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Nuvendil on 13 April 2015
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NoirSon said:
Soundwave said:
The thing is even Disney has found a way for themselves to be "cool".

Marvel/Avengers, Guardians, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tron, etc. are "cool", even during the 90s their more modern animated movies starting with Little Mermaid and Aladdin started to be more contemporary.

Nintendo hasn't really been able to find that groove, I think largely because they are overly Japanese as a company.

Yes while there is like 1 or 2 games a year like Xenoblade or Bayonetta, these are the very small minority and Nintendo does very little to market them, they're just kinda like throwaway projects that they know are going to have niche sales.

Nintendo is trying to be like Disney as Disney existed in the 1950s-1970s ... their concept of what Disney is even outdated. Disney moved away from being strictly a syrupy sweet family-only company years ago.


I agree, although this is a more recent trait that the company has taken on since Iwata and Miyamoto have rose in power. Both guys are genius in game development and implementation... but they have proven horrible at marketing and understanding their foriegn markets. Nintendo's NA output was stronger in the SNES and N64 time frame, but under Iwata, Reggie whoever they say is calling the shots, the NA development teams are barely putting out any titles on their own and fewer games that would appeal to Western audiences that are not family friendly are getting the green light in.

With the hopeful release of Xenoblade Chronicles X this year and the announced release of Fatal Frame's latest sequel, maybe they are turning this around. But given the lack of buzz they have put out for Splatoon which if marketed right could be a great success, I have my doubts.

 

I mean with Splatoon, how hard is it to make a commercial that alludes to the core concept of it being a MASSIVE paint ball fight? Or it being about ink throwing squids and octopi?

To be fair, they have done a lot for Splatoon and Xenoblad X so far.  XCX has gotten lots of info released and been in almost every general Direct since its announcement.  Splatoon has been shown a lot and they got a lot of YouTubers and magazines to do coverage of it.  We'll see come launch month how serious they get, but I anticipate a hefty push.  Whether their commercials are worth anything will be the bigger question. 

But I think a lot of the problem is also timing.  Nintendo this gen rolled out most of their family friendly titles early on and now we are seeing it shift to more core titles lately.  XCX, Devil's Third, Bayo2, SMT x FE, Zelda, Fatal Frame, even Star Fox could (emphasis on COULD) fall closer to this category, and there are mutterings of possible Metroid and so on.  If they were to make sure their release schedule featured diversity from the start, things would be looking better I think.  But I think this gen they hoped 3rd parties would do that for them, but that didn't work out obviously.