So Far, Nintendo's Arms Does Not Have Legs - What?

[Nuvendil]

Soundwave said:

Podings said:
That's a pretty stupid article.

It's a new IP, and while not as immediately impactful as Splatoon was, it's still very much holding its own.

Let's see come Christmas if the game is still selling to a reasonable amount of new system adopters. Then we can talk about the LEGS of ARMS.

It's not really holding that great in Japan or the Switch eShop charts. Which is fine, not every game is going to be a hit IP, those are so valuable because they are rare even for Nintendo. 1+ million for a new IP is never that bad, it's just was never going to be a huge hit. People are over the whole "games tha define their marketing/gameplay identity largely around motion gaming" thing. It's an idea that's 10 years past. 

I think 1,2 Switch and ARMS were Nintendo's way of trying one last ditch attempt to see how much of the Wii market might be left, so at least they would know very early on in the Switch lifecycle exactly where in the paradigm of Nintendo systems it sits and I think they've been given their answer. Motion-heavy games have a place on the Switch, but certainly not in the driver seat (as with Wii) or even in the front passenger side (as with Wii U), but firmly in the backseat once in a while. 

Well I would say Arms was never a go at the Wii audience.  The advertising tone made that enormously clear.  It was, I think, more of a go at the new found home motion has found with core gamers thanks to VR.  Obviously, Arms is not VR but they likely felt that the growing comfort with motion controls would be a boon to the game.  And I would say it has, honestly.  Given it is a new IP released on such a young platform with the limited content with free updates later model, being on track to pass 2 mil lifetime is pretty good.  The big limiting factor is really the fact it's a 3D fighter.  Fighters in general are in a bit of a rut, but there's VERY few 3D fighters even out there, much less successful ones.  All things considered, I would say Arms' performance is actually pretty good.  It's certainly not dead like the article suggests.  I can name several games that died after a decent launch.  Battleborn comes to mind.  Shoot, Dead Rising 4 is more legless than Arms :P

The interesting thing to see will be how the updates affect things.  Splatoon updates helped alot not just because of the added content but because Nintendo did a whole second marketing push later down the line.  We'll see what happens with Arms.