curl-6 on 26 August 2013
| Soundwave said: I think the truth is there's only a few IP that Nintendo can reliably sell anymore. Anything with Mario in it sells reasonably well. Zelda/DKC are b-tier. Yoshi/Kirby are c-tier. Everything else I think is becoming a tough sell on Nintendo home consoles, even for Nintendo themselves. Partly because I think Nintendo really did not build much critical mass with core players the last 7-8 years. They were busy with casual consumers, but now that they're gone, Nintendo is finding they have a loyal group of consumers that buy a very narrow range of games, and they've lost everyone else. It used to be even on the N64, new IP like Banjo-Kazooie, GoldenEye, 1080 Snowboarding, Turok, etc. could become big hits, and other non-Mario/Zelda IP could do very well for themselves too like F-Zero and Wave Race and Star Fox. Even on the GameCube things like Viewtiful Joe, Tales of Symphonia, Pikmin, etc. were able to find good sized audiences, although the regression here was definitely visible as the userbase was becoming too small. Games like Bayonetta 2, X, Wonderful 101 don't have much of a chance on Wii U IMO. Even Pikmin 3 I think is probably going to have to struggle to break even. |
On Wii new IPs like Xenoblade, Shaun White Snowboarding, Endless Ocean, Boom Blox, and de Blob were able to carve out solid sales.
Pikmin 3's already at 350k after just 1 week in NA, 3 in Europe, and 5 in Japan. It has a good shot at reaching Pikmin 2 GCN numbers. I very much doubt it has to do huge numbers to break even; this is Nintendo, they don't blow their budget on unsustainably expensive games like much of the rest of the industry.
X and Bayonetta are not in the same position as W101 at all; they don't have its overwhelming problems.
