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NintendoPie on 17 February 2012
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ryuzaki57 said:
NintendoPie said:
ryuzaki57 said:
This article has it right. The growing domination of Mario games on Nintendo's systems hurts third parties and thus makes it difficult to broaden the audience. 3DS is a perfect example : Mario games are still in the top 10 in every market while smaller releases drop like a rock (when they can manage a decent opening).

It isn't Mario or Nintendo's fault that the 3rd party titles do not sell well. The 3rd parties need to take it upon themselves that they need to promote their product more. Nintendo has their own things they need to deal with and promoting 3rd party titles is not on that list. Of course Mario genrates a huge chunk of attention but the 3rd party games need to get it together if they want their games to sell. Just look at the Japan SW list; MH and RE are up their in the Top 10 and they are both 3rd party 3DS games. It's because they created a name for themselves and marketed their product.

First off, Nintendo foots the bill for the promotion of many 3rd party games on its systems in the West. Do you think Capcom alone could pay for the enormous ad campaign for Revelations or Monster Hunter (the Wii one)? Ninty also actually publish some games that are from 3rd parties in Japan in the West (Dragon Quest IX, Professor Layton). Without this support to 3rd parties the software drought would be worse still because smaller publishers can't launch campaigns huge enough to rival Nintendo's own promotion of its games, so they can't attrack the audience by themsleves. It shows that 3rd parties doesn't stand a chance against Mario's monopoly. 

Second thing : you mention MH and Revelations. MH is the biggest franchise atm in Japan, it would sell on any system. The important thing to look at is how smaller releases perform. Beyond the Labyrinth, Ace Combat and Spirit Camera bombed, Rythm Thief did ok and only Revelations was really successful. In comparison, Vita's new releases perform more steadily given the limited userbase.

As for Revelations, even if it's doing great in Japan, the US launch (under 100K) is not that good and the game PLUMMETS in Europe (out of the top 40 this week). Meanwhile, Mario games are still on top...

@Bolded I know about that and totally agree, I was even going to include that in my response to you.

For the rest; Nintendo publishing and helping a 3rd party doesn't prove that Mario squashes them. DQ and Professor Layton would have done fine without a publishing from Nintendo.  And when you talk about MH you are backing my opinion. I said that 3rd parties need to make a name for themselves to be able to sell. MH did just that, that is why they are still selling well. RE didn't have the best opening in America but we can't see if it has legs yet so I would hold off from calling that a bomb in America.