explained, but sometimes, good games just can't catch a mainstream audience for some mysterious reasons: Okami always comes to my mind, a game of such a quality should easily have been (at least) a million seller, and then... it only sells a little bit more than 500k on two of the most successful consoles ever... very mysterious... Another strange thing: some games are supposed to fail due to a "kiddy look"... someone here told about Psychonauts (not released on a Nintendo console), but we could mention "Zack and Wiki", "Little King's Story" or "De Blob": quality games... colourful and cartoony, OK, but quality games, and they should "click" with the usual Nintendo userbase: and they just don't, or only have a "niche success"... In the past, i liked to view the Nintendo's "core userbase" as more open-minded than the ones of the other console makers, but with time, i realize that these people may be sheeps, too (but with other kinds of games): if a great action/adventure has Zelda written on it, it sells 7 millions, and when it's Okami, only 3% of these 7 million people will buy it... If a quality game needs to have "Nintendo" written on it to be "really" successful, then, there's really a problem, and i can easily understand the doubts expressed by many in the industry... even if to know some success, they should think about quality FIRST, which most just don't, at least not on Wii and DS like they usually do anywhere else (Ubisoft bein' the worst in that vein)... |
Little King's Story might be the one and only Wii game where I am genuinly perplexed as to why it didn't catch on. Although I have a couple of theories, such as the strange kiddy image not meshing with the complex and difficult gameplay, and the obvious lack of advertising. I still think it should have sold more though, it was pretty accessible I thought, and one of the most fun Wii games I've played. But really, almost any Wii game that didn't sell I could probably offer a good reason as to why it didn't sell, whether it be lack of advertising, niche concept, or crappy shovelware. It's all about knowing how to market your product and make it accesible, along with creating a genuinly fun game that will please as many people as possible.
And yes, I guess people tend to gravitate towards Nintendo games, sometimes blindly without questioning them, but you have to take a step back and question why that is. There is a reason people do this, because Nintendo has earned the trust of many with their quality games. If you buy a new Zelda game from Nintendo, you pretty much know you're going to get quality. This doesn't include the CDi abominations of course, which were not made by Nintendo :)
In the case of 3rd party efforts on Wii, it becomes far more difficult to trust them, and rightfully so, as 90% of them turn out to be crap. I will never get why so many 3rd parties can't crack the "secret" of making a quality Wii game when Nintendo continues to do so, but hopefully one day that changes, and once it does, the sales will follow.
