Is Nintendo focusing to much on Japan?

[Joelcool7]

RolStoppable said:

Joelcool7 said:

Roma said:
do you regret making some of your threads after making them?

1) Yes some of them, I create a lot of threads and am bound to make mistakes from time to time. Do I regret making this thread, no I don't. Rol saying I needed to research the subject and pointing out that the conference took place right prior to TGS, what honestly does he believe I was not aware of that? No shit I am aware of it!

2) Me quoting Rol was not because I think he is a good solid source for information. I quoted Rol saying Nintendo was paying Capcom off because in another thread a large amount of users supported that idea and Rol was the one who everyone will actually know. Now with a little research we see that Nintendo always tells us when they pay for exclusive content. Nintendo and Capcom have a great partnership and honestly there is no reason other then rumors to believe a pay off was made. People tell me not to say things without doing research, but what research proves that MH4 was bought by Nintendo? The facts really lead the other way.

3) In fact a lot of the media have very different reasons for MH4 being exclusive to 3DS. Such as lower dev costs, a great relationship with Nintendo. Publishing deals outside Japan.

But enough about my lack of research, to the comments people are making about UbiSoft.

4) Rol states UbiSoft made money on Quantity and not quality. A quick look over their charts and I disagree. They made their money by targetting girl gamers and  mothers. Look at their line-up Imagine and the Petz series dominate the DS sales wise, look at the highest selling title Imagine:Babyz 2.82 million copies sold.Or another title Imagine:Fashion Designer 2.79 million copies now was that just quantity? I think those 2.79 million gamers definatly thought the game was quality. Even UbiSoft's Rabbids series sold over 700,000 copies which is very good for a handheld game.

5) UbiSoft made a killing on their DS games, Nintendo made a killing in royalties. Nintendo probably sold hardware thanks to alot of these female focused titles. Then lets look at UbiSoft on PSP, Assasins Creed on PSP sold over a million copies and so did Lumines. Of course UbiSoft had more success on DS with their Imagine and Petz titles but they definatly impacted PSP sales as well. Considering how low Sony's software sales were on PSP Assasins Creed doing this well shows that it was a very big title! The highest selling title on PSP according to VGChartz only broke the 6-million mark. So Assasins Creed is up their listing within the top fourty highest selling PSP games.

6) A little research shows that UbiSoft is very important to Nintendo's handhelds and even Sony's handhelds! If Nintendo wants to attract female gamers like they did with DS they need Imagine and Petz titles, if they want to steal market share from Sony and compete then they need Assasins Creed and other western titles.

7) I don't believe for a second that western titles are not a force on handhelds! Look at PSP's sales figures the top ranking games other then Monster Hunter where are the japanese games? Square-Enix and Capcom are high in the charts but look GTA outsold Monster Hunter, but I thought that Western portable titles didn't sell well? I also see Activision and EA games pocked throughout the top 50 list.Lucas Arts, Warner Bros. Sales figures prove that the PSP was largely sold by western third party developers.

8) Then look at Nintendo's top twenty DS games. 17 of them are from Nintendo themselves but what about the other three titles they must be Japanese right? Well one Mario and Sonic at the Olympics was sorta first party. So number 15 is from Majesco and number  20 on the highest selling list for DS and the first non-First party title is.... Lego StarWars from Lucas Arts! But wait that must be an anomaly because Western developers weren't that successful on DS, wait out of the top fifty and excluding games published by Nintendo themselves I see Activision, EAGames, UbiSoft, Majesco , Disney Interactive, Warner Bros. Umm what about the Japanese developed games? Where's Capcom or Square-Enix? Well Square actually has two of the top fifty titles, but Capcom is non-existent.

9) A little research and look at the handheld industry shows that while MH was extremely important to PSP. Western developers and publishers outside of Nintendo's first party studios sold more software and in turn more hardware. Yes Nintendo's first party content made in Japan trumped everything. But as far as third party content is concerned western third parties dominated the handheld market.

10) Even Monster Hunter on PSP could take on RockStar's GTA. So please arguing that North America is not important or somehow less important than Japan is insane. Also seeing as UbiSoft's titles on DS made up a good chunk of the non-first party titles in the top fifty DS games I would say it proves that they were very important to Nintendo's success.

You don't interpret data correctly, because you have formed your conclusion before you look at it and then piece everything together until it fits. I'll go through your post step by step.

1) You knew about it, yet still framed the original post in a way that made you look ignorant. Like I said: Conclusion first, everything else is secondary.

2) Sure, Nintendo always tells us everything about their exclusive deals. Conclusion first, ...

3) Publishing deals outside of Japan ARE a way to pay for exclusivity.

4) Ubisoft's DS games. The list contains obvious errors, so let's just say they published 150 games that sold more than 50 million copies in total. There is no consistence here, they just put out a lot of games. You name a couple of Imagine games that did well, but they published more than 30 of them. Chances are that Ubisoft made more people stop buying DS games than keep buying DS games, because they released so much trash.

5) Nintendo software sold the hardware to females. Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart DS, NSMB and more. Seriously, Nintendo didn't need Ubisoft who lived like a parasite off of the base Nintendo built. A game ranking in the top 40 bestselling PSP games really doesn't mean much, because the cutoff for that is a flat one million in sales.

6) See above point. Nintendo software sold the hardware to females.

7) The PSP sold more due to brandname than anything else in the West and the sales figures for software are nothing to brag about to begin with. There's 22 Western million sellers and only six of them sold more than two million copies.

8) So the highest selling Western game on the DS barely sneaked into the top 20 of the bestsellers list. Hardly a good way to prove the importance of Western games. Likewise, it just isn't a good way to use Capcom's non-existence in the DS's top 50 to imply that Monster Hunter suddenly isn't important. What you look at in the end is that there is only one Western game on the DS and PSP combined that managed to outsell Monster Hunter and that is GTA: Liberty City Stories on the PSP.

9) That's just stupid. Where did third party software apparently do well? On the PSP. Which handheld tanked after a short while in the West? The PSP. The lesson learned from this should be that you better not bet on Western third parties selling the hardware.

10) On the PSP, GTA is #1 and #4 and Monster Hunter is #2 and #3. Also, nobody bought Monster Hunter to crack the PSP in an easy way. Furthermore, MH pushed PSP hardware drastically in the last few years while GTA did barely anything for the PSP. Ubisoft's "good chunk" of the DS's top 50 amounts to two games (#38 and #39).

As for UbiSoft, they released 36 Imagine games for DS. Of those 36 titles 8 of them sold over a million copies which is a major feat. Though I must admit ten of them failed to sell over 100K. Likewise of the Petz games 19 of 26 broke the 100k mark with two selling over a million. Now yes UbISoft did release too many games. I guess you are both right and wrong. They released a huge quantity of titles which you are right about, however they also released alot of the biggest titles on DS. Regardless of the crap they put out they still managed to shift millions of copies.

Also do note that many of today's biggest franchises have failed to sell over 100K, including the mighty Street Fighter who had several titles fall short of 100k. If your talking over 100K but not a million look at Monster Hunter which while sometimes successful has also seen some pretty pittiful releases. Infact the first two Monster Hunter titles failed to break a million and Monster Hunter Tri on Wii was outsold by Imagine Babyz on DS. Just look at Sega for example only 7 of their DS games broke the million mark, while UbiSoft had twelve titles break that mark. Look at how many broke 100k Sega had 42 titles while UbiSoft had 113.

Lets look at Capcom on DS shall we they failed to sell a single million copy game. Not one, with far fewer and according to you higher quality titles not one game broke the million mark. Also of the 27 games , 7 of them didn't even shift 100,000 copies. Now yah Monster Hunter is a big franchise but Capcom has contibuted very little to Nintendo's DS success.

Square-Enix did a lot better then Capcom and in fact did almost as many million sellers as UbiSoft. 11 million selling games were released for DS, but that doesn't mean they too didn't have poor selling titles like UbiSoft, look several titles failed to break 100,000 copies. If anything Square is the most important third party that Nintendo has in Japan. According to the performance of Square titles on Nintendo hardware.

Now honestly I think UbiSoft probably killed their own sales with all these games. If UbiSoft had stuck to releasing say ten Imagine games the sales of those games probably would have been far better then releasing over 30. Same could be said for the Petz titles which UbiSoft flooded the market with.

However while UbiSoft did make more games, they created more successful titles then the competition did. Sure they also made more flops but if you look at how many titles sold over 100k their aren't that many that are truly flops. A handheld game has a very hard time breaking 100k regardless of publisher or developer.

But again I am not soully talking about UbiSoft. look at Activision they launched 7 million selling titles out of a total of 104 titles. Much like UbiSoft quite a few of their titles flopped. Activision had 75 titles break the 100,000 mark, showing yet again they launched more games that were more successful then Sega who is Nintendo's biggest Japanese 3rd party supporter. Even Majesco one of the struggling North American publishers managed to have 4 million sellers with 22 titles that broke 100k! THQ has 7 million sellers, Disney Interactive 9 million sellers

However this clearly shows western developers are not less important then Japanese ones. You pointed out RockStars success on PSP. I notice you limit your response to talking about UbiSoft and not the other publishers in NA. Look at the sales figures for DS and PSP and you'll note that a ton of the big sellers come from North American publishers.

How can you possibly argue that Japanese third parties are more important then North American ones? On what basis a single high selling PSP franchise? Yes North American publishers publish a shit ton more games thus leading to more flops, but it also leads to more successful titles. Japanese publishers on the other hand (Talking Square Enix) release fewer games with almost as many million sellers, however even Square has tons of flops.

Also look at where Square's games and Capcom's games sold? The most successful Square Enix title shifted only 1.18 million outside of Japan. Compare that to Western titles sales outside of Japan and you'll notice that even the best of the best coming out of Japan fails to outsell American titles anywhere else on the globe. Look at Monster Hunter's most successful title sold barely 1.02 million units outside Japan. Now Japan accounts for how much of the hardware sales for Nintendo platforms? For DS Japan was the smallest global market for Nintendo's hardware by a long shot. The sales for Wii are about 1/4th that of America and 1/3rd of Europe, so how exactly is Monster Hunter or any of the titles Nintendo announced going to impact sales outside of Japan?

Now as I admitted, this conference was held in Japan as a precursor to TGS. However that does not change the fact that all the major western titles are being dropped. If Nintendo has something from the west to announce they sure aren't hinting at it. Seriously its not just at this conference look at E3, how many western titles were announced there? Nintendo has already lost significant support from Activision and UbiSoft two of their biggest supporters on DS.

As for me seeing things with a bias, your right I definitely see things with a bias. But are you honestly going to say that you don't? I have seen many articles and threads that you have written based solely around your opinions and not facts, you then try to find facts to back those opinions the exact same way you say I do.

Its part of writting a post, I can try to remain as unbiased as possible but there will always be some bias, just like you. Because we have opinions and beliefs and no matter what those beliefs and opinions will always effect our threads and posts.