Malstrom: "My purpose is to reveal and inform people about Nintendo."

[KungKras]

happydolphin said:

KungKras said:
There are so many things wrong with that post.

True, but he also brought up some very good points, like SFIII not being a success but SF IV needing a breather to be what it was, a success. The same applies to NSMB. A sequel to Super Mario World back in 1998 was uncalled for when games like SM64, FFVII and GT were selling in the 10s of millions. The 2D mario series at that time was dwindling in popularity (I have graphs to prove it).

If 3D was so valued, then why are so many of the essential classics from that era 2D, like Neverwinter nights, Rayman, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Starcraft: Brood War, Age of Empires 2, Red Alert 2, etc. Both 2D and 3D gaming thrived, it's just that the playing field wasn't level, IE everyone wanted to make 3D games. 2D games sold well too during that era, and a true Super Mario Brothers would have still kicked ass in sales.

The same could be said about 8-bit games. They sold so well. Would they sell as well in a 16-bit era? I wouldn't gamble on it.

Why would Nintendo give a game that sells less than 2D Mario more than quadruple the budget, effort, and production values? Noone is saying they shouldn't make it, but it is obvious that their priorities are wrong.

And that's exactly what I said in my NSMB2 thread, yet I got bashed for asking for that, even by OP of this thread.

Keep in mind, NSMB doesn't require the resources a new 3D mario does (3D games are almost always more dev resource intensive than 2D games). There is a sweetspot where adding development resource will honor NSMB's sales power (20M+) and not waste resources. Ultimately, whether AAA or not, the cost should be greatly lower than 3D Mario, so it would be ludicrous to expect the same investment for both.

2D platformers never stopped selling, however, they stopped being produced, you have NO data to support your claims about Super Mario Brothers having to go away for it to have sold as well as it did. And please stop saying nostalgia, I never had the 2D games, yet I bought, and like NSMBW more than the 3D ones, these games selling because of nostalgia is a dogma that is getting awfully repetitive.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4456481

It's the green line that makes the most sense tbh.

The only argument I've heard to counter this so far is that SMW was not a good enough sequel to SMB3. I can accept that, but you can't say SMW wasn't a dedicated videogame development. It was a AAA game. Rushed maybe, but AAA. Can't say the same about the upcoming NSMB2, which is rushed, and clearly not AAA from what we've seen so far (I'll just leave it at that). It'll probably still sell because there is now a market for garbage.

Bringing new content to the SMB series is all Nintendo have to do to keep sales high.

In today's market, yes that's a fact. They need to bring it back since there is still sales potential. Back then, it was time for SM64, it was time for something fresh; the sales were stagnating.

It's pretty obvious that Street Fighter suffered from the Guitar Hero effect during that time, just look at all the versions of Street Fighter 2, the market was exhausted.

Yup, and 2D Mario at the time was not doing too too much better, even if they weren't saturated with versions, people just didn't want it as much anymore.

The same could not be said for 8-bit games in the 16-bit era. You're pitting an era against an era and somehow equating it to comparing games in the same era. All the games I mentioned were 32-bit games. 2D vs 3D is not the same as 8-bit vs 16-bit. 2D and 3D had distinct advantages and disadvantages in the 32-bit era, but devs favoured 3D anyway. Try doing Heroes III in N64 3D graphics and see i it would look as appealing.

Of course it was dwindling in popularity after the childish themes in Yoshi's Island and after a 2D Mario not having been released for a while. That's not an indicator of anything. All we know is that it sold well in the beginning of the 16-bit era, the market was not satisfied with yoshi's island, and then when proper mario bros games are made again, they still sell like crazy!

I'm sorry if I ignored the graphs, but I couldn't figure out how to read them xD. Can you tell me how the research in them was conducted, what they display, and how I'm supposed to read them please, they were confusing :P

You say that sales were stagnating and there was time for something fresh, but if SM64 is to be considered mainline Mario, it just made the stagnation worse! I don't think a proper sequel near the end of the SNES would have tapped the market too much, a launch SMB and a late SMB on each console seems pretty reasonable to me. I also belive an SMB game would have sold more than SM64. just look at how much SM64 made the franchise decline from SMW!

How do you know that people didn't want it as much anymore? If it was because interrest had declined, then that can be explained by the lack of new games in the series. Street Fighter 3 is not the same because capcom had exhausted the market, while Nintendo only released one version, and waited a few years between releases (between SMW and SMW2 and SM64) Market exhaustion would not be that big a problem for Nintendo.