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NYANKS on 05 September 2010
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RolStoppable said:
Doobie_wop said:

Marketing is far more a factor in how a game sell's than the actual quality of the game. The market is ignorant and misinformed, most of the general public don't know they want something until they are told what to want. Nintendo would never have been the success that it was if they didn't start grabbing celebrities for ad's, putting the Wii on talk shows and advertising the system non-stop for the first three years of it's release. The same applies to their games. 

You've seen the marketing push that's followed games like Halo 3, MW2, Gears of War, Wii Something Something, Mario and Gran Turismo. If little Timmy had never heard about Halo from his TV box or never read the back of a Mountain Dew can, he most likely would never have heard of Halo. People could say that word of mouth is the cause of their success, but that only works after the ad's kick in because they have to develop a large enough userbase to spread the word to a significant amount of people.

Your opinion on what games are innovative and important is skewed because I'm willing to bet that you don't play most of the PS3 games you've mentioned or you already have some sort of weird affiliation with another console that hinders your enjoyment of PS3 games. 

Marketing is a factor in how a game sells initially, in other words right after release. If a game isn't as good as people were led to believe by marketing, sales will drop sharply while the games that hold up to people's expectations enjoy long legs. Halo, CoD, GeoW, Mario and Gran Turismo fall in the latter category. So do Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit, but not Wii Music despite having a similar marketing push.

I also don't believe that Sony is that horrible at marketing their games. As a rule of thumb, if I see plenty of commercials for a game on German television, then the same holds true for the UK and the USA, because I highly doubt that companies invest more money in ad campaigns in Germany than in the bigger markets for video games. Uncharted 2 and LBP certainly had good marketing. But blaming the marketing is easier than admitting that the games themselves might be the problem. That doesn't mean that the games are bad, it only means that they aren't mega franchise material.

In the post you responded to I said that my opinion doesn't matter, it's the market as a whole who defines what is amazing and important in a video game. Therefore you questioning my opinion is absolutely irrelevant and even if you were correct, it would mean nothing because my personal opinion about games isn't the base of my argument.


So I'm assuming you agree with the hardcore vs. casual distinction, or something like it?  You say the quality of the game is not the problem, but simply the premise of the game, or should I say, the real or perceived complexity of them.  Basically, consumers can only stomach so many things or so much complexity.  I mean, Wii Sports.  Does what it does well.  The topic is sports, easy to get into.  A new way to play sports, the closest thing we have to playing real sports in the home I guess? Doesn't seem like to tough a sell. And very easy top play, very few buttons to memorize, mostly motion.  And some perception of a challenge, because the Wiimote is relatively accurate.  

Then we have Call of Duty, which I believe sells on par with some of those games.  A game about war, perhaps particularly resonant now.  Has a highly competitive structure, played by I assume a large majority of males.  I feel like the online perception of "all my friends have this, I should too!" helps this game alot. Then again, I guess that goes for the Wii series as well. 

Gran Turismo, a game about cars and racing them.  Again not a tough sell, cars are pretty big.  Quite similar to reality, graphics-wise and I believe physics-wise.  Allowing people to drive beautiful cars they may never even see in person in their lifetimes.  Has a legacy as being the BEST of all driving games.

It seems the most popular games ar the ones most easy to understand and relate to real life.  Either that, or they just do something innovative to some degree or simply raise the past bar a great, great deal.  Sports, War, Cars.  Easy sells, but still either amazing or innovative games or both. 

Wii SPORTS, Wii PLAY, Wii MUSIC, Wii FIT.  You can't get much simpler than this.  Couple the simplicity of these games with the new "I'm really doing it!" play mechanic, and I guess it's not so mindblowing to understand.

Sony does innovate, but they are big into technology. They like pushing the envelope in this way, and it has paid dividends ever since they started.  They've made some of the greatest games in the history of games.  They do what they do well, but Sony hasn't really made things so simple and basic like Nintendo did.  Note that it's not Okami, Little King's Story, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, No More Heroes 1 and 2, Muramasa or Trauma Team doing so incredible.  It's games like Rock Band (about guitars), Just Dance (about *gasp* DANCING) that are simple that do incredible. 

And of course Nintendo has some old ips that can do it too, like Mario.  Link does pretty well.

Sony makes some beautiful games.  However, they don't always make themselves look simple, approachable or easy to understand.  Shadow of the Colossus.  Very simple game.  Doesn't appear incredibly simple at first look, but it's not  that hard.  Appealing colorwise? Not particularly. The concept is simple, kill 16 monters.  But it was more than that.  Gamers thought it was beautiful.  However, the bottom line is people don't want art, they want fun and they want it to be simple and easy to understand and make sense of.  Shadow is fun and relatively simple, but not easy to tell someone about.  Not as easy as Gran Turismo or Call of Duty or Wii Sports.