You know, I really wouldn’t mind if Pachter would at least be consistent.  He called the PSP Go a rip off, then quickly retracted that statement.  Now he’s flat calling the Vitality Sensor stupid (even though we don’t have any software demos to speak of), and I know damn well he’ll never retract that statement.  What a jackass.

Also, just an aside, the commentators on GoNintendo are really annoying.

Pachter’s reputation is clearly imploding. When an analyst has to declare, “I am not biased,” well, what does that say? He even admits in his Pachter show on Gametrailers that he was disappointed that Nintendo did not take his ‘advice’ and make a Wii HD. The sector of the Industry that Pachter represents would love to port their stuff to a Wii HD. But an analyst is supposed to analyze the market, not try to manipulate it.

People keep sending me Pachter stuff, but I try to avoid him now. He’s quoted in enough places. I’m not going to put his stuff on my website. I mean, he has almost every game website including TV shows to do it for him.

About GoNintendo, it isn’t the ‘commentators’, it is the actual staff there. I’ve been trying to ignore the bile coming from their ‘moderators’ for a while. So now I am going to shine a giant spotlight on it so everyone knows what exactly is going on behind the scenes there.

As I said, these guys don’t think I can see what they are saying about me.

Gais gais, malstrom wrote a blog post about me!
http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2010/ … followers/
Lol, I feel so famous. What a tool. I love how he reports me to RMC like that. Oh noes, he’s telling the boss on me! Ah man, I just couldn’t stop grinning reading that. Awesome stuff.

If I wanted to ‘report’ anyone, I would have just emailed RMC. The reason why I am putting it on my blog is so the reader knows why this site won’t be as friendly to Go Nintendo as it was in the past. I’ve always been nice to you guys. But no more. Since the traffic of this website is heavily Nintendo, it is important that they actually see what is being said or they wouldn’t believe it. In the same way, they wouldn’t believe IGN Nintendo saying outright garbage until we kept showing it on a consistent basis.

I enjoy reading your thoughts, and I truly feel I’ve learned a lot from you.  I’ve had several “aha” moments reading your articles, and that doesn’t happen every day at my age.

When I consider myself experienced enough to have an opinion about your opinion, I tend to agree.  Although I would still be afraid to use “blue ocean” or “disruption” in a sentence with you in the room, I think I have a pretty good grasp of the concepts.

But the thing that always seems unbalanced is your vitriol toward Mario Galaxy.

Let’s get this out of the way.  I really enjoyed the game.  I fully agree with reviewers who scored it in the 95% range.  It has its minuses, and I could talk to you at length about them (perhaps crystallizing some of Nintendo’s less obvious faults), but that is not the point of this email.

Some of your quotes:

“There is no reason to make Super Mario Galaxy 2 as Galaxy 1 didn’t make much of an impact.”

“I know it is NOA’s job to sell whatever comes out of NCL, but I hope no one at NOA truly believes that people who bought Mario 5 are going to transition to Galaxy 2. Tell me they are not that naive!”

“Mario is an action game, not a scavenger hunt game.”

I wanted to scour for more, but these illustrate the point.  Galaxy seems to fluster you to the point where your ideals get muddled.  Or maybe I’m not getting it.

There is no reason to make Galaxy 2?  I can think of plenty of good reasons to make it, and I’m sure you can too (if you’re not angrily on a roll).  It may only be a tank in Nintendo’s arsenal and not an aircraft carrier, but that doesn’t mean it won’t usefully contribute to the fight.  Maybe it gives a team of people something to keep them busy (people Nintendo wants to hold on to) until the time is right for their next project using their skills.  And it will make a profit (easily, since development could be fast-tracked).  We can debate whether or not Galaxy 2 could possibly detract from the “vibe” of the Mario IP, but “no reason to make Galaxy 2” seems to be a statement born of anger rather than logic.

Mario 5’ers won’t transition to Galaxy 2?  Perhaps not to the level you would consider “worth it”, but there is bound to be some movement.  Maybe not those who have made up their mind about 3d Mario, but fence-sitters to be sure.  And there are always the young players who weren’t around to be personally angered to the core by Sunshine as you were.  Is that not good enough for you?  It’s not an atom bomb on Sony headquarters, but every move can’t be checkmate.  Is NOA is naïve, or are you being angrily difficult?

Mario is only an action game?  This one rankles me the most.  Out of all the lessons Nintendo has taught you.  Out of all the mistakes made by competitors.  Out of all the stupid words written by stupid people, you’re going to make the mistake of putting Nintendo in a box?  I could go on and on about this point, but I’ll leave it here.  This statement seems so unlike your normal wisdom, I can only assume it was the anger unbalancing your chi.

I read you’re going to bow out of this whole Nintendo business in the near future.  I was sad to hear it.  Still, if your feelings about the subject confuse your message, it’s only a matter of time before your message is noise.

Or is up down, east west and I’m wrong about everything?

Don’t take my issues with 3d Mario, modern Zelda, or even Metroid personally. I am not the usual gamer. And I am not the ‘brand new’ gamer that Brain Age or Wii Sports would get. I am an older gamer who didn’t exactly leave gaming, rather the games left me.

The reason why I keep speaking up on modern gaming is not to infuriate gamers. It is to point out there is another group of people with an entirely different perspective. When you look at Mario 5’s massive sales, well, where did those customers come from? They certainly didn’t come from the same group that Wii Sports and Wii Fit sold to. They didn’t come from the Core. Since nowhere in ‘game journalism’ is anyone voicing the viewpoint of this Shadow Market that has developed in the background, I’m trying to give it some voice. I’ve gotten emails from people who say when they tried to get a girl or someone older to play 3d Mario, they wouldn’t do it but they would play 2d Mario. Then they would express hostility for 3d Mario. They email this because they recognized my dislike emanating from those people. They can see a connection.

Remember when the Wii was sold out for 2007 and all we heard, from the game press and analysts, was talk about Sony and Microsoft? Was it not strange that they were ignoring the elephant in the room? And were you not angry for it?

Now in 2010, Mario 5 is rocking the sales charts and boosting sales of the Wii worldwide as an entertainment phenomenon. What do we hear? We hear little to nothing about this phenomenon. Anita Fraizer keeps talking about Modern Warfare 2 even though Mario 5 outsold it in February (and she talked about the supposed ‘PS3 shortage’ but didn’t even bother to mention the severe Wii shortage).

I get angry when people refuse to look at the facts of the marketplace. I was angry at analysts in 2007, 2008, etc. when they were not even talking about how the Wii did what it did (which is why I wrote papers on Blue Ocean and disruption as since analysts aren’t going to do it, I might as well). People either could not imagine a game market where PlayStation isn’t on top or were trying to intentionally pollute the true nature of what was going on.

In a similar way, people are not facing the facts of the current market. Mario Galaxy is not the true Mario game. Mario 5 is. The phenomenon of Mario 5 is similar to what I witnessed with Mario 1, 2, 3, and 4 when they came out on console (although Mario 1 was way bigger, even bigger than Wii Sports).

Here are the ‘measuring sticks’ I am using to gauge what is the ‘true’ game of the series or not.

1) Is it making gaming, in general, more mass market and popular (i.e. the Revolution which began back in PONG)?

2) Is it furthering the drive for momentum for the console itself, such as the Wii?

3) Is it further fleshing out and developing the Mario Universe or is it messing it up and making Mario less popular than before?

Now lets take all the Mario games, both 2d and 3d, and run them through the three grinders above.

What games furthered the Revolution?

Mario 1, clearly. NSMB DS and Mario 5 definitely are. Mario 2, 3, and 4 are sorta iffy on this.

Mario 64 repressed the Revolution as making Mario games more niche. Mario Sunshine added to the disaster. Mario Galaxy was designed to make 3d Mario more accessible so it would sell like 2d Mario (according to Miyamoto’s exact words). Mario Galaxy failed. Selling pretty much only in America, Galaxy flopped in places like Japan which is major since it was the flagship Nintendo Mario game where the Wii was dominating the market at the time.

How did the Mario games increase the momentum for the console?

Well, with Mario 1, it is clear what that did for the NES. Mario 2 and Mario 3 kept the Mario 1 fire burning. Mario 4 launched the SNES to sold out numbers.

Gameboy did not sell due to Tetris alone. It also sold because people wanted the Super Mario Land games. And GBA had 2d Mario ports on them.

The DS was in close competition with the PSP until software like Nintendogs and Animal Crossing DS and Mario Kart DS began to erupt sales there. But NSMB DS, which is the best selling DS game in Japan, helped catapult the DS and drive momentum for it longterm. NSMB DS is still selling strongly and is well over 20 million units sold.

In America, the DS was neck to neck with the PSP until summer of 2006. People say the DS Lite was what brought the DS up. Since software sells the hardware, we have to point to NSMB DS which was released a week before the DS Lite did. After NSMB DS came out, the DS had no problems selling. And NSMB DS still keeps selling.

A clear pattern emerges that in order for a Nintendo console to be successful, handheld or console, it must have a 2d Mario. N64 and Gamecube didn’t have a 2d Mario, and they had only declining sales.

And what about the Mario games further carving out Mushroom Land and the Mario universe?

Mario 1, 2, 3, and 4 all were spectacular in creating a universe which constant Mario spin-offs have been exploiting to this day. There could be no Mario Kart franchise if Mario 1, 2, 3, and 4 did not push to enrich the Mushroom Kingdom the way they did.

Mario 64, to the contrary of the rest of the 3d Mario games, did further add to the Mario universe. This is perhaps why Mario 64 is said to be more replayable than Sunshine or Galaxy. Sunshine didn’t even take place in the Mushroom Kingdom so it couldn’t add anything. Galaxy featured the Mushroom Kingdom only in shattered pieces floating around in an ether. When looking back at how much the Mushroom Kingdom was enriched by a game like Mario 3 or 4 or even Doki Doki Panic, it is clear Galaxy didn’t add anything except Rosalina (who I don’t think anyone cares about anyway).

Interestingly, NSMB DS and Mario 5 didn’t really enrich the Mushroom Kingdom at all. But after fifteen to twenty years of no 2d Marios, they got a pass. However, they will not get a pass next time. Nintendo really needs to become a content orientated company rather than just focusing on the ‘gameplay mechanics’. Mario 3, when it was being marketed, was said by Miyamoto to be a ‘further exploration of the worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom’.

Unfortunately, Mario games are not exploring the Mushroom Kingdom anymore. They are just laboratories of gameplay mechanics.

Now, let us look at Galaxy 2.

Will Galaxy 2 help make games more mainstream? The answer is no.

Will Galaxy 2 help further the Wii momentum? Since Galaxy 1 didn’t do anything for Wii momentum, the answer is no.

Will Galaxy 2 further flesh out and explore the Mushroom Kingdom? We can’t answer this as the game hasn’t come out. But since Galaxy 2 will be like Galaxy 1 in shredding the Mushroom Kingdom up into chunks and hanging them out in the ether of space, the answer is likely be no.

This is why I am saying there is no reason for Galaxy 2 to be made.

Now, if you want to know why you sense anger about this from me, I want you to imagine eighteen years of not having a Mario game. And I want you to imagine a decade of people praising 3d Mario and Miyamoto when the market was actually rejecting 3d Mario. Imagine a fake Mario game replacing the true Mario game.

There is almost twenty years of bitterness. The hostility is due to several reasons:

1) Not making 2d Mario for decades. You’d be pissed off too. This is why I laugh at the ‘hardcore gamers’ feeling ‘abandoned’ by the Wii. You guys don’t know what it is like to feel ‘abandoned’.

2) A decade of people saying 3d Mario is the true Mario game when you know it is not and the market says it is not.

3) 2d Mario said to only be allowed on ‘handhelds’. “Only 3d games are allowed to be on the home console.” Yeah, well screw them!

4) Miyamoto knew we all wanted 2d Mario. His exact words, “I’ve made those games before. I don’t want to make them again.”

5) At E3 2009, Cammie Dunaway said, “But Miyamoto doesn’t want to just make a new Mario game with only more levels,” when announcing Mario 5’s four player mode. Then, later in the same conference, Cammie Dunaway said, “And here is Super Mario Galaxy 2″ which is nothing more but Galaxy with extra levels. Talk about the hypocrisy.

6) 2d Mario people are still treated like second class gamers. Mario 5 is very modest in terms of graphics and sound. Meanwhile, Galaxy and Galaxy 2, which are a very niche game compared to 2d Mario, get amazing production quality and full orchestras.

Miyamoto’s premise was that Mario was about… Mario. But Mario games are about platforming. When Miyamoto didn’t make Mario 5, an opening was made for competitors. People flocked to Sonic the Hedgehog for example. In trouble, Nintendo put out another 2d platformer that saved the SNES (Donkey Kong Country). Miyamoto, instead, put out Yoshi’s Island which certainly was not Mario 5 which sold way less than Donkey Kong Country and did nothing for SNES momentum. Not a bad game, of course, but it didn’t do the job it was supposed to do.

Ever since Super Mario World, people like myself have been eagerly awaiting Mario 5. We thought we would get Mario 5 on the SNES because there was three Mario games on the NES. Instead, I got a not-that-great 2d platfomer about monkeys. Definitely not the same. And Mario 64 was such a radical departure of what Super Mario Brothers is. (which Miyamoto is beginning to say in public. “Something was lost in the transition to 3d Mario.”)

So after a decade of calling for Mario 5, we finally get NSMB for the DS which everyone wrongly called the successor to Super Mario World. Since it was made for the handheld, it would be the successor to the Super Mario Land series. Anyway, I buy a DS after E3 2005 when NSMB is announced.

I had not bought a video game console, of any kind, in fifteen years since the SNES launched.

When NSMB DS comes out, it is a massive success. DS sales explode in America. People like me were saying, “Now, Nintendo, make a 2d Mario for the home console. Make the Wii launch with Super Mario Brothers 5.”

At this time, Iwata was pushing Miyamoto to make a ‘Mario game’ for launch of the Wii (since Luigi’s Mansion did miserably for pushing Gamecube momentum). Mario Galaxy was unveiled at E3 2006 and released for the holidays in 2007.

Now, I rented Mario Galaxy and was taken in by the music. Having a gift card, I foolishly bought the game and stopped playing it instantly after I ‘beat it’. The game wasn’t fun to me at all. I should have just bought the soundtrack.

3d Marios were not selling anywhere close to 2d Marios. Miyamoto said this was due to accessibility. So Mario Galaxy was designed to be as accessible as possible. It would have a special lens that would help see around corners, the gravity pull made it harder to fall off to doom, and most interestingly Galaxy kept resorting to flashes of 2d gameplay (which was vicious teasing to folks like me. Just give us a damn 2d Mario already).

Despite NSMB DS massive success, everyone shouted down the idea of a 2d Mario for home console. “Home consoles are for 3d games, not 2d games.” However, they relented. “2d Mario should only be a download such as with WiiWare.” In other words, the games I want to play should be automatically relegated to the ghetto.

When Mario 5 was unveiled at E3 2010, it was panned by all the ‘game journalists’. Viral marketers, or complete idiots, kept calling Mario 5 a “DS port”. They called Nintendo ‘lazy’ for making the game. They even went so far as to say that Mario 5 is not a proper video game, that it was a ‘casual game’.

Nintendo fans were saying, “Why is Mario 5 coming out? What a waste of time. I suppose this will hold me over for when Galaxy 2 comes out.”

How do you think people like me felt? From statements and behavior, it felt like if you were a fan of 2d Mario and not 3d Mario, everyone was giving you the middle finger including Nintendo developers and Miyamoto himself. “I just don’t feel like making that game anymore.”

Longtime readers will recall how I was a broken record on calling for 2d Mario to come out on the Wii. “Stop this User Generated Content nonsense and make Mario 5!” And, lo and behold, Nintendo did.

Going into holidays 2009, Reggie was asked who Mario 5 was for since it wasn’t a Core game and wasn’t an Expanded Audience title. “For other gamers,” Reggie responded. Somehow, I got a sense that was a nod to people like me. When asked about Wii momentum, Reggie said on TV that it was normal for console sales to decline after the third year. In other words, Nintendo was thinking declining Wii sales were going to be the norm.

Then Mario 5 was released. I bought it as soon as the store opened on Sunday morning. If you think I was the only one, as some crazed 2d Mario fanatic, think again. There were other people who were rushing to the store, as soon as it opened, just to get their hands on 2d Mario. Some of them were women. I asked them when was the last time they went to the store to get a game when it launched? Their answer: Wii Fit and some Wii Sports Resort. I asked them when was the last time they bought a home console other than the Wii. Their answer: the SNES over fifteen years ago. Some said they got other consoles like a PlayStation or such that their roommates played, but they didn’t like at all. The Old School were coming back home.

Mario 5, despite its massive supply, was selling out in stores and even Amazon. I can’t think of a non-hardware bundled game to ever sell out since games went to disc (that had such massive supply in the first place).

Despite constant decline, the Wii broke all hardware sales record in December 2009 with almost four million systems sold that month. Nintendo had to have been shocked at the hardware being sold. In Japan, Miyamoto admitted Nintendo was surprised that Wii-motes were selling out because everyone was playing Mario 5 together. In America, the huge Wii stockpile was obliterated. Reggie said in December or November 2009 on TV, in response whether Wii would see shortages as it did in previous Christemas, “While I would love for us to sell out, we don’t think that is going to be the case.” Nintendo knew Mario 5 would sell, but I think they underestimated how much hardware it would move.

I see this as vindication after fifteen years of demanding a new 2d Mario. It is vindication of the Old Schoolers. It is vindication that Mario 64, far from being a success, was actually a disaster for the Mario franchise.

The Wii is not only radically changing the video game market. It is going to radically change video game history. The biggest business blunder in Nintendo’s history is not the Virtual Boy or the bad blood with Sony and the PlayStation, it was the refusal to make 2d Mario. When Nintendo stopped doing this, their hardware faced continued decline. Mario 64 ensured the N64 lost to the PlayStation. Mario 64 almost ensured the DS losing to the PSP. In both the DS and Wii, the software that turned around declining sales was 2d Mario.

What makes me angry is that even though all the market data is there that shows my vindication is being ignored. Mario 5 is selling at a faster clip than even the monster hit of Modern Warfare 2. But do you ever hear analysts mention this? No. Do you hear game journalists mention this? No.

When you ask me why I say Galaxy 2 shouldn’t be made, I have to ask if you are not looking at the market data? What possible reason could there be to make Galaxy 2?

On why Galaxy 2 and Mario 5 were made, here are Miyamoto’s answers.

With Mario 5: “Our salesmen really want it.”
With Galaxy 2: “Our developers have ideas.”

In other words, Galaxy 2 is being made only because the developers want to “play” and entertain themselves. Mario 5 was not made for those purposes. The business side kept seeing the massive success of NSMB DS and wanted such a game for the Wii.

This is why I trust the business side for choosing game development as opposed to the creative side. This same situation occurred with Modern Warfare 2. Infinity Ward did not want to make Modern Warfare 2 but Activision insisted. Activision was correct in forcing Infinity Ward to make the game.

You expressed wonder how I could say that Cammie Dunaway is naive if she believes Mario 5’s customers are going to buy Galaxy 2. The reason why is because we have been rejecting 3d Mario ever since the N64. We just do not like the game.

At.

All.

The question that keeps being asked at Nintendo is how to get 3d Mario to sell like 2d Mario. This is because the Nintendo developers only want to make 3d Mario and despise making 2d Mario.

The real question is why should Nintendo continue 3d Mario at all? It doesn’t sell consoles. It only harmed the Mario franchise (remember Mario being the laughingstock starting in the N64 generation and continuing into the Gamecube Era?). It is absolutely insane to let Nintendo developers do what they want to do. I long for the NES days when Nintendo developers tried to please Yamauchi rather than trying to please themselves. There was a hell of a ton better games made back then from Nintendo.

I sincerely believe Iwata misdiagnosed the cancer that is causing the decline of gaming. Iwata said gaming is in decline due to ‘Gamer Drift’. Games are getting longer and less accessible.

What is actually occurring is that gaming is in decline due to ‘Developer Drift‘. Gamers didn’t leave games, the game makers did.

With Mario, the peak of the series was during the NES days. Since then, it was in decline and was in major decline after the SNES. What changed? The game developers decided they didn’t want to make 2d Mario anywhere.

With Zelda, the peak of the series came with Ocarina of Time during the N64. Since then, the series has seen decline. What changed? The game developers changed. They decided to do funky things like turn Zelda into a cartoon (Wind Waker) to have Zelda be about trains and blowing into the DS (Spirit Tracks).

With Metroid, the decline began with Super Metroid after the peak of Metroid and Metroid II. However, the peak of the series was with Metroid Prime. Ever since then, the Metroid series has been in decline. Why? It is because of Developer Drift. Developers are trying to turn Metroid into something that entertains them and not something that entertains the masses. So Metroid becomes more manga like (which will be soundly rejected by the Old Schoolers just as they rejected Fusion and Zero Mission).

But please, do not misinterpret me to say that you should not enjoy playing your 3d Mario games. I am trying to look at the Big Picture of not just this generation but all generations. When you look at it from that perspective, there is no other conclusion I can see but to declare 3d Mario a failure at carrying the torch left that was handed to them from Super Mario World.

“But 3d Mario sells!” Yes, but at horrible levels compared to the real Mario games, the 2d Marios. The road of 3d Mario is the road of N64 and road of Gamecube. If Nintendo is truly interested in becoming a mass gaming medium, they are going to do what they can to avoid the road of the N64 and Gamecube.

I am beginning to think that Nintendo is going to eventually abandon the mission of expanding gaming to the mainstream. Why? It is because in order to do this, Nintendo must eliminate ‘developer drift’. And since ‘developer drift’ is developers doing whatever they want, to drown themselves in ‘creativity’, Nintendo developers will bitterly protest this. Remember, game developers didn’t join the industry to develop games, they came so they could inflict their “incredible” visions of art on us.

Why is it that the less creative a game developer is, the better the game ends up? There is nothing creative in the Blizzard games, for example. There isn’t much creative in Mario 5, as another example. There is nothing creative in Wii Sports or Wii Fit.

If we are willing to accept many premises about video games were proven wrong by the Wii’s success, perhaps we should allow the possibility of more premises to be proven wrong. And the latest premise to be shown wrong was that 3d Mario is the successor to the Mario franchise. No, it is a spin-off and not a true Mario main entry.

If Nintendo was really smart, it would launch all new hardware with 2d Mario. I thought this would have been the pattern. I never would have dreamed that Nintendo would stop making Mario games after Super Mario World. It is as absurd as Nintendo no longer making games like Wii Sports.

If Nintendo refuses to make any more 2d Mario after seeing the phenomenal sales of NSMB DS and Mario 5, then they deserve the low sales their future hardware will get.

This is from an exchange of emails I had concerning someone asking whether game sales mean quality.

Hi again!

Well my opponents say that games are an art and should be measured by people who “know” art. Here are some of their arguments i short form:

- Is a Volvo better then a Rolls Royce because it sells better?
- If better sales mean a better product then Twilight New Moon would be the best movie in 2009, that isn’t the case.
- Better sales only indicate that the product is more popular not better.

And other arguments like that follow page after page. They have taken a quote from a swdish author that says this: “A product has the right quality at the satisfaction of the user / customer requirements, needs and expectations.” Then they go on that there isn’t any connection in the book between quality/good product/etc. and sales.

This is a question I’ve been searching for a deffinitve answer for. One of my teachers said that it is true that a product that has good sales is better then a product with lesser sales. Another one said the opposite.

I’m really confused about this. I want to say that a good product gets better sales but I just can’t find a good definition or quote in a book that strengthens my thesis. That’s why I’m turning to you. Hope you can solve this little problem.

My immediate answer to this is, “What other indicator is there of quality than sales? When someone is able to hand over hard earned money to purchase something, that means the customer wants it badly enough.”

No one has yet offered any other reliable indicator of quality other than sales. Game reviews are a joke as many of them are fake. So what other indicator could there be than longterm sales? Keep in mind, I am referring about legitimate sales. I am not referring to a practice such as occurs in the book industry when a politician’s book is bought by boxes in mass (and burned in mass too) just to pop the book up on the New York Times Best Seller List. I don’t think there is any instance that occurs with video games that comes close to that.

Let me spin the question around. Does greater salary mean greater quality? Quality… defined as what? Well, defined by the desire and scarcity of your skill by the employer.

I can sing. I can dance. But are people willing to pay to hear Sean Malstrom sing and dance? The answer is, alas, no. No one is willing to pay to hear me sing and dance (even though I can!).

But people were willing to pay Michael Jackson to hear him sing and dance when he was alive.

I can play basketball. I can shoot hoops. But is anyone willing to pay money to watch Sean Malstrom play basketball? Once again, alas, the answer is no. No one wants to pay money to watch me play basketball. But people will pay money to watch Michael Jordan.

I can play golf too! But no one is willing to pay money to watch me play golf. But people are willing to pay to watch Tiger Woods play golf. You get the pattern.

Is Michael Jackson a better singer and dancer than Sean Malstrom? All you can do is point to sales. People were willing to pay to listen and watch him. People, alas, are not willing to watch me sing and dance.

What sales indicate are customers. The question is not whether sales determines quality. The question is, “Do customers determine quality?” And the answer to that is an astounding YES!

Jets are constantly outsold by bicycles. Does this mean bicycles are a better form of transportation? Seeing how very few people can purchase a jet, and even fewer than that can pay the jet fuel needed for the jet (you won’t believe the price of jet fuel these days!), the bicycle is better. An economy car is better than a sports car in that it is allowing people to drive around (where they couldn’t before).

And this brings us to an important topic on disruption. Disruption occurs on the low ends. How did electricity get spread commercially? How did we go from a civilization of candles and fireplaces to a civilization of electric bulbs? Shumpeter said that electricity failed to spread earlier was because kings and other heads of state saw no purpose for it. And why should they? They had servants put out their candles and servants make their food. Something like electricity has allowed us to live as rich as a king.

Things sell because they make people happy or are useful. Greater sales, of course, occur on the lower end of the market than the higher end. It is easier to sell a jet ski than a yacht. Is the jet ski better than a yacht? Seeing how it allows more people access to the water, I’d say so.

So when it comes to games like Let’s Dance to Carnival Games, are those games of quality? Well, someone is buying them for a reason. And when you talk to someone who bought Let’s Dance, they will admit that they play the game constantly especially when friends are over. People laugh and have a good time. Isn’t that what games are supposed to do?

If sales do not indicate quality, what is stop someone saying the N-gage is the best portable gaming device ever? Or that this generation’s masterpiece is Lair?

So why do people not want to accept that sales (i.e. customers) indicate quality? This is a far more fun question to me.

Check out this link to Ars Technica saying that sales shouldn’t be used to indicate quality. What is said about musicians liking low sales is laughable. Believe me, they want high sales. Everyone does. But if they have low sales, they try to shrug off defeat by saying they were ‘too sophisticated’ for the market. Har har!

The nice thing about being a fan of games is that we don’t work for a publisher, and we don’t have to worry about whether or not a game turns a profit… unless we’re hoping for a sequel. Once the game is made, and the disc and case—or download—is in our possession, the only thing we need to care about is whether or not the game is good. We need to re-contextualize the argument: a game isn’t a success when it sells more than 500,000 copies or whatever we’ve decided the number is this month; a game is a success when it’s fun to play, gives you satisfaction, and allows you to enjoy an evening or afternoon with yourself or some friends. It’s easy to list great games that sold poorly, or poor games that sold great.

The next time someone argues numbers when you’re discussing the worth of a game, gently remind them that you’re a gamer, not an executive. All things being equal, we have much less worries, and many more opportunities to find the gold… no matter how many other people pass it by.

The reason why people keep trying to insist that sales are not quality is because they cannot tolerate that the business side is defining, in their view, the artistic side.

Oh, that awful business side! Full of corporate drones! Full of numbers! What a dull, dry, dreary world! But the art side… My goodness! Bring out the red wine. Turn up the music. The ‘business side’ is ’sub-human’ while the art side allows us to fully be human.

That is the mentality going on with those protesting that sales do not indicate quality (what are sales? Customers. And customers are people).

One of the things I wish to change with this website is the myth that business is dull, dry, and dreary. That it is nothing but numbers. To the contrary, the artist is a dull shallow figure compared to the businessman. Business is really all about emotion. You could even say that business is not even really about money but about time. A businessman has inverse values where they value their time more than their money (as a businessman understands that you can always borrow more money, but you are extremely limited with your time on Earth. No one has ever figured out how to extend it). When businessmen really talk, they say some of the most incredible things. Things an artist could never possibly say despite all their ‘creativity’.

Sales are not just numbers in a financial statement. Sales are indicators of flesh and blood human beings. Sales indicate the level of audience.

Does the size of the audience determine the quality of the show? Even artists are going to have to admit that yes, it does.

People have problems with having sales determining quality because they are unable, or unwilling, to allow the business context to intertwine with their life. So sales become ‘business’ which is ‘dull, dry, and dreary’. It is the stuff of accountants and even more boring salesmen.

When the Industrial Revolution was coming around, there were people who did not want to learn how to read. They wanted to remain farmers. It was comfortable to them. But they were being left behind. It wasn’t just reading but the emotional processes that an academic education brought. Those who refused to learn how to read (or worse were denied the opportunity) were not stupid people. It just made no sense in their period of time.

Now, we have what I call the Silicon Revolution coming around and it is changing everything. Instead of the call to read as happened to your forefathers, you need to learn to embrace the business side. Is it boring? Dully, dreary, and dry? This is because no one has shown you the good stuff. It is like people hating Shakespeare because of how it was taught to them in classrooms. The process of sales, marketing, and finances is very exciting and far more interesting than anything we’ve seen.

You’ve gotten a taste of the exciting world of business with how this console market swings wildly one way or another. You’ve gotten a taste of the exciting world of business when you had the ‘aha!’ moment in seeing what disruption or Blue Ocean was. And what is fun is that all this stuff will lead to you becoming wealthier (and likely more manly as a certain appreciation of risk is involved).

Sales are not about profit and numbers. Sales are about customers. Sales are about the quality customers see in the product that they are willing to pay money for it.

Customers define quality in products. And what other indication of customers is there but sales?

Splitting this email up because it asks The Big Question at the end.

Dear Sean

You’re making the argument that people care more about the artistic side than the business side because the business side is dry and boring. That argument is true for some, but doesn’t tell the whole story.

By dismissing critics of the purely economic argument, you completely neglect the ethical side of this discussion: Does this product make the world a better place to live in? Does it do any harm?

Following your argument laid out in your recent quality/sales post, cigarettes have a higher quality than fruit (the former selling roughly four times as well as the latter). It follows that as an artist, I shouldn’t have any scruples selling my work for propaganda posters or cult recruitment if it sells better than other customers. Would you agree with that?

The premise you are putting out is that customers are stupid and will unknowingly buy things that will lead to their destruction. This idea was best illustrated with Prohibition that was actually put into the United States Constitution almost a hundred years ago. After all, drinking leads to many social problems. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to just get rid of it? That led to so much crime. There is a part of Human nature that some people do wish to drink away their life or whatever.

People know what cigarettes do to the body. Even kids know. But people smoke because they enjoy it. Professional golfers are, to this day, allowed to smoke cigarettes when playing (where everyone else cannot of course) because it soothes their nerves. (Cigarettes are a bad example since the state propaganda about them was more about interested in taxing them. If they as bad as politicians have declared them to be, they would have been banned.)

As I said earlier, customers are the determination of quality. Customers are the determination of ethics as well. When baseball had all the problems with steroids, did baseball attendance fall? No. So while some people had problems with it, the customers did not.

Is buying gold and items with real money a problem in games like World of Warcraft? Is it unethical? The customers think so which makes Blizzard think so.

Is cheating in my single player game unethical? No customer thinks so. So Blizzard allows that.

Are video games unethical? After all, they can cause great harm to a person’s life. But it is for customers to determine whether or not video games are ethical or not, not someone named Jack Thompson or some other non-gamer who is obsessed at controlling what other people do.

Who is any non-customer to define what is ethical or not for a customer? Where someone might find cigarettes unethical, many do not. There are people who think strip shows and drinking are unethical. But who are they to enforce that ethical standard on other people?

Your ‘ethics’ is nothing more than non-customers demanding what is ethical for customers. It is like a vegetarian shutting down the steak house or the non-smoker shutting down sales of cigars or the minister shutting down bars.

Customers define the value of products. They also define the ‘ethics’ of that product too.

I think this is a point of confusion because people confuse marketing with brainwashing (which it isn’t). All marketing does is bring attention to the product. If the product sucks, like Wii Music did, no amount of marketing can sell it.

The question is: What is the purpose of business? Is it to create value for individuals clever enough to understand it? Does it serve a societal purpose, such as increasing quality of life, furthering freedom, health, and human expression? Or doesn’t it have a purpose other than sustaining itself, a “memeplex” behaving like an organism trying to survive?

To answer this, I have decided to summon the spirit of Peter Drucker to this blog post. Peter Drucker, how are you?

“I am fine, Malstrom. How about you?”

There is someone here who wishes to ask you a question.

“OK. What is it?”

The question is, ‘What is the purpose of business?’

With a smile, Peter Drucker answers:

To know what a business is we have to start with its purpose. Its purpose must lie outside of the business itself. In fact, it must lie in society since business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

Markets are not created by God, nature, or economic forces but by businessmen. The want a business satisfies may have been felt by the customer before he was offered the means of satisfying it. Like food in a famine, it may have dominated the customer’s life and filled all his waking moments, but it remained a potential want until the action of businessmen converted it into effective demand. Only then is there a customer and a market. The want may have been unfelt by the potential customer; no one knew that he wanted a Xerox machine or a computer until these became available. There may have been no want at all until business action created it—by innovation, by credit, by advertising, or by salesmanship. In every case, it is business action that creates the customer.

It is the customer who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for a good or for a service converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. What the business thinks it produces is not of first importance—especially not to the future of the business and to its success. The typical engineering definition of quality is something that is hard to do, is complicated, and costs a lot of money! But that isn’t quality; it’s incompetence. What the customer thinks he’s buying, what he considers value is decisive—it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper. And what the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or service does for him.

The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. He alone gives employment. To supply the wants and needs of a consumer, society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise.