Nintendo As Evil Mastermind

Every so often, you hit on an argument that is so odd that you wonder if the person making it is serious.  Here, GameSetWatch attempts to debate the altogether dubious proposition that Nintendo avoids a strict quality control audit of third-party titles in order to inflate its own software sales. 

I admire GSW’s willingness to try to engage with an argument whose main appeal is the fact that it is counterintuitive.  Unfortunately, Idon’t think it passes a basic smell test, let alone reaches the “nuanced” level.

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What If They Threw A Game Show, And Nobody Came?

Via Kotaku, apparently attendance at the Tokyo Game Show has dropped a bit: only 64k visitors came on the first day this year, compared with some 85k gamers from last year.  Kotaku attributes this to the fact that Nintendo is forgoing the show this year; the hypothesis seems reasonable, since the Wii and DS are the hot things on the market at the moment and Sony can’t carry the show itself (the 360, of course, is a non-factor). 

I’m a little hesitant to start drawing conclusions based on a single day’s worth of data, but if there is a discrepancy, it brings two things to mind: first, that Nintendo is definitely successful enough this generation to dictate its own rules - why give free publicity to Sony when it can throw its own conference and have people show up? - and second, that it’s quite impressive Sony can draw 75% of last year’s audience considering how relatively unsuccessful the PS3 and PSP have been on a global scale thus far.  That may say more about Japanese tastes than the companies per se, but still: don’t count them out yet.

Metroid’s Corrupted Marketing

As we mentioned in Saturday night’s Chatcast and in an earlier post, Metroid Prime 3, which just received a 9.5 and a “Best Wii Game” nod from IGN, just isn’t getting the marketing it should. Want proof?

Well, you’d think that Metroid Prime 3 should be this week’s biggest release, no? Apparently, Best Buy and Circuit City don’t. Circuit City’s ad highlights “Stuntman: Ignition” for the 360 as the big release this week. Sure, Metroid Prime 3 is on the page, but with a normal, smaller picture and not even the correct box art.

Best Buy’s ad highlights Tiger Woods ‘08 for Wii with a HUGE picture. Metroid Prime 3, at least this time with the proper box art, sits at the same level as “The Bigs” and “Brunswick Pro Bowling”. So Best Buy highlights a Wii game this week, but apparently not the “big” one that we all think it should be.

Well, these are just big electronics retailers, right? Surely, the gaming retailers would know what the big release this week is, right?

Well, the current EB/Gamestop ad is up: The front page highlights Pokemon and Brain Age and has a big picture of Halo’s Master Chief to advertise a bonus on traded games towards Halo 3 (not releasing for a month). The second page mentions the games coming this week (8/29): Tiger Woods, Warhawk, Stuntman, and a few others… Metroid is nowhere to be found. Hell, even “Dynasty Warriors: Gundam” secured a spot in their ad, but no Metroid.

Does anyone think that Halo 3 will suffer from this problem? To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Master Chief plastered all over all the TVs in Best Buy and Circuit City’s ads the week Halo 3 launches. We can only hope that Metroid, likely the Wii’s best game so far, will sell incredibly well in spite of Nintendo’s marketing failure.

Bizarre Statement Of The Day

“I keep hearing that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption isn’t being promoted very well, but the person saying this always seems to know about it, and then when people share this complaint in the thread those people also seem to be ‘in the know.’”

Oddly, it doesn’t seem to occur to Tycho that the people most likely to be trolling Prime message boards are the ones already most interested in the game.  Nor that such people are concerned about the lack of publicity not for their own sake, but for that of the vast majority of the population that doesn’t actually seek out new Prime trailers as a regular hobby (i.e., the ones that need to be told about a new game to be interested in it).

I, for one, am firmly in the “concerned” camp, not because I don’t think it’s going to be a good game (early impressions are optimistic)… but because Nintendo’s title is at risk of getting buried under the vast hype emanating from the release of Bioshock.  Nintendo’s always been an overly secretive company, and given the issues with Prime 2 sales, I would’ve hoped they would allocate a bit more time and money to effective marketing.

How Many Is Enough?

Laesperanzapaz links in a comment to this Nintendo Australia interview inquiring about Nintendo’s commitment to hardcore gamers.  While I don’t want to relitigate that issue, this got me thinking a bit more about the nature of console purchases.  When I buy a new console, I usually take a look at how many “must-have” games it has either out or coming down the immediate pipeline… if there’s enough for me to consider it “critical mass,” I’ll buy the device. 

At the same time, I’ll probably be satisfied if the console manages a dozen AAA games over the course of its lifetime.  (By that standard, I’ve been pleased with the return on my Dreamcast, but less enamored of my Gamecube investment.  And the SNES, PS2, and NES have been incredible values.)

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Metroid Who?

IGN has an interesting editorial up about how Nintendo has done absolutely nothing to hype up Metroid Prime 3 despite the fact that it’s one of their biggest titles this year.  The game is only about 3 weeks away and yet it seems like Nintendo has barely said a word about it.  Even the official Metroid site, as of this posting, doesn’t even mention the game (the main title screen still highlights Metroid Prime: Hunters, a game that was released in March last year).  It really does beg the question: what the hell is going on?

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NES on iPhone *yawn*

Things like this always intrigue me, but when I see the videos I always lose complete interest.  I mean, it’s a great technical achievement (I guess) to get an NES emulator working on an iPhone, but when it only plays at 1/4 speed with buttons that don’t really work all that well, who really cares?

One-Liners Part II

I’m not sure how many people actually hate these, but I have about 20 minutes left before I board my flight… so I thought I’d try to catch up quickly on anything I’ve missed in the last few days.

- In what universe does telling a company that has agreed but failed to comply with your regulations constitute a “sucker punch“?

- I’m as tired of the guy as anyone, but any Jack Thompson fight that can be drawn out over 4 posts is amusing enough to warrant a mention.

- If Lifetime really thinks that “women’s casual gaming” is equivalent to “Golden Girls Trivia” and “Sally’s Salon,” both they and their audience should feel very dirty.

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E3 Presser ‘Pressions (Updated)

*Updated with small changes for accuracy*

I’m sure this will probably come as a surprise to our readers, but like David Jaffe, A Link to the Future was not invited to E3 this year. As a result, my impressions are based primarily on either watching the press conferences online, liveblogs, and then the various videos from Gametrailers and Gamevideos.com and such. Here are my not-even-eyes-on impressions of the big 3’s E3 press conferences, after the jump.

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Wiimakes ‘R Us

I’ll admit, I’ve come full circle on the RE4: Wii Edition. After initial skepticism, then excitement, I’ve now been completely enamored with RE4: Wii Edition. Not only is it great to play through the game again (as it seems I don’t remember much about it until I actually re-familiarize myself with each section), but the Wii controls actually work beautifully and I find that I’m having even more fun with the game. My first time through on the GCN I completely ignored the TMP because it just didn’t seem like it’d be worth it, but now it’s actually a lot of fun to use as you can easily aim it and take out a ton of guys. While it’s also easier to use the knife than before, I think I’m actually using a lot more bullets than before just because it’s more fun (and faster) to shoot guys. It was definitely worth the upgrade, and it seems that, at least according to its current Gamerankings score of 90.1%, most people agree.

At 90.1%, RE4: Wii Edition now also occupies the second spot for the top rated Wii games on GameRankings, right after Zelda: Twilight Princess. Then after RE4: Wii Edition is Super Paper Mario. Anyone starting to notice a trend here? Zelda and RE4 are essentially Gamecube remakes, and Super Paper Mario may as well be one (it was confirmed as a Gamecube game until very late in its development).

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