Financially, was ARMS a flop?

[Nuvendil]

The_Liquid_Laser said:

Nuvendil said:

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.

The fallacy in your logic is the assumption that the resources and personnel used in the production of these games is interchangeable with the resources spent in Mario.  Which is quite untrue given Hal makes Kirby, Good Feel makes Yoshi, Retro was making Donkey Kong, etc.  And rerouting all these to Mario and DK would just result in brand fatigue.