By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Core gamers and magazines/sites hyping NSMB Wii worries me

Erik Aston on 21 October 2009
Kenryoku_Maxis said:

No game selling 10 Million is a flop.  That's like saying games like Halo 3 and GTAIV were flops because they only sold around 10 Million.  10 Million is a pinnacle of sales only a small fraction of games reach.  Just because certain games Nintendo has made has gone beyond that doesn't mean every game will.  And if they don't, it doesn't mean they're a 'flop'.  If anything, the monumental sales for New Super Mario bros on DS are beyond anyones expecations and so demanding New Super Mario Bros Wii to do as good or BETTER than the DS game or deeming it a flop is just an unfair judgement.


There is not any arbitrary sales number that absolutely means success for any game.

GTA series only has one game which has ever sold 20 million copies in San Andreas. And third party games never have the goal to sell hardware. So expecting every GTA game to reach 20 million and move hardware isn't fair. Halo had never sold 10 million before Halo 3. The goal of Halo 3 was to grow the Halo phenomenon and sell 360s. It accomplished that.

Mario has had a whole stack of games sell 15 and 20 million copies, and the goal of all of them was to sell hardware. NSMBW needs to live up to it's history. You can't excuse it if it sells less than Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Land 2. It does not necesarily need to do better than NSMB DS. I don't think I said that; NSMB will sell 25+ million. I think 15 million sales is the baseline to consider the game successful.



"[Our former customers] are unable to find software which they WANT to play."
"The way to solve this problem lies in how to communicate what kind of games [they CAN play]."

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo President. Only slightly paraphrased.

Around the Network
SnesTea on 21 October 2009
Kenryoku_Maxis said:
Snesboy said:
I like Bacon said:
yushire said:
 Its not for core gamers


That is sooo full of fail right there. Why can't it be for both? NSMBW is supposedly the hardest 2D Mario besides the the japanese version of SMB2. The game is definitely for core gamers IMO.

Saying Mario isn't for hardcore gamers is like saying Ridge Racer is a game your mom can play.

Not quite.  Like most Nintendo games, Mario is a game anyone can enjoy.  In other words, its a game made for 'all audiences', not just a 'casual' or 'hardcore' audience.

Ridge Racer is not the polar opposite of Mario, as it targets a very specific market (simulation racing fans).  There really isn't any polar opposite to Mario because it hits nearly every age group and is popular with nearly everyone.

But you do understand where I was trying to go with it right?



Kenryoku_Maxis on 21 October 2009
Erik Aston said:
Kenryoku_Maxis said:

No game selling 10 Million is a flop.  That's like saying games like Halo 3 and GTAIV were flops because they only sold around 10 Million.  10 Million is a pinnacle of sales only a small fraction of games reach.  Just because certain games Nintendo has made has gone beyond that doesn't mean every game will.  And if they don't, it doesn't mean they're a 'flop'.  If anything, the monumental sales for New Super Mario bros on DS are beyond anyones expecations and so demanding New Super Mario Bros Wii to do as good or BETTER than the DS game or deeming it a flop is just an unfair judgement.


There is not any arbitrary sales number that absolutely means success for any game.

GTA series only has one game which has ever sold 20 million copies in San Andreas. And third party games never have the goal to sell hardware. So expecting every GTA game to reach 20 million and move hardware isn't fair. Halo had never sold 10 million before Halo 3. The goal of Halo 3 was to grow the Halo phenomenon and sell 360s. It accomplished that.

Mario has had a whole stack of games sell 15 and 20 million copies, and the goal of all of them was to sell hardware. NSMBW needs to live up to it's history. You can't excuse it if it sells less than Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Land 2. It does not necesarily need to do better than NSMB DS. I don't think I said that; NSMB will sell 25+ million. I think 15 million sales is the baseline to consider the game successful.

The original point I was trying to make is the same as your first point, there's no set basis of what makes a game 'successful'.  That basis is set after the game sells and compared to otehr games released around it.

Yet after you made that point, you seemed to contradict yourself everywhere.  Stating NSMB has to 'push hardware' and 'it'll be a flop if it doesn't sell as good as Mario 64 and Mario Land 2' and then saying 'it doesn't have to do as well as NSMB'.

Why does this title have to be a major console mover, when its been proven that the 'Wii' titles and games like Mario Kart are already good at doing that?  And why does it have to match the sales of all the past Mario games?  The game isn't on the NES or N64 or Game Boy and more importantly, is completelty different game than Mario Land 2 or especially Mario 64 (a 3D Mario title).  And then why does it not have to match NSMB DS if it has to match the other Mario titles in sales?  Where's the magic number?  ......10 Million?



Six upcoming games you should look into:

 

  

theprof00 on 21 October 2009
Erik Aston said:
theprof00 said:
word of mouth is people talking to each other.

 

theprof00 said:
word of mouth is a marketing strategy


Haha. Those are pretty much contradictory. Word of mouth can be good or bad, and it comes from customers, not from marketers at companies.

You understand that in the term "word-of-mouth marketing," "word-of-mouth" is being used as a modifier; as in, "marketing designed to generate good word-of-mouth." Word of mouth itself is a different thing.

Anyways, right now Nintendo is hyping NSMBW to generate awareness and excitement. But you can have awareness and excitement and never have a product. And once you launch a product, you can't control what people say about it. If people don't like the game once they play it, sales can fall off quickly, ie a highly hyped game can have bad word of mouth once released.

I guess the point being, that simply having a lot of hype doesn't mean the game will fail. Because of the gap between the AAA Nintendo products and the crappy and/or niche games third parties put on the console, there have been a lot of B games on Wii which were hyped up. Then when they are mediocre or niche, they have bad word of mouth, and end up with bad lifetime sales. So the problem is not that the game was highly hyped, it is that it is a bad game or a niche game with too-big expectations. NSMBW is certainly not a niche game, and if it is a ton of fun, then it will generate good word of mouth, and have long tail sales.

There IS a way to accept that you're wrong gracefully.

I quote you again from your first post responding to me

"Huh? The game isn't even out, so it can't have any word of mouth"

just accept that you were wrong and we can move on. I'm not going to read your post past the second paragraph explaining the modifier because that was simply what I meant to say originally. Word-of-mouth is ALSO a marketing strategy.

I will quote my source again, because you still don't get it:

"Word-of-mouth marketing, which encompasses a variety of subcategories, including buzz, blog, viral, grassroots, cause influencers and social media marketing, as well as ambassador programs, work with consumer-generated media and more, can be highly valued by product marketers" -wikipedia

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZBUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZBUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZBUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL VIRAL

You said "Certainly people can talk about the game before it releases, and one of the goals of Nintendo promoting the game pre-release is to get people talking, but that is only about product awareness"

But that's only because you don't understand what promotion is. Promotion is all those things, including people talking to each other about something, and the company giving people information with which they can talk about to each other.