Nintendo sucks at marketing its older-teen blockbusters

[Mr Khan]

NightDragon83 said:
Wow, those are some sad numbers for Prime 3, arguably the best in the series. The Wii sold a bajillion units, yet MP3 couldn't even come close to 2 mil WW, and couldn't even break 1mil here in the US.

The OP is spot on about Nintendo's marketing and advertising. Unless you were a hardcore gamer or Ninty fanboy at the time, you had no clue that Prime 3 was coming out on the Wii prior to its release because there was NO advertising of any kind until the week of its release. Nintendo was even criticized for this point blank by many gaming journalists for years, and yet they still went ahead with their policy of 1: not revealing new games until it's within months of their release date (which means no hype buildup at all), and 2: not advertising their games at all unless it has Mario, Pokemon, or Wii in the title.

For further proof, just look at the Wii U. We didn't get any concrete info on the console's price, launch date and launch titles until TWO MONTHS before launch, and heading into 2013, aside from Pikmin 3 and Bayonetta, we have absolutely NO IDEA what Nintendo or even 3rd parties have planned for the Wii U after January or February. Meanwhile if you're a PS360 gamer, you know of plenty of AAA titles coming out for your console of choice in just the first half of 2013 alone, like new Gears, God of War, The Last of Us, Metro Last Light, Bioshock 3, GTAV, etc.

What the hell is Nintendo's PR and marketing department DOING???!?!?!?

I think the idea is to avoid Last Guardian/Versus XIII/Dragon Quest X/Agent type debacles. You don't want to create hype for a project, and then see it fall through for whatever reason, then have to deal with backlash. Better to wait until the game is really ready to go, in their mind.

I don't agree with it either, but i do think that's the justification. The problem with that strategy is that if you don't show people that you're doing something, they'll assume that you're doing nothing.