Why do developers act like Nintendo fans are obligated to buy their shitty games?

[gumby_trucker]

Capcom was in a difficult position in terms of fan relations exactly because some of the games it released for Wii were of high quality and clearly had real effort put into them - even if they weren't all your cup of tea. For example I can name 5 Capcom games alone that are worth buying new - Okami, Monster Hunter Tri, RE4: Wii, TvC, Zack & Wiki... Many of these were released for a budget price (usually $39.99) from day 1, so it's not like the required investment from consumers was that high. This probably created an impression early on that there was much more to come, and unsurprisingly, a backlash when that didn't happen.

What definitely made matters a lot worse than they needed to be were the many unkind remarks coming from Capcom's PR or other departments. These include the "Can't run RE5's title screen" remark, the "test game" remark and several more. This was a common trend this gen by many publishers and just goes to show you how unprofessional they can be. In this area they REALLY should take a lesson from Nintendo, who (for the most part) refrain from saying anything which can directly be perceived as negative or sensational about its competitors, or its partners.

A final point about the occasional good game not getting the sales it deserves, and something 3rd parties rarely understand about Nintendo gamers, is a certain level of trust that needs to be achieved between a company or brand and its consumers. Nintendo gamers as a whole are less likely to go online and check every last detail about a game before making a purchase, and more likely to go with trusted brands or ones that regularly receive positive word of mouth. The key to creating such a brand is two-fold: First games must be of a consistent level of quality and offer a reasonably consistent experience between releases, and second must have fairly consistent releases to maintain awareness of the quality of the brand. 3rd parties have for the most part failed on both these accounts, either by not maintaining quality (ex: the FFCC games that came out for Wii, Ubisoft's Ninja Turtles games and PoP games, Red Steel series could also fall in this category) or consistency (Castlevania and Soul Calibur both deviating dramatically from their expected formulas, not to mention the RE railshooters etc) or by not following through often enough for people to associate a new game with previous ones, thus effectively making it an "unknown" in terms of brand recognition (NBA JAM, Dead Space, Klonoa etc. - these games were not strong enough to stand on their own but as part of a series could have seen their userbase increase gradually).

Examples of brands that did a reasonably good job of avoiding these mistakes, and saw success because of it, are the CoD Wii series ofcourse, Rabbids series, Trauma series, We Ski series, Decca Sports series, Taiko no Tatsujin series (Japan) and more. Once again these are examples of games that were not necessarily brilliant or strong enough to stand on their own individually, but as a brand created enough value to warrant an investment from the consumer.

Bottom line is: if you don't actively create consumer trust, there is no reason to expect good sales, regardless of quality.