This was another really interesting article by Malstrom. It is good to understand how consumers buy games

With the news that Excitebots isn’t doing so well, that it may not be released at all in Europe, we have to ask ourselves not why Excitebots failed but why Excite Truck failed.

And yes, Excite Truck ended up being a failure. It was a Nintendo branded game that was a launch game on the fastest selling game console every made. By default, it should have been successful.

I like Excite Truck. It is a fun game. Everyone who owns the game likes it. I have tested out Excite Truck by placing it in front of my ‘testers’ (little nephews), and, at first, they protested because mean Uncle Malstrom wasn’t letting them play the games they wanted. But then they played and got enthralled in it. Yet, the game failed.

I don’t know about you, but if I were making games, the most awesome time to have a game released would be a Wii launch game. It should have been extremely successful. It should have been to the Wii what F-Zero was to the SNES.

So why did it fail?

1) Looked like a redneck fantasy come true. The name was cheesy as was the concept. I love ‘big damn trucks’ but many people don’t. They would rather have ‘race cars’ or something.

2) The music SUCKED. Games, no matter how good they are, often end up sucking due to bad music. And often, games that suck are considered good if their music is good.

3) It wasn’t a racing game. It was more of a do tricks and get stars type of game. Have you noticed the lack of race car games for the Wii? Excite Truck is set up like a racing game, but it isn’t really about racing.

4) Local multiplayer sucked. Local multiplayer is a BIG DEAL on the Wii. All you got was 1 on 1 racing and not even any AI trucks to play with.

5) Excite Truck had a tutorial straight from hell. Tutorials that are straight from hell are those that prevent you from playing unless you play the stupid and boring tutorial. I had a friend who bought the game at launch and, after playing Wii Sports, popped in Excite Truck to play with his friend. Yet, he had to play through the stupid tutorial in single player just to play with his friend. When I borrowed the game from him, I never unlocked multiplayer because I could not perform that last stupid triple spin thing in the tutorial.

With Excitebots, the music was fixed, I don’t know about the tutorial, but the third problem (of it not being a racing game) was expanded. The first problem was expanded as well because no one knows what the hell ‘Excite Bots’ are. I know what a truck is. I know what a bike is. But what is a ‘bot’?

Both Excite Truck and Excite Bots look destined to be cult classics due to their low sales and intense reception among core gamers. Pick them up now before it is too late.

Source

An interesting theory, though he's missing a few of the concrete reasons (no advertising). He nailed down the fact that the idea of "Excite bots" was hard to comprehend.

I agree. Then again, it was completely obvious to me why Excite Truck and Excite Bots failed because I was one of the many people who thought they both looked and sounded uninteresting.

Excite truck did rather well IMO.... it has sold about 1 million (at least 900k) Just because it didn't sell multimillions doesn't make it a failure.

Excite Bots failed because they replaced trucks (already not the more popular form of entertainment transport) with random bots.

I would think the same thing, but his claim is it should have done better for being a launch title on the Wii, and a racing game at that.

I bought Excite Truck with my Wii thinking it would tide me over till Mario Kart came out. I ended up disliking so much that I would likely have retired it in less than five hours but that my then two year old son was constantly begging to watch me play it (he loved the trucks). Malstrom touched on all the reasons I didn't like it.

Nintendo did a horrible job with Excite Bots. I didn't even know the game existed till it launched. Thats just how bad they did in marketing it. I hated Excite Truck and even when their was only like 6 games for the Wii I didn't bother buying it. Nintendo has really dropped the ball as far as advertising goes. I think their biggest mistake to date was selling Nintendo Power. I used to love Nintendo Power but once it went third party I haven't bothered renewing my subscription.

ExciteTrucks didn't fail at all, this guy Malstrom has it wrong.

ExciteBots did fail, and horribly. The reason behind this failure is the complete, I mean ZERO advertising and hype for it. No one I know even knows the game... How do they expect to sell an unknown game? Come on, Wii Fit ads are still airing, there's no excuse.

I'm pretty sure it failed cause it's not a racing game & because 1v1 w no bots local multi is terrible. Oh, & there was no advertising.

I think what he was saying is that Excite Trucks was a failure to capitalize rather than just a failure. I mean it wasn't a niche game as he described it but it came off that way. Although I disagree launch games of a successful console are not guaranteed to be a success (there were close to 30 that launched with Wii so give it a break).

But I would agree that it was a failure to capitalize on a potential mainstream success. I mean aside from Mario Kart, racing games have not been that popular on Wii... for good reason. Excite Truck was not that great of a game. It was more of a game Ninty put out to have something else on the market. Personally I think it would have been a better idea to delay till early next year, give it some marketing, and you could have potentially revived the series from Excitebike and had you a popular brand. Ninty screwed up with that. So when a really excellent game like Excitebots releases, it has nothing to back it up and only the few go and grab it.