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Nuvendil on 09 August 2017
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mZuzek said:
Nuvendil said:

Not touching on most of this but XENOBLADE. IS. FIRST. PARTY.  It's as first party as Mario.  Monolith was bought by Nintendo and began working on a new, Nintendo owned IP called Monado: the Beginning of the World.  The IP was then renamed to Xenoblade Chronicles.  It is a Nintendo first party IP.

Oh don't worry I knew this response was coming. I know Xenoblade is objectively, 100% first party, but I still don't think of it that way in my head, and it seems Nintendo doesn't either, because they don't seem to care nearly as much about it as they do about their EAD games (which would be the ones I'd think of as 'real' first party). I mean, all you have to do is look at the marketing, all the EAD games Nintendo promotes like hell and beyond, and then stuff like Xenoblade and Pokémon just mostly get ignored in most of their presentations except for a little trailer here or there (despite Pokémon being, you know, Pokémon).

Well, Pikmin didn't get much push on the Wii U.  No one questions that one being first party :P

And Xenoblade Chronicles X got a strong push all the way up to the end where they fumbled at the goal line which, let's be honest, sums up the Wii U's life story with software releases.  It was prominently featured in every Nintendo presentation, had extensive gameplay demos, some good ads, a video series, some dedicated directs.  Nintendo just dropped the ball big time with launch promotion.  Which they also did with Pikmin, Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, etc etc.  

And Xenoblade 2 was the opening act at the January event, kicked off the meat of the Nintendo Spotlight, and had a good sized gameplay demo at E3.  And of course, they now emphasize the tie to the Nintendo brand more.  We'll see how they close it out, but if their current pattern holds, I'm hopeful for some agressive marketing.

And this, by the way, is a *problem* Nintendo needs to and hopefully is addressing.  The Nintendo brand is so much more than Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, the usual suspects.  They need to work to have Xenoblade, Metroid, Splatoon, Arms, all their franchises be equally synonymous with their brand as the usual faces everyone already knows.