RolStoppable said:
This post is one of those examples where someone tries to inject business sense to rationalize the conventional wisdom of internet gaming communities. But it's nothing more than an illogical mess. For one, if the game is supposed to be a graphical powerhouse for next gen hardware, then it will be much harder to justify the investment than it would be on Switch. And two, if the audience needs to be expanded, then the series needs to be watered down to appeal to that kind of average player that is referenced in the post. That sort of thing rarely works, because the typical result is that the current fans will be lost while the supposed target audience doesn't bite either. Aside from Metroid Prime 1 and 2, graphics have never been a selling point for Metroid games. Metroid Dread did not have graphics to sell itself (2D games are written off as having lackluster graphics by default, that's just how it is nowadays), and that game sold just fine. |
Well for describing my post as "illogical mess" I'd say your argument shows some fallacy as well.
The first sentence is factually wrong. If you want to create a great looking title on the current Switch with detailed enviroments and while aiming for 60fps (just like older titles) you'll need to spend time and money to squeeze any hardware resource avaliable on the system. With a new machine you could get a drastically better result even with much less effort for polishing finer details and optimizations.
Secondly, you're implying the series would need to be "watered down" to reach a wider audience and that's totally an invention of yours based on no actual arguments. Nintendo just successfully renovated the Zelda series for example. Is BOTW a watered down Zelda experience? Did they lost the original fanbase while not reaching anyone new? Doesn't seem like it to me. Also you refer to "that kind of average player"...what does that even mean? you don't specificy what kind are you referring to. Maybe you mean a kind of player that is influenced by the look of a game? Because every player is to a degree and even Nintendo itself acknowledge this...otherwise it wouldn't make much sense for them to put so much effort to make games like Zelda or 3D Mario look great.
Yes, graphics were a selling point of Metroid Prime as a series. Prime 1 and 2 are not even up to debate and Prime 3 proves the point even further, in fact it was supposed to be the best selling entry in the series as it got a greater marketing push from Nintendo and it was released on a console far more popular than the Gamecube. Yet it did sell cosiderably less than Prime 1. The difference is that, in 2002, if you looked for an immersive 1st person experience Metroid Prime was the state of the art, in 2007 Prime 3 couldn't be even put up for comparison with contempoary games like Bioshock (which btw was released within the same week).
Also the fact you aren't differenciating between Prime and 2D Metroid games doesn't make much sense either. Just like between 2D and 3D Mario or between top down and 3D Zelda, the expectations are completely different. Metroid Dread is a 2D side scrolling game, so it gets compared with other side scrolling 2D games. Metroid Prime is a first person game and (for a relevant part) a shooter, so it naturally gets compared with other first person shooters.
And btw Nintendo actually did put a lot of effort to make Dread look good while aiming for 60fps, much more effort compared to what they do for other series with broader appeal like Fire Emblem (for example) and let's not even talk about Pokemon. So I guess they do think good graphics is one of the selling point of Metroid.
