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Why do you resort to calling everyone who defends Other M for what it is a Sakamoto Cultist when you know it makes your argument against them seem really cheap? Is it so hard for you to believe that there are actually people out there–Metroid fans!–who are excited about Other M and everything that has been shown so far (angsty cut scenes included), that you must insist that they are blind followers of some Sakamoto God? I’m one of those so-called “cultists” who has e-mailed you about Other M in the past, and I was one of the commenters on that article on Jack Loftus’ blog. And honestly, I don’t give a flying crap about Yoshio Sakamoto. I respect him for what he’s done in the past, but my interest in Other M has little to do with him and everything to do with the games content: I actually care about Samus Aran’s back story! I care to learn more about the Baby Metroid (Metroid II is my favorite Metroid game, and Sakamoto had nothing to do with that one). I’m excited about the cut scenes, and I got into Metroid back with the very first game, when there was hardly any story. It’s all well and good that you don’t like emphasis on story and Samus’ emotions. That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. But calling all these people who genuinely look forward to the game Sakamoto Cultists? That’s low. You mentioned retiring this blog not too long ago. Will it be any time soon? I’d hate you see you become a laughingstock when Other M’s sales exceed the last two Prime games (actually Reggie himself said that it only needs to surpass Super Metroid’s sales to be a hit in their book). Why is it that what I write bothers you? Why do you give me such power over your emotions? This is what I’ve never understood. I’ve probably pissed off every Nintendo fan due to writing about Mario and Zelda but none of them react as the Other M advocates have. Let’s go through your email again in a more fine tooth comb: Why do you resort to calling everyone who defends Other M for what it is a Sakamoto Cultist when you know it makes your argument against them seem really cheap? If it is so cheap, why not just ignore me? The reason why I used the phrase ‘Sakamoto Cultist’ is because of the literal worship they give to the man. Now, this might be more understood if the man was Shigeru Miyamoto, but of Sakamoto? I’m sure they are. But they are just as clueless about Metroid as those Zelda fans who thought trains in Spirit Tracks were ‘really cool’. As a gamer, you can be on the wrong side of the market. There are people who think the PSP Go is awesome when the market clearly doesn’t. I am sure, somewhere, perhaps in a place of unicorns and skittles raining from the sky, is someone who actually is excited for Kinect. You’re one of the reasons why gaming is collapsing. If you think of the Metroid titles have a ‘story’, then you do not know what a story is. What you are doing is acting as an enabler for developers to put in elements into games that do not belong. They might see your message forum posts and go, “Oh boy, some people out there like this direction. Therefore, let us go with it.” Sakamoto has been making Metroid games for your tastes for decades and where has this brought Metroid? Only into a steady decline. If it wasn’t for Metroid Prime, there wouldn’t have been much excitement of the Metroid series as there has been recently. Since your way hasn’t been working, of making Metroid games more about ‘Samus stories’, why not try it my way? Why not a full back-to-the-roots 2d Metroid game for the home console with no bloody cutscenes or storyline? One of the reasons why Sakamoto’s direction is not working is because he is a member of the Cult of Creativity. He has stated, several times, that he needs to do things differently than Miyamoto. But the rub is what if Miyamoto’s games succeed not because of ‘creativity’ but because of how it resonates with Human Nature? This would mean by doing something the opposite of Miyamoto, just because, the game would be going contrary to Human Nature and would lead to poorer sales. Sakamoto’s creativity is the problem…
It’s all well and good that you don’t like emphasis on story and Samus’ emotions. That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. But calling all these people who genuinely look forward to the game Sakamoto Cultists? That’s low. If you read the email that I responded to, it was someone accusing me of lying about something Sakamoto said. These same people have expressed a desire to punch me, to do other sorts of violence to me. It is that behavior of which I am responding to. You make it sound as if I am calling ‘cultists’ of anyone who may want to play Other M. I am labeling that crazy behavior as the cultists. But why don’t your words apply to me? Why doesn’t my opinion count? After all, I am only writing my own stuff on my own personal website. Why are these other people getting pissed off at what I am saying on my own website? Why is what I am saying hitting such a nerve? You mentioned retiring this blog not too long ago. Will it be any time soon? It will be very soon. But I am still going to come back and laugh at things like watching Kinect crash and burn. He he he. 1) Reggie never said that. He said they want to make Metroid more mainstream. In order to do that, the game needs to match or surpass the first Prime game’s sales. 2) There are three Prime games, not two. It has gotten so pathetic for the Sakamoto Cultists that they are pretending the first Metroid Prime does not exist and only wish to compare Other M to the sales of Prime 2 and Prime 3. Prime 2 appeared when the Gamecube was in massive decline and everyone was abandoning the system. Prime 3, actually a poor game in my opinion, also suffered from horrendous marketing. Nintendo’s 2007 core game marketing was so bad that when Mario Galaxy was published in Japan, the Japanese thought it was a party game. This is why Mario Galaxy initially sold so horrible when it was released in Japan. (Many people do not realize this including business websites who should know better. There is one business website in full orgasm that Mario Galaxy 2 was selling better than Galaxy 1 in launch aligned status. They had no idea how Galaxy 1 was so badly marketed in Japan and Galaxy 2 is being marketed much, much, much better [and Galaxy 2 is nowhere near the 2d Mario games... another failure of 3d Mario]). If Other M is the ‘first real Metroid since Super Metroid’, according to Sakamoto, then surely it would eclipse NES Metroid and Metroid 2 sales due to the population increase and the much larger Wii install base. Other M should clearly clean Metroid Prime’s clock because Other M is on the massive Wii install base while Metroid Prime only had the puny Gamecube install base. Even the Sakamoto Cultists know that Other M isn’t going to be the ‘big hit’ so they are already trying to frame the comparison between Prime 2 and Prime 3 (why stop there? Why not frame the comparison with Metroid Prime Pinball?). Any addition of Japanese sales alone would pop a title above Prime 2 and Prime 3 sales. But that definitely wouldn’t be a success. What is really going to be fun is to compare Donkey Kong Country Returns with Metroid: Other M. God, it really does feel like 1994 again! Anyway, the Sakamoto Cultists (not you, the emailer) need to get a hobby and need to stop being so emotional to what some anonymous person writes on their own personal blog. |
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Hi Malstrom, Your previous emailer asks whether the Backstreet Boys are better than Iron Maiden under the ‘sales = quality’ mantra. To quote their concerned comment: (Backstreet Boys are) ” Better, according to you, than bands like Iron Maiden, who still goes on tours and preform in front of millions of pepole, sell millions of albums every year, yet, their grand total of albums sold is less than The Backstreet Boys?”‘ I must say I agree with your respose: “The answer is that the people decide what is the quality of a product. We know it has value because people give something they have of value to get it (their money). If they didn’t value it, people wouldn’t be paying for it.” The thing is, your view and that of the emailer don’t cotradict each other on that point. As the emailer writes, people still buy millions of Iron Maiden albums each year, still go to see them play live and listen to their old music. I highly doubt that Backstreet Boys cds sell that well in comparison after their few years of ‘fame’. So it would seem to me that under that definition, which you both agree on, if more people appreciate something then that indicates it is ‘better’. (That said, I think it is trivial to argue over who is better over Michael Jackson, Freddy Mercury or Elvis etc. But I would expect they can sing better than you or else you may have to start another career!). So the cliffnotes version is that if something is popular, it will sell, but if something is genuinely good and popular, it will keep selling for a long time. That works for both Iron Maiden, Queen, Michael Jackson, Tetris and Super Mario Bros. We were absolutely not talking the same things. The entire premise behind the reluctance of letting ‘better sales mean better quality’ is the idea that ‘sales’ defines quality. Ebert has said that video games are not art, e.g. are not quality in comparison to movies. But this was said about movies not being seen as quality compared to literature and stage plays. Movies became defined by quality due to sales. It was sales of movies that eventually made it into quality. Television was also not seen as ‘quality’ compared to movies. What changed it was sales. People enjoyed watching TV. This meant TV had some sort of quality. Personally, I don’t know why someone would like Just Dance. But I know it is a quality game because people keep buying it. It is of value to someone. It becomes quality to someone. There is much about Human Nature we do not understand. Quality cannot be some fixed definition. If something sells and keeps selling, we re-define quality. This is why I mentioned Shakespeare and Mark Twain because their work was not considered quality in the idea but their works became massively popular, not after they were dead, but while they were alive. However, there are many cases when a work sells very strongly during the present and is completely forgotten about later on. Why is this? Well, we know it was quality at that time period. But during the next time period, it wasn’t considered quality. It is no different than a game selling because of its ‘awesome graphics’ back in 1990 only to be seen as ‘trash’ in 2010. What was considered quality graphics in 1990 is not quality graphics in 2010. This is why it is best for video games to target Human Nature instead of targeting computer technology. When you target computer technology, the product becomes obsolete as soon as computer technology changes. But if you target Human Nature, it remains eternal because Human Nature never changes. |
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1984 Arcade, NES, other platforms (Someone stole my NES copy of this game and, over two decades later, I am still pissed off about it.) How strange is it that a game of rolling marbles has a far superior soundtrack to 99% of every other game made!
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After doing the Marble Madness music post, I thought why the simple little game was so much fun. The marbles rolling around and the ‘physics’ made it fun. The music made it fun. But Marble Madness was a simultaneous co-op NES game. Part of the reason the Wii had huge success (and DS as well) is because of the local multiplayer. While Xbox 360 has games like Gears of War, it is safe to say most of the multiplayer in those games are over the Internet. Gamecube and N64 had four controllers that could play games like Mario Kart and Smash Brothers in fun little parties. But this is not the co-op gaming I am referring to. Every console can point to some sort of co-op game. But looking at the broader picture, the NES comes out as the one who most seemed to embrace it. The SNES gravitated more toward single player adventure and RPG gaming. The Genesis, with its many arcade and sports games, did have tons of multiplayer but much of it was placed in the port (e.g. multiplayer in Street Fighter 2 because it was already part of the arcade game). The Atari Era console games were too short for people to play with them co-op. The NES is a different story. One thing I really liked about this time period was how a game console would not only come with a video game, it would come with multiple controllers (and hell, even a light gun). An old Miyamoto interview has him saying that the multiple controllers were to get people playing the console together, of games like Baseball, and Miyamoto wanted the game console to be approached that way (which would explain why multiple controllers were included in the box). Most of the early NES games were very primitive (as you would expect). But I recall even back then, people were trying to play the games co-op. Even though Super Mario Brothers had one person play at a time, people would still play it together. People would even play Legend of Zelda together (!). I recall the co-op NES games being extremely popular with players at the time. Here is a list of a few of them and tell me if, when remembering them, you get a smile: -Bubble Bobble And I haven’t even listed the sports games. In the arcades, my favorite games were co-op video games. Many of the beat-em-ups were co-op, many of the ‘gun’ games were, and who didn’t love Gauntlet or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or X-Men? Many game makers think a game has to either be single player or ‘party game’, and this is silly. Co-op games mean that you and a friend get to go through the adventure together. I think co-op is one of the understated reasons why some games become big. Donkey Kong Country, unlike the 2d Mario games, embraced co-op gaming (in a limited fashion) as the two players gave each other control in the game. People talk about World of Warcraft succeeding because it is an MMORPG. But looking at how people behave in the game, I think it is more of a co-op experience for people. The husband will play the game together with his wife. In a way, many MMORPG games end up becoming a ‘multi-co-op’ experience where it is multiple co-op experiences for a group of friends. If this is true, then one can create a similar experience to WoW without the expensive servers and online fees. Most games have been reluctant to embrace co-op gaming. The HD twins do not even like local multiplayer. And keep in mind I am not referring to games like Smash Brothers or Mario Kart or Wii Sports with co-op gaming. These games are more or less people against one another. But there is nothing like the family versus the game, and the family cheers itself on their progress through the game. The family gets together in anticipation of going further in the game. Games like Mario 5 should be revealing this behavior. But what games on the market that allow this behavior? Very, very few if any. I still like my idea of a Wii game that uses motion plus controls (for various weapons like sword, bow and arrow, etc.) where a group of people adventure together through a dungeon or other bad area together, something not unlike Gauntlet. People would be working together, getting together, to progress through the game. It would transfer the ‘house party’ to the more serious gamers who have no reason to get together for LAN parties (because LAN is no more even with games like SC 2). People playing games together is the strongest experience a video game can provide. |
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In a little house on the prairie is the distinguished Malstrom School of Analysis. It is here where all the analysts go back to school.
Malstrom lights a cigar and sits at the desk. ”Little analysts, before you to go off to recess, it is time for you to hand in your homework on the United States video game market of May 2010. Anita, let us start with you.
”Who, me?” ”Yes. Hand in your paper.” ”Here it is, Master Malstrom.” Malstrom reads it over. ”Now, Anita, look at what you wrote. You said “Although down this month, May sales reflect the third best-selling May on record after May ’08 and May ’09.” Why stop there? Why not say it is a better month than when the Atari 2600 was on the market?” The room full of little analysts laughed at this. Malstrom pointed to the paper. “Anita, you actually have to write the word ‘decline’. You cannot write it as ‘best-selling on record after last year, and the year before’. It is not honest analysis. You are trying to give an impression that sales are robust when they are seeing some significant decline. Normally, this decline would be acceptable due to a transition period where a next generation of game consoles would be coming out. But there are no new successors to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 coming out anytime soon.” ”And look at this,” Malstrom taps the paper. “You write: “The 360 platform, across hardware, software, and accessories, contributed the greatest share of revenue to industry sales for the month, and year-to-date.” How does this matter at all if no one is making any money from such revenue? You make it sound as if everyone is getting rich off of the Xbox 360 when the exact opposite is occurring. ”What do you write here?” Malstrom squints at the paper. “The PS3 platform has enjoyed the greatest percentage growth, with platform sales across hardware, software, and accessories up 32% for the month, and 28% year-to-date.” So if I used Anita’s analyzing system, I could say the iPhone 4 enjoyed the greatest percentage growth, with platform sales across hardware, software, and accessories up 100% since a month ago, and 100% year-to-date since the iPhone 4 didn’t exist yet.” The room roared with laughter at Anita. ”Percentages don’t mean anything. In order to properly analyze the market, you must state what is actually going on. If the market is declining, say that the market is declining. If the market is declining, but you try to write that it is growing, you will fail as an analyst.” Malstrom turns the page. “Now let us see what you wrote about the hardware. You start off by saying: “The portable hardware category contributed the most to the decline in hardware sales for the month, yet the NDS is the best-selling hardware system for May.” Nowhere is there any mention of the DS lifecycle finishing due to the announcement of 3DS. Nowhere do you mention the DS hardware is transitioning to the new DS coming out. This is curious as you mentioned the transition when the PS2 and Xbox sales declined prior to the PS3 and Xbox 360. ”Let us see what else you wrote: “Console hardware unit sales are, in fact, flat to last year.” But yet, two sentences later you say the hardware sales are up from a year ago.” The classroom erupts in laughter. ”And what is this? I do not understand this statement: “Declines in sales result from a lower average selling price this year compared to last.” Either you forgot to indicate ‘revenue’ or you are actually stating that lower prices resulted in lower sales. Anita, your analysis might as well be written in crayons.”
Malstrom sat up in his chair and leaned forward. He took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at Anita. “I want to talk to you about this: “Compared to April, both the PS3 and the 360 platforms realized a unit sales increase in hardware.” You missed a console, Anita. Do you happen to know what that console is?” Anita shrugged. “I don’t know…” Malstrom got up and went to the chalkboard. “OK, Anita, let us go through this. Here are the hardware sales numbers for this month.” With chalk in his hand, Malstrom wrote down the numbers. PlayStation 3 154.5K ”And here are the numbers for last month.” NPD May ’09 ”Now, let us do some simple adding and subtraction, Anita. We will omit the PlayStation 2 since it isn’t listed in today’s charts. Here are the differences. DS: -249.8K ”Anita, you specifically cited the DS decline as the greatest. This is true. But you did not mention the handheld already had a successor announced for it. If you are going to spot out the hardware that had the highest decline year over year, you must cite the hardware that had the highest increase year over year. And what console would that be, Anita?” Anita responded, “Both the PS3 and Xbox 360 had a hardware increase from the previous year. There is nothing factually incorrect about that statement.” ”Except you are omitting an entire console. And it is not just one console, it is the console that saw the highest hardware increase year over year for this month. This console is the Wii. Investors should conclude you are trying to manipulate them since you are only saying good things about non-Nintendo hardware and only saying bad things about Nintendo hardware. You do not even mention the Wii at all!” Malstrom slapped the report closed. “Anita, you get an F.” And Malstrom threw the report into the garbage. ”Now for our next report. This one comes from Mr. Michael Pachter. Let us read what Mikey is saying…” 5/11/10 ”The releases of key software titles in 2010 will lead to a rebound in sales, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, however Wii sales will stagnate and hardware sales are also expected to decline.” ”Completely wrong! F!” 07/10/08 ”Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has said that he’s certain a high definition version of Nintendo’s Wii home console will be released.” (Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/pachter-absolutely-convinced-wii-hd-is-on-the-way) ”No! No! No!” |
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When the Titanic was sinking, the musicians kept playing to keep the audience calmed. So as the gaming market sinks (Analysts: “It cannot sink! Video games always grow!”), let me play the music from the past video games to keep everyone calm.
Normally, I only do one music post per day or whenever I update this site. But since this month’s NPD numbers have depressed everyone, I will play three music posts! Perhaps this will calm publishers enough to not jump off a bridge. |
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Rambo II Commodore 64 1988
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Last Ninja 2 Commodore 64 1988
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Journey to Silius NES 1990
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With one picture, Nintendo blows away all the analysts and their spinning. The bottom line is that the gap between the Wii and the HD Twins is increasing, not decreasing. I love how that blue goes almost straight up when Mario 5 is released. And, of course, Mario 5 is still in the top ten. It is clear the analysts are doing their hardest to distort the market. Even when the Wii was sold out for years, Nintendo was still ‘doomed’. Note that every time the Wii sold less than a year ago, the analysts would trumpet it (and this was actually unfair because the Wii was sold out, it could only come down). But now that the Wii went UP in sales compared to a year ago, is any analyst mentioning it? Noooooooooooo… When this Industry goes kaput, I hope it takes its analysts with them. Investors, you are dealing with fraudsters. The only way we can truly get rid of the analysts is to hit them where it truly hurts: in removing their customers, in removing the investors who pay obscene amounts of money for so little. |
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Sean, I read your recent posts regarding sales = quality with great interest as this is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. I wholeheartedly agree with your opinion that consumers define quality, but I do think that sales on it’s own is not a good enough measure of something as complicated as human nature. A good example of this is the Hollywood of recent years. From what I understand, this is an industry run by people who believe your assertion that “sales means better quality”, yet Hollywood is in decline. I think that there is a number of contributing factors for this but for starters one I would like to focus on is the emphasis on opening weekend box office. I remember seeing a Q&A with Eli Roth at a film festival years ago (when Cabin Fever had just come out) and the discussion got onto the state of the horror genre in movies. He told the crowd that if they want Hollywood to make more horror movies they have to see any horror film released on the opening weekend. Seeing the film any other time made absolutely no difference, even seeing the movie just a week later. “How the hell can paying to see a movie make no difference to it success?” I thought at the time. Years later I could understand, but one week? However all the research I’ve done since then confirms he was right. It’s much, much harder to have a ‘sleeper hit’ now days than it used to be. The problem with using opening weekend figures of course is it tells us absolutely nothing about how much people enjoyed a film. Rather, it’s just a measure of who successful the advertising campaign leading up to the films release was. So over the years, Hollywood has become all about hype attached to bad movies. And after getting burnt again and again, people are slowly learning not to believe the hype. Another factor is sequels and franchises. One great example was after the second Tomb Raider film came out I read a very funny article where the author simply could not figure out why the second film had done so badly and the first so well, when the second was clearly a better film. The only conclusion: people must like crap. But it completely ignored the fact that there was a huge amount of goodwill among fans in the lead up to the release of the first movie, which was completely destroyed when people felt ripped off for having paid to see such a bad film. So the second was always going to struggle, regardless of the quality (in the customers eyes). I could think of many more examples from various industries but before I ramble too long, my point in all this is that box office or sales or whatever isn’t always a true indicator of how the customers feel. Sure there are many examples where the market very clearly speaks one way or the other, but the rest of the time how can we be sure that sales reflects the markets tastes? I ask because I really want to know, I hope that this email prompts some enlightening discussion. Clearly, the bad reputation of the first Tomb Raider movie made sure the second one didn’t succeed. Also, people do tire of sequels. Matrix Reloaded was a ‘better’ Matrix movie (in terms of more special effects, more fight scenes, etc.) yet it was nowhere as fresh. Entertainment is dependent on surprise which is why sequels, even if very good, will do poorly. (BTW, I think Matrix Reloaded sucks compared to the original Matrix.) It doesn’t matter how successful advertising is. All advertising does is bring attention to the product. If the product is bad, the greatest advertising in the world will be unable to save it. Why? People’s real life use with the product trumps everything else. If someone who excitedly bought a Xbox 360 because of Microsoft’s marketing ends up with a red ring of death, they become almost impossible to reach through Microsoft’s advertising. All the advertising in the world will not continually sell a bad video game. Nintendo’s ‘long-tail’ selling video games is not because Nintendo created some super new marketing scheme but because the games are actually very good.. Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Mario 5- these are all some of the best video games made in a decade. They all have high value to consumers in some way. Now, let me ask you a question. What if there was no product? All advertising fizzles away once the customer gets to the product. Either the product works or it doesn’t. The great economist, Joseph Shumpeter, wondered about this issue: ”The ways in which issues and the popular will on any issue are being manufactured is exactly analogous to the ways of commercial advertising. We find the same attempts to contact the subconscious. We find the same technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are the more effective the less rational they are. We find the same evasions and reticences and the same trick of producing opinion by reiterated assertion that is successful precisely to the extent to which it avoids rational argument and the danger of awakening the critical faculties of the people. And so on. Only, all these arts have infinitely more scope in the sphere of public affairs than they have in the sphere of private and professional life. The picture of the prettiest girl that ever lived will in the long run prove powerless to maintain the sales of a bad cigarette. There is no equally effective safeguard in the case of political decisions. Many decisions of fateful importance are of a nature that makes it impossible for the public to experiment with them at its leisure and at moderate cost. Even if that is possible, however, judgment is as a rule not so easy to arrive at as it is in the case of the cigarette, because effects are less easy to interpret.” ”Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy,” by Joseph Shumpeter, Page 262 In other words, a politician can keep ‘advertising’ on and on again and there is no product. How’s that stimulus working out for you? It only cost trillions of dollars which you’ll have to repay somewhere down the road. All the evidence around you points to the economy getting worse, of falling stocks, of more jobs being lost. Yet, what does the politician say? The politician repeats, over and over, that ‘the economy is recovering’ and ‘soon, the economy will rebound’. Since there is no product, there is nothing to break the illusion. It is why you keep seeing the politician keep talking in airy platitudes I’ve gotten several emails saying, “Sales cannot determine quality since advertising can distort it.” Yes, it is true that someone can lie and say, “This is the best product ever made!” and when people go to try it, they find out it is not the best product ever made. The answer is that the product destroys the illusion. In the long run, sales determines the quality. Any distortion will be temporary because the person will end up arriving at the product (as the exercise is to sell the product). There are other distortions like bad weather harming sales because people stay inside. But this isn’t getting to the heart of the matter that quality is defined by customers. With a politician, you get nothing but distortions. And this is where the true danger lies. |
