| Louie said: A few points. 1) Labo wasn't revealed "outside" of a Direct, it got its own Direct-like presentation. Which games get their own Directs, the big ones or the small ones? 2) I gave you multiple examples of Nintendo's marketing push for the game but you continue to say it was "minimal". Nintendo sent out Labo review kits to outlets that normally don't review games, which means they even developed a specific marketing strategy for the title. That's more effort than marketing it in the usual ways and most gaming websites did review the product and had review copies of it. Sure, some of them probably decided they didn't want to review a "non game" but that doesn't mean Nintendo's marketing push was minimal. 3) Reggie said it met their expectations because what was he going to say? "Damn, Labo flopped so hard and people were fired in disgrace over this"? :p And sales going up during the holiday season is normal for Nintendo titles. It happened to basically every other noteworthy Nintendo game as well in Japan. But while other games saw really strong sales increases, Labo didn't even chart in the top 20 last week. Even Mario Tennis charted and that was released in June (way before the latest Labo kits) and didn't exactly have stellar reviews. 4) The Vehicle kit had a low shipment because retailers didn't order more. Nintendo doesn't decide how many copies of a game they ship to stores! The retailers decide this. Strangely, I have seen this argument brought up since the dawn of VGChartz but it's not valid. A low shipment only shows the retailers didn't anticipate demand, it says nothing about Nintendo's sales expectations for the game. Nintendo can only influence retailers by saying "we will push this hard! It will be big!" ...which is what happened with the original Labo kits and which is why it took ages for those to sell out if I remember correctly. |
1.) That wasn't a Direct. That was just a 3 minnute trailer shadow dropped on YouTube. Even then, Nintendo didn't mention it in any Nintendo Direct, or at E3. Hell, the Vehicle Kit was revealed AFTER E3.
2.) The fact that Nintendo didn't send review copies to gaming sites at all, and instead to general tech outlets is the point here. They weren't marketing this like a traditional game, so a more unconventional approach was needed. As for everything else, Yes I do believe that marketing was pretty modest in North America. Even when Labo launched, Ads for it only appeared occasionally, not too frequent, not too sparse, and they didn't start advertising it until the day it came out. Nintendo really didn't build a lot of pre-release hype for Labo. We had a hands-on event and some info trailers. That's about it. Stark contrast to something like Smash Ultimate, or Pokemon which had multiple hands-on events, Nintendo Direct appearances, tons of trailers, and large amounts of marketing hype before release. Even ARMS had more pre-release hype from Nintendo.
3.) Not everything Reggie says is PR, and his position means obviously has access to Nintendo's sales data and projections if he's saying something like that, he also talked about Smash Ultimate being the biggest launch in series history before official numbers came out, which it was. Also, the Vehicle Kit did return to the Top 20 for 2 weeks during the holidays. Sure it's out of it now, but sales grew just like Nintendo said. In the latest IR meeting, Furukawa didn't talk about Labo as a holiday system seller like Smash Ultimate or Pokemon, he simply said sales will grow in its first Holiday season, which they did. It's hard to say if sales grew enough for Nintendo, but you can't really say they were lying.
4) Okay, but Nintendo and the retailers still need to come to an agreement to decide shipments. These decisions aren't made in a vacuum. In the case of the Variety Kit, what I think happened was that retailers wanted to make sure there was enough for GW in Japan, and Nintendo wanted a number that could sell steadily throughout most of the year. They probably realized that was a bit too much, and decided to do lower numbers for the Vehicle Kit, because it was this close to the holiday season, and smaller shipments work better for a product like it. Even though Labo sales haven't been at a brisk pace, they've been steady enough for retailers to not put on clearance so quickly. In fact, retailers in Japan just ordered more shipments for the Variety and Vehicle Kits last week, so it's gotta be doing well enough for them to keep ordering more. The only ways we know if something is a clear bomb, is if it gets price slashed on clearance ASAP as we've seen happen to the PlayStation Classic, or if the company comes out and says it. I haven't seen any signs of this for Labo, save for maybe the Robot Kit which was always the least popular.
Last edited by TheMisterManGuy - on 27 December 2018
