I never believe a company intends to destroy its own product. But the day after Christmas just doesn’t make any sense. All I know is that the game has bombed in Japan. (Now some of you are going to claim this proves you right, except he's stating this after a month of sales, not just one or two weeks that you did; he knows you have to wait to see how these things last).
I never understood what Square-Enix was doing with Crystal Chronicles. They knew Final Fantasy sold great on the Nintendo systems of the past so, when making FF games for it, they put their B team of developers on it and figured, “The Nintendo FF games all had crystals. Therefore, let us call the other series the Crystal Chronicles since they will be chronicles about the crystals.”
Ever since the Gamecube Era, I never understood why Final Fantasy was never ported to the Gamecube. Even the PS1 games could have been ported over (they would have sold). With FF13, it shows that Sony exclusivity is a thing of the past.
The Crystal Chronicles series has never been interesting and appears to exist only for noob developers at Square to be given something to do. But for some reason I keep thinking of Mystic Quest.
The “casual gamer” is not a new meme. It has existed in terms throughout all generations of gaming but the label changes though the meaning stays the same as “stupid game for stupid gamer”.
Do you know who the “casual gamers” were in the 16-bit generation? Why, it was the Americans! Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was dumbed down into a plastic dog to get “stupid Westerners” into Final Fantasy complete with rock and roll music. In Japan, the game was called Mystic Quest: USA instead of just Mystic Quest. I suppose the ‘USA’ tag meant “STUPID GAME HERE” in Japan at the time.
I dislike how all the Crystal Chronicles games has that stench of ‘dumb game for dumb gamers’ like Mystic Quest did. But Mystic Quest did have awesome music. It is a good example of how games were about rock and roll in that time period. Even bad games, like Mystic Quest, have way better soundtracks than the “good” games do today!
Cheek out these emails. The first one is titled: “Pachter has outdone his stupidity”
‘TOO MUCH VALUE’
“(Game) publishers have probably done themselves a disservice by giving us way too much value for our money with each of these games,” Pachter says. “You just get way too much content. The installed base has a lot of music, and they don’t really need a lot more. It’s sort of like buying more books when you have a stack of books left to read. You just don’t.”
Pachter points to the disappointing sales of “The Beatles: Rock Band” as proof of this theory.
“There isn’t a game that we would expect to have more widespread appeal than that,” he says. “And yet with the installed base of music-game owners at around 20 million, it boggles the mind that only 800,000 bought ‘Beatles: Rock Band.’”
The second email is called “Sales of Music Games Plummets”
Your boy, Pachter, just doesn’t have a clue (hint Michael: people are SICK OF these games–it has nothing to do with too much of a good thing):
<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BH5DS20091218?type=technologyNews>
Very clever guys! But I can see through your wily emails. Everyone knows Pachter would never say anything as ridiculous that music games aren’t selling because they have too much consumer value. Everyone knows there have been too many trips to the well and that music genre well has been drained. You email me these ridiculous things that Pachter would never, ever say. Our brave and incredible analyst of Wedbush Securities is a professional. Professionals don’t say the crazy things you guys emailed me about.
Try again, guys.
This seems to go off track from the initial point, although I do agree Nintendo needs to grasp the possibilities of the Wiimote, and leave the other guys to try to imitate them.
Given that Alexa works with percentages, I wouldn’t be so quick to say they lost that much readership but it is certainly possible. The first thought I had was to check out gonintendo.com and I was shocked to see that it has seen a similar drop. Most gaming blogs I know are in the same boat, except for joystiq and destructoid which seem to hold out pretty well. Then it hit me. Three years after I bought my Gamecube, that’s when I started losing interest. Also I believe Reggie said something about console interest or console sales after three years but I couldn’t find the quote.
Less people interested in games, less people looking for information on those websites. I remember I pretty much stopped reading IGN before the Wii was announced. Then with the whole backlash that came with the Wii, I stumbled on GoNintendo which became a better source of news. With what has been happening lately with IGN, I am seriously losing interest and find myself having more fun discussing about the news with fellow gamers than reading fanboy editorial rants from “journalists”.
While people will be quick to point that console sales are still somewhat strong, disinterest within a generation can only come from people who have been gaming already so in this case, software numbers will be more telling. I consider Halo ODST sales to be disappointing. It doesn’t matter if people think it’s more of an expansion, it’s still a Halo shooter and should have sold more. Uncharted 2 didn’t do all that good. Arkham Asylum, a well made but very average game is spoken of very highly. Modern Warfare 2 selling extremely well only proves the point. When people start losing interest, they’ll start gravitating around the biggest releases only. I bet that 2 years ago, Brutal Legend would have seen a lot more interest.
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I think it’s too bad the Wii has to fight against the bad after taste of Wii Music and Animal Crossing, Wii Motion+ could have had a much bigger impact. Nintendo really needed something like SMB 5 to get back on track. With the Vitality Sensor on the way next year, Nintendo will again have a new proposition for us (though we still don’t know how good it will be). It’s too bad 3rd parties were too stupid to fill in the gap.
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Sony and Microsoft do have Natal and the Wand, but seriously, those are more like Sega add-ons, and we all know what that means. Sony at least has some heavy hitters coming out with FFXIII, Gran Turismo 5 and God of War 3, but Microsoft only has games like Mass Effect 2 and Splinter Cell, which won’t get anyone new on board.
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So basically Microsoft is only getting sequels of games that have already been on 360 and Sony is finally getting the big games from previous generations (which took way too long, look at how GT on PSP turned out…).
I think it’s sad how so many developers care so little about gaming to refuse to work with motion controls on the Wii. But then I guess it’s too intimidating and they’re not talented enough. At least the guys at High Voltage have the ambition. Last gen the lack of third party games hurt the Gamecube really bad, but now, with Nintendo going back to what makes gaming so fun and making costumers left and right, 3rd parties are only left fighting against the disruption. Doing that can only create more disinterest in core gamers.
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This generation was expected by many to last 10 years because the PS3 and 360 had so much technology. With massive sales of the Wii, and people being generally reluctant to buy new hardware, it seemed Nintendo’s approach with new interface and upgradable controls was the best way to go for long term. But now I think that generational disinterest is rearing its ugly head again. HD games aren’t offering anything new and Nintendo isn’t capitalizing on Motion+. People might soon learn that disinterest is what pushes for a new generation, but what is the next generation going to be when we already know more pretty graphics don’t do the trick anymore?
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I think this makes for an exciting new variable to add in the formula of what is going to happen next year. Fighting disinterest in people that haven’t played a game in years is one thing, keeping them interested is another. -
I put in bold your point about Modern Warfare 2. Some people are going, “It’s the new GTA 3!” Nope. GTA 3 rocketed the PS2 hardware sales. But Modern Warfare 2 isn’t exactly rocketing hardware sales. Even though Modern Warfare 2 is selling big numbers, other games are not. In other words, Modern Warfare 2 is not making gaming more interesting. It is not creating interest among gamers about games.
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But I think you are correct that disinterest is growing all around. And I agree that after E3 2008, Nintendo fumbled badly with Wii Music and Animal Crossing Wii. Sales of the Wii were still strong enough to go through the holiday but they soon fizzled afterward. I blame it all on the User Generated Content philosophy Nintendo thought to inflict on its poor customers.
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Wii wasn’t just selling because of Wii Sports. Wii was also selling due to potential. People couldn’t wait to see what other games the Wii’s special features (especially motion control) can do. 2007 had Gamecube left-overs (such as Super Paper Mario) and many sequels to Gamecube games (Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Strikers Charged, Super Smash Brothers Brawl). Everyone was expecting awesome motion control games in 2008. Games where you were a knight and had to use the Wii-mote as a sword against evil dragons. Games where you used the Wii-mote pointer to play awesome strategy and FPS games. Games that were new franchises whose gameplay was only possible with the Wii-mote. Instead, we got Wii Music (a game of no content) and Animal Crossing Wii (a game of recycled content with more User Generated Content features). Wii mania just died.
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There was no NES mania so much as there was Mario Mania decades ago. Mario Mania was weakened somewhat by Super Mario World and competitors like Sonic coming around. But what finished off Mario Mania completely was Yoshi’s Island. That game had a huge backlash to it. The backlash was similar to Wind Waker. People hated the art style. And the game didn’t act like a Mario game. Too many radical changes (such as collecting things to truly finish the stage). So Nintendo has unintentionally killed off their entertainment phenomenons before.
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I suspect Nintendo went the direction they did with the User Generated Content was because they believed that they thought motion controls expanded the audience enough in one way (and there was going to be competition soon for motion controls they knew) so while they put out Motion Plus they could expand in
different ways (which is what User Generated Content was supposed to do).
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Nintendo’s big weakness as a company is its total disregard for content. It lasers in on gameplay and inventing new gameplay, but content is rarely if ever focused on. People are correct in the complaint that Nintendo keeps injecting new gameplay into old content. None of it is surprising anymore. Only a company that has such low regard for content could decide to steer the ship toward the User Generated Content mirage.
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Wii owners want to do more with motion controls than just play sports games. They want motion controls married with all types of gaming. People didn’t buy a Wii for it to be a Super Gamecube. This is why games like Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M aren’t going to light any fires.Also, putting out those games is kinda a slap that Nintendo doesn’t want to use Wii’s features for its big games. Only until Zelda Wii was announced to have motion controls (or rather trial ballooned) did it seem motion controls were being combined to some sort of content.
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Imagine if Nintendo only made Brain Age and Nintendogs and made no more games using the touch screen. Ridiculous, right? But this is what happened with the Wii.
Nintendo is way behind where they should be. More motion controlled games should have been coming out in 2008 or at least returns of fan favorite franchises like Starfox and Kid Icarus that we haven’t seen on the Wii before. Instead, we got the Wii doing things no one bought it for like User Generated Content. Instead of announcing some motion plus games to complement Wii Sports Resort in 2009, we got more Super Gamecube games but of franchises that already were out on the Wii from Galaxy 2 and Other M. And we got more User Generated Content games. The only shining light was Mario 5. (It is a good thing Mario 5 was announced first in the conference or I would have gone nuclear if I saw Galaxy was getting a sequel prior to Mario5’s announcement).
It was as if E3 2008 was misread by Nintendo in that hardcore gamers didn’t have any games they saw (so they made Galaxy 2 and Other M). No, the problem of E3 2008 was the lack of games with content. Wii Music had no content. Animal Crossing Wii felt recycled content from the DS and Gamecube versions.Galaxy 2 and Other M are not new content propositions. There are already starfinder Mario and Metroid experiences on the Wii. But there is no Starfox experience. No Zelda experience (if Twilight Princess is a more Gamecube game).
Nintendo is facing a very big dilemma. If they do not put out motion controlled games, if they do not fulfill the potential of the Wii, consumers will no longer trust the company’s new innovations. Why buy a Nintendo “innovation” if Nintendo doesn’t intend on following through with it? It would like the PS3 and Xbox 360 putting out games that aren’t in HD. Consumers bought those systems for HD games and so they get them. People expect motion control type games for the Wii. They aren’t getting them. So Wii owners cannot suggest to friends to buy the console.
I’m worried that with Natal and Wand, Nintendo will drop motion controls like a hot potato and do something else on the Wii for fear of competing in the ‘red ocean’. But this situation doesn’t qualify as ‘red ocean’. Nintendo isn’t competing on their competitors’ terms. They are competing on their customers’ terms.
NCL doesn’t appear interested in more motion control games. NOA appears more interested. So long as Nintendo stays away from User Generated Content as it has been nothing but radioactive for the software, doesn’t release a new Wii in 2010 (that would be very destructive), and puts out more motion plus games, their momentum will continue.
I’m a gamer lost in the clouds of disinterest. I’ve noticed what I buy, especially day one, tend to end up becoming entertainment phenomenons in games. (I bought the first Civilization day one for example. I remember buying Wing Commander, the first one, day one.) There are two Wii games I bought day one in 2009, and they were Wii Sports Resort and Mario 5.
Aside from Starcraft 2 (is that game even going to come out in 2010? The beta isn’t even out!), the only game I see now I will get day one is Monster Hunter Tri. I have never played a Monster Hunter before. The more I learn about it, the more I like. PSP versions didn’t interest me due to their handheld nature. I also enjoyed the vast WoW type of game and kind of want that MMORPG experience without the MMO.
Monster Hunter players are very interesting gamers. They will buy Monster Hunter and nothing else. They then play their Monster Hunter for hundreds and hundreds of hours. I am curious to see how the hell a console game can be played that long. How much content is there in that type of game?
Monster Hunter Tri is an interesting marketing challenge for Reggie. Americans aren’t going to go big over RPG games on handhelds. We prefer our big games on consoles. I know if I’m interested in Monster Hunter Tri, then I know a pool of a market does exist for this game. Monster Hunter being on a home console could give it a big advantage in sales in the West that its handheld version couldn’t have. But how do you market it effectively to people who want that type of deep experience? We’ll see if NOA does anything interesting with Monster Hunter Tri.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqo0hnHhmE8&feature=player_embedded
“Mario Mania was weakened somewhat by Super Mario World and
competitors like Sonic coming around. But what finished off Mario
Mania completely was Yoshi’s Island. That game had a huge backlash to
it. The backlash was similar to Wind Waker. People hated the art
style. And the game didn’t act like a Mario game. Too many radical
changes (such as collecting things to truly finish the stage).”
I can’t help it. I lost track of how many times you’ve mentioned this
supposed “backlash” (that you’re always quick to point out was like
Wind Waker), and I now I just can’t help it anymore—I have to write
this e-mail if only just to tell you that your memory is flawed
regarding this game. You’ve mentioned your disinterest in video games
during the SNES era. Could it be that you weren’t really paying
attention to Yoshi’s Island to begin with? Yes, for something that was
branded “Super Mario World 2″, the sales were underwhelming. But so
were the sales of Super Mario RPG, and the last two Donkey Kong
Country games. C’mon, the SNES was just dying, period. That being
said, Yoshi’s Island was a new Mario game, and I played it just as
fanatically as I played all the other ones. Me and my friends had more
fun playing that so-called “collection game” with all the radical
changes that you think would have detered people who were raised on
Mario, than we had playing the original Super Mario World (which, as
great as it was, was a subpar rehash of SMB3). As for people hating
the art style, where is your evidence that anyone hated the art style
other than the executives at Nintendo who were complaining that it
didn’t look enough like DKC? You keep stating this as if it’s a well
known fact but neither I nor any of my Nintendo-loving friends who
grew up in that era of gaming have any idea what you’re talking about.
Could people have been turned off by the whining baby? Yes. Could
someone have quickly labeled it a “kiddy game” based on the graphics?
Sure. But Nintendo has a long history of fighting that “kiddy” image
that people associate with their games, and it dates back to the Sega
Genesis when Sega openly ridiculed Mario in their commercials for
being “nice, wimpy, and lame”. Still, who complained about the art
style? If a group of me + three or four other 11-13 year old boys
didn’t call it a sissy game back then, it’s for me to imagine that
anyone else did.
Once again, your words were “huge backlash”. Really? From where I was
standing, people just didn’t care because the SNES was losing steam
due to competition from the PSX and the N64 was just around the
corner. If you want to talk of Yoshi’s and backlashes, why not mention
Yoshi’s Story and how that backfired?
Pretend we are going ten to twenty years in the future. You say, “Wii was very much hated by the ‘Game Industry’.” Someone who was thirteen years old during the time of the Wii, all grown up, will say, “What! Everyone loved the Wii! All my friends played it. My family played it. Wii was selling left and right. Why are you making up this story that the ‘Game Industry’ hated the Wii?”
The kid isn’t wrong. His perspective is correct. However, the perspective of a thirteen year old kid isn’t on market dynamics at the time.
I’ve noticed there are many Nintendo related “myths” of how children who grew up with the products write about them than in how the products were actually received by the market. Let’s go through a few of them:
MYTH: NES was loved and adored by everyone.
FACT: NES was loved and adored by children and families who were not being served by game centric computers. Gamers on the game centric computer called the NES not real gaming. Western Third parties held out as long as possible from publishing on the NES. Electronic Arts refused to publish games on the NES until Trip Hawkins was told either to publish or lose his job. United States Congress kept attacking Nintendo. Political pressure was propping up Atari’s ridiculous lawsuits on Nintendo that held them in court so long they couldn’t properly expand in Europe for the 8-bit generation. Analysts kept declaring the NES fad over each year.
MYTH: Super Mario Brothers 2 and Zelda 2 were not well received by Mario and Zelda fans.
FACT: Mario 2 and Zelda 2 were sold out everywhere. Parents drove to other states just to get the games. Mario 2 and Zelda 2 may not have been the phenomenons the first ones were, but they were so well received that elements of both games found their ways into the sequels. For Mario 2 this was remarkable since it was actually Doki Doki Panic. To this day, people demand princess to be included in Mario 5 and that she float solely because of the impact of Mario 2.
MYTH: Super Metroid was a big best seller and the pinnacle of the Metroid franchise.
FACT: Super Metroid sold well for a couple of months and then left the sales charts completely. Soon, the game was price slashed. The game failed to create the same cult hit that the NES Metroid or even Gameboy Metroid did. The game was completely overshadowed by Donkey Kong Country which came out months later. There is a reason why Metroid went dormant until Metroid Prime and Fusion.
The game wasn’t very popular at the time and considered more of a re-make of Metroid 1 than an actual sequel. But time has been good to Super Metroid and it has aged like wine. I think growth of its popularity also has to do of how easy and fun it is to play in computer emulators. But the game was never that popular during the SNES era.
It is interesting how some popular games for consoles, at the time, end up being forgotten and how not very popular games for consoles end up being more popular in the future. River City Ransom for the NES wasn’t popular during the NES era. But it became more popular in the future as people discovered the game via computer emulators and all. It will be interesting to see what people in the future will think about the games currently out.
MYTH: Super Mario World received a fantastic reception.
FACT: Super Mario World was SNES game #1. The SNES was well received, and SMW was quality, but it didn’t live up to expectations. People at the time excused this for being a launch game. They expected Mario 5 to really bring it home. They had no idea they would have to wait 18 years.
SMW’s power-ups were less and weren’t as interesting as Mario 3’s. Dinosaur Land didn’t seem as epic as Mushroom Kingdom. The Koopa Kids seemed like a joke whereas they were more badass in their airships in Mario 3. There was no battle mode (multiplayer mode) in SMW as there was in Mario 3. To its credit, SMW had Yoshi, multiple exits, and was 16-bit.
I got lots of hell of people angry that I could say SMW was somewhat of a letdown at the time. But they were kids at the time growing up with it. It was, to them, their first sidescrolling Mario. It wasn’t until Jeremy Parish of 1up spoke of the same sort of reception Super Mario World had until people stopped giving me hell about the issue. SMW and Mario 3 being constantly debated about which is the better Mario game should be evidence enough to show SMW’s weakness. A game of 16-bit quality being debated if it is better than an 8-bit game? In those days, people couldn’t go back to 8-bit after seeing 16-bit. It shows how weak SMW was in comparison to Mario 3 (but in SMW’s defense, every game could be considered weak compared to Mario 3).
MYTH: Yoshi’s Island was greatly received by the market. Everyone loved the art style.
FACT: No way. The ‘crayon’ art style greatly divided the market. This is why the NOA executives wanted a more realistic art style. They were seeing the backlash. Yoshi’s Island was a side-scrolling Miyamoto game. The lifespan of the SNES doesn’t matter. The sales of a side scrolling Miyamoto game should have been astronomical. Miyamoto was considered god-like at that point and the idea of executives telling the genius what art style to do was unthinkable. The only reason why they were doing it is because of market data.
One of the greatest mysteries in video games is why Nintendo stopped making side scrolling Mario games (since they, alone, placed Nintendo on top of the video game world). I only have speculation. I suspect it could be Donkey Kong Country, not made by Nintendo, being so well received and Yoshi’s Island, made by Miyamoto, was not. Perhaps Miyamoto got peeved and ran to 3d Mario. I don’t know.
An emailer reminded me of one big problem people had with Yoshi’s Island that I had forgotten: the game was a giant retcon. Mario was always portrayed prior to Yoshi’s Island and in the numerous cartoons and books as a plumber from our Earth who got caught up in the Mushroom Kingdom. Yoshi’s Island, by putting baby Mario in the game, made Mario a ‘citizen’ of the Mushroom Kingdom instead of a visitor/stranger. Fans were not happy about this. They also weren’t happy how Mario was portrayed as living in Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario RPG for the same reasons.
Yoshi’s Island is a fantastic game. But it wasn’t a phenomenon as the main Mario games were. People don’t even consider it a Mario game. Once Yoshi’s Island came out, I remember that any anticipation for a sequel to Super Mario World died. This is when Nintendo lost many of its former customers including me.
Yoshi’s Story just continued in the saccharine direction Nintendo developers wanted to take the game. The more saccharine the games got, the more customers fled and the greater stigma of ‘kiddy’ or ‘childish’ was attached to the game.
And this could well explain why NSMB and Mario 5’s art style is so neutral. Nintendo knows full well that the art style that their developers want to use cause customers to run away (such as with Wind Waker). NSMB and Mario 5’s art style was not like Yoshi’s Island for the reason that the masses would reject the game.
Yoshi’s Island’s art style being seen as controversial is a well known fact to older people who lived during the time. Go ask any of them. They will tell you that many people did not like the art style and were angry at Nintendo’s direction with the game. This doesn’t dispute that were people who did love the art style. But those who loved the art style were clearly not the majority of consumers.
Donkey Kong Country came out in November of 1994. The game completely sold out, and it was selling consoles left and right. It pushed the SNES atop the Genesis in the 16-bit console war at the time. Donkey Kong Country brought excitement again to the SNES console.
Yoshi’s Island came out in October of 1995. The game did not sell out. Yoshi’s Island did not move hardware.
You can’t excuse Yoshi’s Island because “SNES was dying”. SNES was dying before Donkey Kong Country. Hell, Donkey Kong Country saved the SNES by providing a massive momentum boost. With Yoshi’s Island being out just one year later, it cannot be denied the game was no killer-app.
