atomicblue said:
Also want to address this, since I hate that people have this misconception that anything under a million sales is bad. Nintendo themselves said that they don't spend as much on marketing if they think a game is likely to find its audience anyway (because a lot of Nintendo fans and gamers in general tend to keep up with new releases). I believe the example they used when talking about this was Xenoblade. That lack of marketing spend also means their games don't need to sell anywhere near as much to be profitable; the companies who usually want to sell a bajillion copies of their games are the bigger third-parties (especially Western ones) who blow millions of dollars on global campaigns. Plus, Nintendo don't have to worry about licensing fees when they're self-publishing. Most of this is also true of Sony and Microsoft, which is why those companies are more able to release niche games for their consoles even if they only sell, say, 250k or something like that. |
It also could mean they don't want to invest heavily in a game that could flop or not do as well or won't sell much beyond the game's fans. Regardless they are holding back on supporting their games in a sense.
