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makingmusic476 on 21 May 2008
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NintendoMonopoly said:
akuma587 said:
Its not necessarily the strength of Nintendo's first-party games that cause problems, look at some of the multi-million sellers like Mario Party 8 and Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, which cause problems for third parties, but the name recognition factor of characters like Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, etc. which draw people in over third-party competitors whose games might be similar in both type and quality but lack the same name recognition.

Even series with name recognition have yet to sell on a comparable level with a game like Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess, albeit those two games are of higher quality than comparable third-party titles.

Honestly, some people put entirely to much emphasise on brand name recognition. Nintendo only has brand recognition, because they earn it. I don't recall too many people picking up cd-is for the Zelda and Mario brand names and if Nintendo games were selling on name alone , don't you think Barrel Blast would have sold better with it's DK brand recognition? Anytime Nintendo doesn't live up to their standards in any area, of any game they get marks against it in fold. There are plenty hardcore zealots ( which make up the majority of critics and most of the rest get pressured into going along with the crowd ) just waiting to tare Ninty a new one.  Why do so many pull the name recognition card on Ninty, when it seems to me they have been pretty consistent with quality, creativity, and gameplay character. What games are on a comparable level to nintendos on that regard, that aren't selling, on the wii or otherwise?


Name recognition certainly plays a part.  Granted, a crap game will generally sell like crap, but name recognition can help a great game sell much better than other similar titles.

Why else is Twilight Princess nearing the 5 million mark on the Wii, while Okami struggled to reach 150k on the ps2?

Also, why is Nintendo's first party is the one always brought up in situations like this, while Sony's is ignored?  In recent years Sony has begun publishing more games for their home consoles year-for-year than Nintendo, yet the individual IPs carry for less name recognition because they don't have the tenure that Nintendo's do.  Sony's IPs are gerally good, and they generally garner quite a bit of sales, but because they continually make new IPs (often not by choice, like Naughty Dog and Insomniac moving from Crash and Spyro to make Jak and Ratchet), they don't manage to build up the notoriety that Nintendo's franchises do, outside of a few like Gran Turismo (in other words, the ones that have been around for quite some time).