VideoGameAccountant said:
Yes. I hear it a lot from Smash Bros people but I think that's because those folks have become almost hostile to anything Nintendo. I remember seeing a thread on r/NintendoSwitch and seeing a lot of people saying they enjoy it. As far as "Will the game get a sequel", most likely yes. Keep in mind Pikmin got a sequel and sold about half of what ARMS did. Sequels are cheaper to make than a completely new game. This is, in part, how we're getting BoTW2. Moreover, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sells so well that there is no reason to introduce a new Mario Kart yet (likely they'll wait till close to the end of the console's life to give it a late shot in the arm). |
That might be true for some, but as the most prominent voice (at least, from what I can see) for the "Arms was a failure" side of the argument, I can tell you this much about myself:
1. I'm no fan of Smash Bros. If you look back through my posts on the topic, you'll probably find that the only two updates I appreciated from that series since the original Smash Bros on N64 were: A. Cloud, B. Subspace Emissary.
2. I am certainly not hostile against Nintendo. But I don't hesitate to criticize Nintendo for things they do that I don't like, I also have not played on competing hardware (outside of the Vita, which I used exclusively as a handheld PSX, not for actual Vita games) since the Assassin's Creed 2/FF13 era. I also don't hesitate to point out Nintendo's failures. I'm a gigantic fan of Nintendo, and have been for decades, but not a culty fanboy -- although I admittedly was during the SNES era... and probably had some meltdown explosions when FF7 went to Playstation.
3. I am a big fan of Arms. I probably posted more about the game in these forums than anyone else, and perhaps more in-depth too.
4. When looking for objective criteria for a Nintendo EPD game's measure of success, I feel that there's a significant degree of dishonesty and fanboy bias here. People aren't looking at a set of criteria to measure success by, but rather a set of criteria that can make an unsuccessful game look otherwise successful. They divorce the sales number from the fact that EPD developed it; isolate it from Nintendo's core strategy, from their core expenses, and core resources. What this does is instead of establishing criteria to measure success by, they instead create a new set of rules by which they can force the game into the success pile 100%: "It was a launch window game; therefore sales are supposed to be lower" "It was a new franchise. Therefore sales are supposed to be lower," "Ignore the marketing pitch and interviews because that's not important," "It is more core of a game; therefore, sales are supposed to be lower," etc... Though, as my last post pointed out, these points are complete nonsense as there are numerous examples of games from the launch window, belonging to a new franchise, and from "core" gameplay elements (such a silly phrase Nintendo fans have adopted) that manage to hit the goals of their marketing pitches and sell 10M+.
Nintendo EPD is Nintendo's core development studio; they're the ones who drive the hardware sales, who drive Nintendo's business strategy on the software front, who fish for new blue ocean markets. To set the bar for this studio's success to such a low level is an absurdity.
Anyway, enough of me ranting on and on.
T:DR - I'm a huge Nintendo fan, I'm not some biased Smash Bros player, and I'm a fan of Arms. I see a lot of reason to assert that Arms, the lowest selling Nintendo EPD game outside of Labo, hit very well below the bar of success.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
