IcaroRibeiro said:
I'm perplexed you really find that. After all Metroid is still one of the Big3 hardware manufacturers and have a long story of hit games 3D and 2D alike. Anything that ever comes from Nintendo will have free hype because the company itself has fans, let alone fans of the IP. A game like Hollow Knight was made by a completely unknown team and had a chance to just get tossed into obscurity like almost any other indie. Quality play no weight here, as you first need people to play the game first before giving it any good world of mouth. You want an example? Among Us. The game was released in 2018 and only had its breakthrough last year, the game haven't suddenly become good overnight, it's just didn't have enough userbase to grant it enough visibility Any game with Nintendo label is not bonded to this destiny, not in 2021 at least. I would understand if you were talking about Silksong as Hollow Knight is no longer a unknow IP in the scene and already have a fandom (even though still likely to suffer with the lack of expensive and high end advertising), but the original game? I'm even more surprised you think Metroid Dread is more risky for Nintendo than Hollow Knight was for Team Cherry. If Dread bombed Nintendo would keep business as usual and would be at best a small nuisance in their profit sheet, if Hollow Knight bombed (and the odds of this happening with indies are not lean) you would have a company in the verge of bankruptcy made by 3 middle class workers who would by then be jobless What's next? You will say is more impressive a millionaire's son end his life with 1 billion than a blue collar's son ending his life with 100 million? |
About what you said about word of mouth:
The effect of it can already be seen in the second week usually. In the famitsu charts a game with technical issues like SoS: PoOT or Cyberpunk 2077 can drop heavily in week 2 following bad wom. It doesn't need a longer period of time.
Metroid Dread had overwhelmingly good wom, so it managed to stay longer in some charts than expected and will sell especially well when on sale.