| Soundwave said: I think you're being naive with some of these points.
GoldenEye on the Wii is a better FPS than a lot of PS3/360 shooters and sold far less. Xenoblade is the best JRPG this generation most likely, but probably wouldn't clock in the top 10 JRPG sales this gen.
Does this mean Metroid Prime 3 was made with 1/20th of the "love" that Call of Duty is? Because they sure aren't equal in 'preference' from consumers (meaning sales).
When people are talking about core gamers they are talking about the people who buy and play games like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Halo, Uncharted, etc. The defining characteristics of these games are that they are designed and tailored towards the desires of players who are experienced gamers and perhaps even full on enthusiasts. Now sometimes a 'core' game can become so popular that it transcends these boundaries and is even popular with audiences outside it's intended target market (ie: kids and Kim Kardashian, lol, wanting Call of Duty). Nintendo-centric fans tend to rail against the hardcore/core label and don't want it because generally they don't want to acknowledge that there is a rather large base of players that fuel sales of games like CoD/AC/Gears of War/Halo/Uncharted etc. that aren't really interested in Nintendo's own products per se. |
It's worth noting that all of the relevant points are stated without explicitly stating something that I thought would be obvious: "All else being equal". As such...
2. You're comparing Goldeneye 007 on Wii to FPSes in general on 360 and PS3. It's not quite fair to do that. But if you compare it with Goldeneye 007: Reloaded on 360 and PS3, you'll see what I mean. The 360 and PS3 games didn't make proper use of the hardware, and otherwise was a lacklustre port. The Wii version sold best by a fair margin.
6. Again, "all else being equal". You can't compare sales of Metroid to sales of Call of Duty on a different platform. What you can do is compare, for instance, Carnival Games and Rec Room Games. The first one was an inspired (as in, they saw the Wii and said "what if we did THIS with it?"), while the second one was a game made to leverage the "casual gamer market". One sold almost 4 million copies. The other hasn't even broken 400,000. When it comes to more traditional games, compare Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles with Dead Space: Extraction. Or Resident Evil 4 with Dead Rising: Chop til you Drop. Or Xenoblade Chronicles (currently just under 800,000 sold) with Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers.
10. The defining property of core gamers is that they buy a lot of games. Hence "core". They're the people that are most profitable for game companies. Indeed, the term "core consumer" is the general equivalent, which applies to other industries. Note the difference between "core gamer" and "core game". Core games are games that are dependable, that sell a lot of copies. Core gamers are gamers who buy a lot of games. Wii Play is a core game. No More Heroes is not. A gamer who buys every CoD that is released for their console, but doesn't buy any other games, is not a core gamer - they're buying maybe 6-7 games in the entire generation.
Meanwhile, Call of Duty, etc, are not "designed for expert gamers". I mean, CoD's online certainly is, but that's a different kettle of fish. The vast majority of people who buy Call of Duty are actually casual gamers. Casual gamers buy a game occasionally, play it, stop playing it, and move on with their lives. They may occasionally invite friends around to play a game, or set up to play against them online, but it's just an occasional thing. They are no different from the bulk of the people who buy games like Just Dance or Carnival Games (although CoD gamers are more likely to be teens or twenties males, whereas Just Dance is likely to be females of that group and Carnival Games is likely to be families). And there's no such thing as a "casual game", by the way - just throwing that out there. Nobody creates a game with the aim being to have people play it once in a while a little bit.
Matzy - it's fascinating that you're so close to actually getting what I'm saying, and yet so far at the same time. As you said, different games sell consoles to different markets. More importantly, making a strong game for a system will create a market for games like it on that system. When Nintendo made Wii Fit, it created a market on the Wii for people who want fitness games. Thus the success of games like Zumba Fitness, EA Sports Active, and My Fitness Coach. The success of Resident Evil 4 set up some market for various horror and similar titles, which benefited Resident Evil Chronicles, House of the Dead, MadWorld, Silent Hill, etc. The success of Guitar Hero III (it sold best on Wii amongst current-gen platforms) set up the market for later Guitar Hero titles (Guitar Hero: World Tour, Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Metallica, Warriors of Rock, Smash Hits, Van Halen... they ALL sold best on Wii)... and once the market was set up, Rock Band also did well (Rock Band started out squandering the opportunity with the first couple of games), with The Beatles: Rock Band, LEGO Rock Band, and Rock Band Country Track Pack all doing best on Wii.
But it's important to actually leverage the market, otherwise it will dry up. Call of Duty 3 set the FPS market up on the Wii. Then nothing else was made for that market for two years, while major titles were released on the other platforms.
You criticise me for claiming to know better than developers and publishers. One of the most common refrains from developers and publishers is "we can't compete against Nintendo in their own market". First, look at the Fitness Market, which by that reasoning should have been dominated by Nintendo so that others couldn't get any sales (rather than upwards of 5 million for third-party titles). Then look at Sonic selling best on Nintendo systems. Meanwhile, look at how third parties have no problem flooding the 360 with FPSes despite Halo, which is certainly no less of a megafranchise than something like Zelda.
And by the way, I find it hilarious that you spent part of your post talking about how quality is subjective, and then point out that Wii Fit's long legs have nothing to do with quality. You seem to be actively trying to refute your own points.
Oh, and what I said about gimmicks has nothing whatsoever to do with what the GAMER thinks of the feature. It's about the motivation for adding it in the first place. "Oh, we're making a game for the 3DS? Better have lots of touch control." "Oh, we're making a game for the Wii, better use motion control even when buttons make more sense." "Hey, we're making a game for the 360, might as well throw some Kinect functionality in there." The functionality isn't being added because the developers felt it made a better game. It's added because the developers want to say things like "Works with Kinect" on the box. The game isn't built around the gimmick, the gimmick is applied to the game simply because they can. And don't make the mistake of thinking that I think there are no Nintendo games that are gimmick-filled other than the tech demo games (like Wii Sports). For instance, the Zelda DS titles used touch, not because it made a better game, but to show off the DS. There was no choice to use the dpad to control Link's movement, even though that would have made sense. I still think they were great games, but they would have been better games if Nintendo hadn't used touch as a gimmick.
