Columns from 4/18/08 and 4/24/08
April 25th, 2008Just a quick note about our last two columns, which can be found here and here. Last night’s column looks at the similarities between the Gamecube and the Wii, while last week’s looks at whether “artistic” games can actually sell. Enjoy!
Posted in Column, Jeff |
April 26th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
ok, gonna have to call you out on the Wiicube article.
First of all, it seems you and a few blogs I could mention are the only ones who act surprised by a piece of knowledge most everyone knew: casuals don’t give two shits for non-waggly games, and for fighting games. SMash is both.
Second, the New York TImes is a liberal idiotic beacon of “journalism” whose incompetence and pomp-asshatery is only surpassedd by the likes of Fox News. For instance: ” …according to estimates from VG Chartz, a team of analysts who study video-game sales.” Umm…since when are a bunch of 20-some-year old internet dudes professional, accurate analysts? Shitty NYT, as always. Reminds me of that hilarious article mixing up the 360’s processor with Cell, and the “the released GT5″ fiasco.
Third, “At that point, the sales of the game were apparently bad enough that retailers began to bundle the game with the Wii system in order to sell through their inventory.” Umm…how about the fact that greedy retailers LOVE bundling to increase sales? As they have been doing FOR THE LAST 18 MONTHS?
Fourth, the equation “Wii = GC + casuals” is a reality about as old as my cavity-infected tooth that is currently decomposing in my jaw structure. The Wii’s waggling mechanism is already PROVEN to be mostly disappointing because of its cheap inaccurate sensors or whatever. Smash waggle sucks, Okami waggle sucks, Super Paper Mario waggle sucks, Mario Kart Wii waggle is confirmed to suck…
With all due respect to you [because i respect you thats why!] your WiiCube article is the equivalent of kicking, spitting, then shitting inside the nostrils of a horse that’s been dead for longer than McCain’s been trying to stay awake, while simultaneously contributing nothing in terms of discussion but fanboy flamebait that I already expect from Kotaku and Joystiq but not nearly as much from you.
PS: that other article is nice. G’job….except that indie quote, which you incorrectly assume the industry vastly underestimates.
April 26th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Sorry to disappoint, Laesp. When I read the NYTimes article I was surprised, to be honest. To be honest, I haven’t seen too much bundling of Wii Software recently, but when I have, it normally involves selling maybe 1 game people like with 3 that people don’t care about. If they’re just bundling in the one SSB (which is what it sounds like), that indicates to me that retailers are overstocked with it now… In other words, while it’s sold a lot of copies, the demand for the game was actually overestimated.
I also don’t think it’s been “common knowledge” that the Wii is just GC + casuals… The “Blue Ocean” strategy suggested something dramatically different, and while the Wii is certainly more successful than the GCN, the best-selling games show very little difference, except that instead of having all sort of Nintendo published “franchise” games as the top sellers, they practically have all Nintendo published games, and some of them are casually oriented.
A lot of people read into the article that I thought that the Wii was a failure… that’s not at all what I was saying. It’s obviously been a success. Perhaps a more accurate way of putting it, though, would be that the GCN ALMOST had it right… They made a profit with it, but not quite the runaway profits they’re seeing now with the Wii. They just had to tweak their formula a bit and that seems to have done the trick.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
oh look what we have here….
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080425-nintendos-earnings-reveal-an-unstoppable-gaming-juggernaut.html
keep reading this article down to the ‘NYT quotes VGChartz” part. It seems VGChartz has an issue with New York “beacon of journalism” Times’s analysis of their own data.