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Forums - Nintendo - Seriously, Nintendo is not THAT Important

garywood on 15 January 2014

I don't know about publishing or hardware but I think when it comes to developing, Nintendo IS that important. Look at the top 20 games of all time on metacritic or gamerankings. What developer name pops up the most? End of argument pretty much.



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curl-6 on 15 January 2014
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.



lucidium on 15 January 2014
curl-6 said:
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.

It was also heavily bundled in EU and the US, too.



JWeinCom on 15 January 2014
curl-6 said:
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.


Wii Sports was not bundled in Japan where it sold about 3.77 million, which was about 1 for every 4 Wiis sold.  If we assume that it would have sold at around the same rate worldwide (I think it would have sold at a higher rate in the US at least) then we can guesstimate that it would have sold about 25million copies.  So, it still would have been hugely successful. 



curl-6 on 15 January 2014
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.

It was also heavily bundled in EU and the US, too.

Lots of games were heavily bundled in the 7th gen, across all three systems. 



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JWeinCom on 15 January 2014
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.

It was also heavily bundled in EU and the US, too.

No.  In the US there was never any Wii Fit Bundle offered by Nintendo.  Dunno about Europe but I don't believe it was there ever.



lucidium on 15 January 2014
JWeinCom said:
curl-6 said:
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.


Wii Sports was not bundled in Japan where it sold about 3.77 million, which was about 1 for every 4 Wiis sold.  If we assume that it would have sold at around the same rate worldwide (I think it would have sold at a higher rate in the US at least) then we can guesstimate that it would have sold about 25million copies.  So, it still would have been hugely successful. 

When the Wii released in Japan, to counter the fact it had been offered free in all other countries the retail price of Wii Sports was dropped to 2300y below standard retail titles of the day, had the game not been aggressively bundled elsewhere the price of the software in japan would have been higher.

It was also the most aggressively advertised title from the launch lineup winthin japan to parralel the attention the game was getting elsewhere as a result of the bundling, also.

So calculating the eu and us sales based on the the japanese sales that occured in the existing climate where the game was indeed heavilly bundled, doesnt make sense.

The game would have been successful regardless of course, but not to the extent of your guestimate, as it isnt taking into account the influence bundling had on the japanese sales in which youre basing them.



JWeinCom on 15 January 2014
lucidium said:
JWeinCom said:
curl-6 said:
lucidium said:
curl-6 said:

No PS3 game propagated and popularized a whole genre the way Wii Sports and Wii Fit did.

No PS3 game was bundled with every single console like Wii Sports, either.

It stands to reason that more people would play the game if it came free with the console, but that's like giving a jar of marmite/vegimite away free with jars of nutella then saying Ferrero populrized marmite/vegimite.

To be accurate, Nintendo made sports games accessible to a wider audience, an aucience that wouldnt have otherwise tried it, the real question is, how popular would the game have been, had it been sold at full retail and not bundled for free.

Wii Fit was sold at retail, that did incredibly well.


Wii Sports was not bundled in Japan where it sold about 3.77 million, which was about 1 for every 4 Wiis sold.  If we assume that it would have sold at around the same rate worldwide (I think it would have sold at a higher rate in the US at least) then we can guesstimate that it would have sold about 25million copies.  So, it still would have been hugely successful. 

When the Wii released in Japan, to counter the fact it had been offered free in all other countries the retail price of Wii Sports was dropped to 2300y below standard retail titles of the day, had the game not been aggressively bundled elsewhere the price of the software in japan would have been higher.

It was also the most aggressively advertised title from the launch lineup winthin japan to parralel the attention the game was getting elsewhere as a result of the bundling, also.

So calculating the eu and us sales based on the the japanese sales that occured in the existing climate where the game was indeed heavilly bundled, doesnt make sense.

The game would have been successful regardless of course, but not to the extent of your guestimate, as it isnt taking into account the influence bundling had on the japanese sales in which youre basing them.


So, wait, we can't take marketing or pricing into account?  That's part of Nintendo's overall strategy.  And the game was obviously a low budget project, so it makes sense it would retail for lower than full price. I'm not going to argue it too much becuase it was an obviously a ballpark estimate, but those decisions are part of why the game was successful.



lucidium on 15 January 2014
JWeinCom said:


O_o... so... we shouldn't count the sales because Nintendo sold it at the price they wanted to sell it at? 

Not sure how else to make it any clearer to you.

Japan sold 3.7m, elsewhere was bundled with every console.
Nintendo aggressively priced the game since it was included for free elsewhere
Nintendo aggressively advertised the game since it was receiving heavy media attention elsewhere (due to being included free)

You are taking A (japanese sales in the existing climate) and trying to use them to calculate B (US/EU sales in a different climate), without factoring in the effects climate B would have had on A.

It isn't rocket science.

Personally i think it would have ended around 16-20m worldwide had it not been so aggressively bundled.



JWeinCom on 15 January 2014
lucidium said:
JWeinCom said:


O_o... so... we shouldn't count the sales because Nintendo sold it at the price they wanted to sell it at? 

Not sure how else to make it any clearer to you.

Japan sold 3.7m, elsewhere was bundled with every console.
Nintendo aggressively priced the game since it was included for free elsewhere
Nintendo aggressively advertised the game since it was receiving heavy media attention elsewhere (due to being included free)

You are taking A (japanese sales in the existing climate) and trying to use them to calculate B (US/EU sales in a different climate), without factoring in the effects climate B would have had on A.

It isn't rocket science.

Marketing and pricing is part of what made the game a success.  Nintendo could have, and likely would have, marketed it heavily and priced it aggressively in the US if it wasn't bundled.