Author Topic: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?  (Read 14600 times)

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Offline Jonnyboy117

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Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« on: May 16, 2009, 02:20:20 PM »
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/blogArt.cfm?artid=18454

  New details about the April NPD sales report are coming out, and the news is bad for Excitebots. This wonderful game, which was released on April 20th in North America, sold only 13,000 copies in about two weeks at retail.  According to Gamasutra, that puts it outside the Top 100 for April!    


It wasn't exactly a crowded month, as Excitebots was the only Wii release from Nintendo in April, and there weren't any major third-party Wii games released either.  This robust sequel to ExciteTruck (a game that sold quite well, being a Wii launch title) didn't even have to compete with one of Nintendo's GameCube remakes in terms of new releases.    


We all know that Nintendo's catalog releases have been mega-blockbusters over many months and even years.  "Evergreen" titles like Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii deserve their success, and Nintendo is encouraging new Wii owners to pick up these games through continued marketing efforts.  But as I ponder on the next episode of Radio Free Nintendo, could worthy new releases be suffering under the weight of these mega-hits?    


As a relatively small company, Nintendo of America seems unable or unwilling to devote resources to all its games.  It's no secret that the debut of Excitebots was, in game industry terms, a secret.  Other than the standard press release, Nintendo offered no promotion at all for this game, despite fans and critics (including NWR) saying it's one of the best racing games on the system.  Even Nintendo's own, insular promotion tools have so far been withheld for Excitebots. As of this writing, the official Nintendo home page has nary a mention of the game (see screenshot), while the website does push Penguin and Friends and DLC for Animal Crossing: City Folk. Excitebots hasn't exactly been showcased on the Nintendo Channel, either -- the lone trailer is currently on page 8 of 12, below videos for 2008's Super Smash Bros. Brawl and multiple spots for World of Goo, not to mention third-party tripe like Imagine Music Fest.  Nintendo's other first-party game from April, Rhythm Heaven for DS, has an entire page of videos as well as a playable demo. While Excitebots has been on shelves less than a month, it's already disappearing from any official place where consumers might learn about it.      


Not every game can get the star treatment, I realize that.  Nintendo is clearly obsessed with Punch-Out right now, and that's fine. But Excitebots is worthy of more love than this, not only from the press (who have delivered) but from the game's own publisher and retail partners.  It shouldn't be hard to sell this game.  After all, it's basically Mario Kart with robots... and it even comes with the Wii Wheel (optional) that kids and grandparents seem to love so much. You could also present it to traditional gamers as an off-road Burnout, or to lapsed/nostalgic gamers as the modern sequel to Excitebike. But for now, most of these people don't even know the game exists.    


We can only hope that when the game finally gets a release date in Europe, Australia, and Japan, Nintendo's branches in those regions will push it harder.  It's not too late in America, either -- but if Nintendo doesn't step up efforts soon, this stellar arcade racer could fall into obscurity.

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Offline nickmitch

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2009, 02:09:26 PM »
I just wanna point out that Excitebots did manage to get mentioned in two newsletter e-mails.  One was for "Wii News: April Edition" and the other was just for Excitebots.  Punch-Out!! got two of such emails and was at the top of the May Edition.
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Offline Jonnyboy117

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #2 on: May 16, 2009, 02:20:13 PM »
They did a few small things right when it came out -- I'm sure it was on the official website for a week, and that Nintendo Channel trailer was on page one at some point.  But my point is that Nintendo has moved on, with Punch-Out already receiving orders of magnitude more promotion that Excitebots ever got prior to its release.  I'm not begrudging Punch-Out that attention, but it certainly seems to be coming at the expense of other games that are just as great.
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Offline Kairon

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #3 on: May 16, 2009, 02:44:42 PM »
I'm starting to blame NOA more and more, I think they don't understand that Nintendo truly is a broad spectrum company, and that while Iwata
intentds that Nintendo serve all gamers and all sorts of definitions of gaming, Reggie and Co. are starting to narrow their focus more and more to the exclusion of many titles.

And I agree, Nintendo NEEDS to advertise games. Just look at what Nintendo's advertising did for Professor Layton with that recent Lisa
Kudrow commercial. The advertisement may not come in traditional forms, i.e. Brain Age Point of purchase, months-later tv commercials,
ambassador parties, etc., but they still need to get the word out.

Although... I'm not one to think the excite franchise was that strong to begin with. It's always felt very arcade to me, and the sort of
thing a hardcore gamer would dig at launch, but with less appeal later on, especially to a larger audience.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #4 on: May 16, 2009, 03:07:22 PM »
I really don't understand Nintendo these days.  They do that last-minute piss-poor marketing for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and that game sells below expectations.  Then they do that massive viral marketing campaign for Smash Bros. Brawl, which I think we can all agree was brilliant and paid off tremendously when the game came out.  And then they go and announce Excitebots at the last minute, and the game unsurprisingly sells poorly.  Really, what were they expecting would happen?  Excitebots isn't my kind of game, but from all accounts it is a good game and didn't deserve the treatment Nintendo gave it.
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Offline Kairon

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2009, 03:24:39 PM »
I really don't understand Nintendo these days.  They do that last-minute piss-poor marketing for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and that game sells below expectations.  Then they do that massive viral marketing campaign for Smash Bros. Brawl, which I think we can all agree was brilliant and paid off tremendously when the game came out.  And then they go and announce Excitebots at the last minute, and the game unsurprisingly sells poorly.  Really, what were they expecting would happen?  Excitebots isn't my kind of game, but from all accounts it is a good game and didn't deserve the treatment Nintendo gave it.

I tend to think that the great Smash bros. Brawl blog was Japan-oriented.

I think that Nintendo's marketing has been very strong on some points, like the Wii would like to play campaign, and the female oriented DS tv ads featuring games from nintendogs to professor layton and stars from America Ferrarra to Lisa Kudrow. I also think their marketing for Wii Fit was pretty awesome.

However, I don't think they've created a repeatable formula for marketing, or have a template for success. I wonder whether they've identified what works and what doesn't in their marketing programs.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2009, 03:46:42 PM »
I really don't understand Nintendo these days.  They do that last-minute piss-poor marketing for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and that game sells below expectations.  Then they do that massive viral marketing campaign for Smash Bros. Brawl, which I think we can all agree was brilliant and paid off tremendously when the game came out.  And then they go and announce Excitebots at the last minute, and the game unsurprisingly sells poorly.  Really, what were they expecting would happen?  Excitebots isn't my kind of game, but from all accounts it is a good game and didn't deserve the treatment Nintendo gave it.

I tend to think that the great Smash bros. Brawl blog was Japan-oriented.

I think that Nintendo's marketing has been very strong on some points, like the Wii would like to play campaign, and the female oriented DS tv ads featuring games from nintendogs to professor layton and stars from America Ferrarra to Lisa Kudrow. I also think their marketing for Wii Fit was pretty awesome.

However, I don't think they've created a repeatable formula for marketing, or have a template for success. I wonder whether they've identified what works and what doesn't in their marketing programs.

That's the thing, though: Nintendo's marketing campaign is all over the place with no real consistency from title to title.  Really, didn't they go to the trouble of hiring a whole new marketing company just to fix stuff like this?  Instead, they've decided to go the way of the Sega Saturn: "We'd like to announce today that we're working on such-and-such title.  In fact, it's already out!"
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Offline King of Twitch

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #7 on: May 16, 2009, 03:49:01 PM »
Yeah I don't get why they made it seem like the second coming of FLUDD, that no other company (OR WATER DELIVERY MAN) should be allowed to look upon its brilliance lest they steal their idea and render it immediately archaic.

It's bizarre to think they kept such a beautiful animal under total seclusion and secrecy, only to set it free in the wild for it to be devoured due to lack of survival skills.

Save the bots.
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Offline ShyGuy

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #8 on: May 16, 2009, 04:06:42 PM »
Project Hammer. Disaster Day of Crisis. Fatal Frame 4. Trace Memory Another Code Wii.

Time to buy a PS3.

Offline NWR_pap64

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #9 on: May 16, 2009, 04:08:45 PM »
How ironic that the original Excite Truck was the first game to demo the Wii controls at retails and the sequel is left ignored :p .

But in all seriousness, I don't want to sound overly optimistic, since the theme of this blog is to criticize Nintendo for not advertising this game enough, but I think they are banking on word of mouth selling this game.

Its not that farfetched either. Many Wii games had very weak debuts only to end up selling a million copies, sometimes just in the US.

I'm more interested in overall lifetime sales than in first month sales since the Wii is about selling through word of mouth.

Again, I don't want to sound THAT optimistic, but weirder things have happened.
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Offline Kairon

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #10 on: May 16, 2009, 04:12:33 PM »
*Hopes that Nintendo pulls a Lisa Kudrow with Excitebots*
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Offline NWR_pap64

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #11 on: May 16, 2009, 04:30:47 PM »
One thing I just learned is that the 13 K figure is only for the first two weeks of release. Since Excitebots was released near the end of April it only had two weeks to be an April best seller. Should we wait till the May numbers and see how the game does in a month?
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Offline Kairon

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #12 on: May 16, 2009, 04:41:16 PM »
One thing I just learned is that the 13 K figure is only for the first two weeks of release. Since Excitebots was released near the end of April it only had two weeks to be an April best seller. Should we wait till the May numbers and see how the game does in a month?

Hah. No.

This is about longtime sales. I personally would be interested in what the game moves in 6 months, and worldwide, than in 6 weeks in a single market.
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Offline NWR_pap64

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #13 on: May 16, 2009, 04:48:54 PM »
One thing I just learned is that the 13 K figure is only for the first two weeks of release. Since Excitebots was released near the end of April it only had two weeks to be an April best seller. Should we wait till the May numbers and see how the game does in a month?

Hah. No.

This is about longtime sales. I personally would be interested in what the game moves in 6 months, and worldwide, than in 6 weeks in a single market.

I agree. Like I already said, many other Wii games were released into an even worse sense of obscurity and end up selling at least 500 K.

If Excite Bot moves that in that amount of time, then I say its a sleeper hit.

As I recall, the original Excite Truck didn't set the sales charts on fire, yet it was successful enough that a sequel was made.
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Offline BlackNMild2k1

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #14 on: May 16, 2009, 05:42:40 PM »
I haven't seen a single ad for Exitebots, and if I didn't frequent sites like this, I wouldn't have even known it was released.
Actually I frequent sites like this, and I still didn't even know it was out yet until NPD came out and saw that it only sold 13k.

That just shows how little advertising and hype this game had.

Offline Plugabugz

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #15 on: May 16, 2009, 05:47:44 PM »
I'm putting this down to nintendo losing "marketing focus". At the start of wii's launch i'd see ads for all types of games. Now i'm only seeing them for wii sports, wii fit, wii music and rarely mario kart.

It's like they're implying that these games DON'T need marketing because the people who would want this game know how to use the internet and they can find info about it on their own.

Offline Mop it up

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #16 on: May 16, 2009, 06:04:16 PM »
I guess I'd better buy this game before it drops off the face of the planet like WarioWare Smooth Moves.

Offline GoldenPhoenix

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #17 on: May 16, 2009, 06:29:41 PM »
Quote
They do that last-minute piss-poor marketing for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and that game sells below expectations.

What exactly were the expectations for the sales? It still sold better then MP2 Echoes which had an OK marketing campaign, and sold around 1.5 million.. Not to mention with the lack of marketing that means every copy sold is more valuable in terms to return on investment. So I'd like to know what this so called "expectations" is, is it from Nintendo or some forum nerd? All I know is that Sony/MS would be dang happy with their massive budget HD games to sell 1.5 million for a more "niche" series.

In regards to Excite Bots, isn't it kind of early to freak out about this? Haven't people learned anything from the slow burn sales of so many Wii games, I recall similar freak out stories with the latest CoD games and yet they sold VERY well. Even Wario Land, while not amazing sales wise sold decently all around from what I gathered.

« Last Edit: May 16, 2009, 06:32:46 PM by GoldenPhoenix »
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Offline Jonnyboy117

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #18 on: May 16, 2009, 06:48:14 PM »
Wario Land sold much better than this in its first month.  So did MadWorld (about 5x better).
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Offline Flames_of_chaos

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #19 on: May 16, 2009, 07:10:06 PM »
Also gaming sales in general are declining due to the economy. Last month the 360 barely outsold the PS2 and PS3 is second to last in monthly sales. I agree with the people who think that it's early to judge, since the game was released on April 20th so NPD tracked the first 11 day sales of Excitebots.I think it's stupid that the media are focusing one specific title on a Nintendo platform when they do a "doom and gloom" forecast, the proper "doom and gloom" forecast should be that gaming in general is shrinking month-to-month. Apparently no one cares about the huge sale plummets that RE5 and SF4 took and those are huge long running franchises.  While I think that it's a shame that Excitebots didn't sell well in the first 11 days, I think the title will do well over time.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #20 on: May 16, 2009, 07:11:54 PM »
Quote
They do that last-minute piss-poor marketing for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and that game sells below expectations.

What exactly were the expectations for the sales? It still sold better then MP2 Echoes which had an OK marketing campaign, and sold around 1.5 million.. Not to mention with the lack of marketing that means every copy sold is more valuable in terms to return on investment. So I'd like to know what this so called "expectations" is, is it from Nintendo or some forum nerd? All I know is that Sony/MS would be dang happy with their massive budget HD games to sell 1.5 million for a more "niche" series.

Oh quit flying off the handle at everything I say, GP.  I just remember when the game came out IGN (and for that matter, RFN) was posting stories left and right about how the game wasn't really selling all that well and needed better exposure.  It's not a knock against a game I'm rather fond of.  Just a knock against Nintendo for deciding all they were going to do for the game is throw out some teaser videos on a special Wii Channel a month in advance and put Super Metroid on the VC (granted, the latter was a smart move).

Besides, saying that Corruption sold better than Echoes really isn't saying much in the grand scheme of things.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2009, 07:19:44 PM by broodwars »
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Offline UncleBob

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #21 on: May 16, 2009, 07:39:10 PM »
You know, my store did not even get this game in.  A first party title, and we didn't get it.  That's odd.
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #22 on: May 16, 2009, 07:51:23 PM »
You know, my store did not even get this game in.  A first party title, and we didn't get it.  That's odd.

I kind of wonder if it's due to a similar stigma that movies get when their studios refuse to screen them for the critics before the public release: that maybe with Nintendo just suddenly slipping this title in that maybe it wasn't worth selling?  It's more likely, though, that Nintendo announced this title so close to its release that maybe your company didn't get a chance to get a good feel for the title and if it was going to be a title worth selling?  It's certainly also possible that your warehouse just plain screwed-up and didn't ship you any by mistake.  It happens sometimes.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2009, 07:53:27 PM by broodwars »
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Offline GoldenPhoenix

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #23 on: May 16, 2009, 08:28:35 PM »
Wario Land sold much better than this in its first month.  So did MadWorld (about 5x better).

Madworld came out 3/10. Can't say anything about Wario Land because I didn't know there was any reports on its first months sales since it came out the 22nd. We'll see what happens next month when it has a full month to show if Nintendo's piss poor marketing for it killed the game sales.

Quote
Besides, saying that Corruption sold better than Echoes really isn't saying much in the grand scheme of things.

ROFL. Echoes was marketed fairly heavily. It is pretty sad when people whine about a games sales when it sold 1.5 million worldwide for a system that is pretty well known for having lower development costs. If you don't want to be criticized on something don't make statements with no real foundation like the expectations statement which was based on NOTHING that came from Nintendo. What fanbois expect and what companies expect are completely different things. One knows the budget, marketing aspect of the game and the other judges whose is bigger by units sold with no real understanding of the business side of things.

My guess is that MP3 was far more profitable then Echoes because of the limited marketing yet higher sales, then again only Nintendo knows that. Still at 1.5 million units it is pretty safe to say the game did just fine and chances are with more marketing (like Echoes) it wouldn't have sold much better because the Metroid series has always been relatively niche compared to a Mario or Zelda. Metroid Prime seems to have sold to the people who would have bought it regardless of a marketing campaign. Echoes showed relatively heavy marketing for the Metroid series is a waste of money. At the end of the day it is how much profit was made, not how many units were sold. That is why I think using the game as a poster child for bad marketing hurting a game is silly. There are much better candidates LIKE (hopefully not but you never know) Excite Bots or Battalion Wars II. MP3 almost proves Nintendo RIGHT, at least in that case, about their marketing strategy.

BTW I find your flying off the handle statement hilarious, because I am far from being mad and it shows in my previous response.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2009, 10:30:36 PM by GoldenPhoenix »
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Offline Peachylala

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #24 on: May 16, 2009, 10:42:32 PM »
Considering that Metroid Prime 3 sold only 300K copies less then Bioshock (according to some sources... don't know if it's true), I consider that successful.

BTW, NOA's marketing has always, always sucked. Even before Reggie. They do a few good things here and there, but most times I don't learn about games via TV ads and mags, I learn about it via the interwebs.

So we should all stop bitching and just say that NOA marketing sucks. Pro Daisy, we need your derailing powers NAO PLZ.
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