Nintendo sucks at marketing its older-teen blockbusters

[Nem]

happydolphin said:

Nem said:

 You still dont understand. You dont know what segmentation is, you dont know know the logic behind producing and aiming a product at a market.

Marketing isnt something you can define that easily. I dont know where you found that definition, but it is certainly very incomplete.

Dr. Philip Kotler defines marketing as “the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit.  Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services.”

Do you understand now? Can we agree that the "mature"games Nintendo makes are good? If they are good it means they are well marketed on the product side. I dont know wich target they are actually aiming for, but if they expect bigger sales it can only be because the news of the game didnt reach all the customers it should. This is either because the product wasnt good enough for the needs it was trying to satisfy, wich i guess isnt the case, or they failed to deliver the message to the target it was aimed at. Delivering the message is the job of Advertisement. What you are saying is that everything is wrong including the products, the price, the placement, when in fact the problem is just the communication. You are saying everything is wrong, when in fact only 1/4 is. That is hardly what i consider accurate.

Choose between these what you think is wrong:

Price

Product

Placement

Promotion

Tell me what you think is wrong from those, because when you say the Marketing is wrong you are saying they are all wrong. Also, drop the arrogance, i have legitimacy to tell you what these things are since i do have a degree on it. I am teaching you here and you are squabling at me. I can just leave you in ignorance if you'd rather.

A decent post, but I'll try to convince you that I understand, and this whole thread revolves around the idea of marketing.

Price:

This one is ok. However, Nintendo has a tendency to keep their prices high, so this could use some work too. I believe Prime stayed a high price for a long time (too long imho).

Product:

Like some were mentioning in the thread, there may be parts of Prime that may have been a bit too slow paced to make them instant hits, and things like making the character fully powered at game start was suggested (though I believe Corruption uses that idea iirc).

Placement:

I need a little more details regarding this. Does this ask "where should we sell our games, in what retail outlets, in what regions?".

Promotion:

Well, this one you know how I feel about it, so yeah the advertising is inadequate.

In summary,

A hit needs to be designed as a hit from A to Z. My main example in this thread for that point was Assassin's Creed. That was well marketted.

 

Placement is the distribution network and getting the product to consumers. So, yes, its retailers, or nowadays theres the option of online networks.

So you think its a problem all around (maybe except placement?). I just wish you made it clearer on the opening post. I can somewhat agree with those arguments, but i revert to my original post at replying that those might have been intentional as to not damage the nintendo brand. On the other hand, i guess if they are publishing titles like NG3 and Bayonetta 2 maybe that is not the case at all, at least not anymore.

Also another important difference is that Nintendo is first-party and therefore their target has to be in their userbase for the most part. The logic conclusion would be not to develop games for that target, but Nintendo now seem to want to atract that croud to their console aswell, wich is not a bad idea, but it does means that sales will be low on the first titles as people make the transition. To convince someone to buy a console and to convince someone to buy a game are different processes, something that Ubi Soft doesnt need to worry about as much since they can release their games on different systems (they can go after the consumer, while Nintendo is constricted to their market). In that regard you could say that their marketing is faulty, as their games are made available to the same audience everytime. The marketing on the Wii U in this case, needs to be different as to atract more of the "mature" gamers so it corrects the games marketing, in this case the audience they are targeted at, to ensure better sales.

The games themselves could use some more imediate appeal. I think they are trying to do that, but its not gonna happen from night to day. And i think that they are going to need to produce several of those titles to atract the "mature" gamer audience to purchase a Wii U.

In conclusion, i think the problem is the audience and not so much the games, even though for the audience to be there they will need to seriously bet on not only the more action oriented games but making the Wii U a credited venue for those gamers. All this without damaging the Nintendo brand. Its a hell of a challenge.