Financially, was ARMS a flop?

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Nuvendil said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:
Neither really a success or failure. For a console maker, the type of software that they'd want to make is something that will really move hardware. The best money for the big 3 is in licensing fees, which means they want to make first party games that will move the hardware. Arms didn't really do that.

On the other hand it does round out their library some more and it's a reasonably enjoyable game, so its not really a failure either. Plus I think it's good for Nintendo to keep trying out new games. The more they can do that the better. They aren't going to knock it out of the park every time they make a new game, but it's good that they keep trying.

I mean, as I explained earlier, exclusive games make good money on their own.  $7 more per copy than a 3rd party dev makes.  So Arms brought in I would guess 50 to 60 million in revenue.   I can't imagine the budget was close to that high.  So yeah, moving hardware is always nice but midtier exclusives like Kirby, Yoshi, Arms, etc exist fkr a reason.

Ok, I just want to reiterate that I wouldn't call Arms a success or failure.  Having said that:

It's not really a success, because of opportunity cost.  Sure they made some profit, but they would have made a lot more profit if they made a game that would move hardware.  I don't want to call Arms a failure either though, because at least they are trying out new IP, which is something that Nintendo needs to keep doing.

But Kirby and Yoshi games are much better examples to use when talking about opportunity cost.  These games really should never be made.  Why?  Because people buy them because they like 2D platformers.  But 2D Mario and Donkey Kong Country are 2D platformers that always sell a lot more than Kirby and Yoshi, and more importantly Mario and Donkey Kong move hardware.  They are wasting resources making Kirby and Yoshi, because Nintendo gets much better returns when they make Mario or Donkey Kong.  So these Kirby and Yoshi games might technically make a profit, but Nintendo is leaving a lot of money on the table by making them.