pikashoe said:
MTZehvor said:
Regardless of what BotW was announced for, it was still planned to be released more than a year from its release date.
I believe I already mentioned this, but games like Pokemon and Kirby generally can't be announced more than a year before their launch because either their development time isn't long enough to allow for it, or there's another title that would make advertising tricky (you won't see Call of Duty advertising next year's game despite it presumably being in development now because marketing efforts are on BO4). Most of those other games are...definitely not on the level of something like Smash to the point where you would want to devote a long time period towards hyping them up (Labo? Really?). Point being that when it comes to Nintendo's big series, they tend to give them more space, so to speak, if it's available.
Yes, I can say that, because while generating excitement within the community of consumers that keep up to date with video game related news is great, it's not the sole determinant of whether a game sells well or not. Games rely heavily on sales from demographics that aren't necessarily immediately familiar with their franchises, or more to the point, won't instantly purchase a game just based on name recognition. There's a reason why even games that have traditionally sold better than Smash Bros. focus heavily on extended ad campaigns; Grand Theft Auto, 3D Console Mario titles, Halo, etc. You can win over the people that aren't as attached to Smash as we might be.
While all of that is interesting, I don't think it really addresses the initial point that Sakurai's always gotten breaks...as in at least a couple of years, before getting thrown back into making Smash. Six months isn't exactly a ton of time, and I find it far less likely that he'd agree to starting on an entirely new game that quickly, as opposed to a scenario where he gets asked to come back and make an updated version of Smash 4 with some new characters/stages/enough new content to really push it for Nintendo's major 2018 release.
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Smash 64 released in 1999 and melee released in 2001, That's a 2 year gap between games. I imagine nintendo wants to keep this series as a relatively early title in a consoles life, Considering it has been for every nintendo console since the GameCube.
As for advertising, brawl didn't have that many trailers, they announced most of the new characters in the first trailer. Melee didn't have much of a build up, the original didn't either. The only game that had loads of trailers was smash 4. So it's been very different with most of the games. Maybe they don't want to spoil every thing this time. Maybe there aren't as many new comers, which would make sense the roster is gigantic and there aren't that many iconic characters left to be in this series.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the N64 released in 1996, didn't it? That would put it firmly in the middle of its lifespan, and closer to the end than the start. There was admittedly probably a push to get Melee out on Gamecube quickly, but I would also point out that that push resulted in Iwata having to come in at the last minute and fix a ton of bugs in order to get the game out on time. There's been a much larger gap between games since then, and I suspect there's a relationship between the incidents.
Brawl didn't have a ton of trailers in the same way Smash 4 did, but it did have character reveals, screenshots, gameplay tips, etc. on the Dojo website. I'd say the same principle applies. There were only a handful of characters not revealed on the website prior to the North American release date, nearly all of them Melee returners.
