Author Topic: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?  (Read 14603 times)

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Offline Peachylala

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #50 on: May 19, 2009, 08:49:38 PM »
 Nintendo probably figured they wouldn't need advertising anyway since those dedicated Epic of Zelda-game-loving Nintendo elite fans would've gobbled up any noncasual game that came their way.  Oh my bad, those fans don't buy ****, they're too busy typing about a lack of first party titles.
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Offline NinGurl69 *huggles

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #51 on: May 19, 2009, 09:36:27 PM »
oh hay, you fixed the forum code in your sig!
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Offline Deguello

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #52 on: May 20, 2009, 06:17:03 AM »
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I've always found NOA to be, well, completely ****ing clueless with marketing.

That's funny.  Most of Wii's and Nintendo's detractors claim their successes are solely marketing, so they are either whiz kids at handling consumers or they are terribly inept, with no inbewteen.  See Mario Kart and Wii Fit where Nintendo's marketing team doing a great job.  Metroid Prime 3's "failure" (selling more than Super Metroid oughta mean something, jeez) is always a scapegoat for some reason I have yet to decipher.

There seems to be no baseline with a company that has "Good Marketing."  Who are we comparing to?  A lot of game companies have games that totally fail in the marketplace even with extensive marketing.  Microsoft, for one, just can't seem to get anything by Rare to take off.  The numbers are always horrible until they slash the price to bits and bundle it.  Sony had major hype for Lair and Heavenly Sword and both did horribly.  Even big time third parties like Capcom and Square Enix have games flop, particularly anything S-E has done on consoles for this entire Generation (how sad is it that Dragon Quest Swords is their most successful game this entire generation, and they even required Nintendo to develop it for them, and even beat games that Microsoft advertised themselves.)

Sure ExciteBots might have failed in the first month, and possibly for good.  These things happen.  It won't be the first time a good or critically acclaimed game fails, nor will it be the first game Nintendo published fails.  And sometimes it just can't be helped with ANY amount of marketing.

And if lack of marketing and lowness of priority make for "hatred," can it be said that almost all third parties hate Wii?  Because, despite being the market leader, and even when they make the majority of their games for the system like, strangely, Capcom, they always seem to hide their Wii titles from the light and keep them in the backroom and in the last pages of their portfolio.  And when released, they launch them under cover of night alongside either a full-effort Nintendo game or another of their own releases that has a higher priority on a competing system.  I actually hope that they DO hate the Wii, because then they can end the pretense of "trying to understand the Wii base" and the patronization of "recombinant demographic metrics" and just get the hell out.

But I digressed.  Excitebots is pretty fun, and a good game.  Nintendo has a site for it, they hoped word of mouth would sell this game like Excite Truck did, mostly.  That didn't pan out, and Nintendo, wisely IMO, decided to focus on Punch-Out because that's a series that needed to be done right and marketed well and not screwed up.  Not every single game can be a blockbuster.
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Offline jakeOSX

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #53 on: May 21, 2009, 09:59:59 AM »
Metroid Prime 3's "failure" (selling more than Super Metroid oughta mean something, jeez) is always a scapegoat for some reason I have yet to decipher.

i think the point was that MP3's advertising was a failure. The only people who think the game sales were a failure are the ones that compare it to Halo 3, which came out almost the same time.

i think there is a lot of truth in Ian's post. Nintendo doesn't seem to know how to advertise itself very well. there are two great ads that come to mind, the nintendo characters running through the feild holding hands, then one slugs the other for smash brothers and then majora's mask one (which i saw in the movie theatre, made me want to play it there) but for the most part they either don't advertise, or just have print ads with release dates, etc.

maybe they think that nintendo power is all the advertising they really need?

excite bots is on my get / try list, it looks like a fun game, but with punch out and conduit right around the corner it had a strange time to come out.

Offline Deguello

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #54 on: May 21, 2009, 11:16:08 AM »
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i think there is a lot of truth in Ian's post. Nintendo doesn't seem to know how to advertise itself very well.

Care to give any recent examples?  Maybe more than just a random game here or there?

People, the point of ads isn't to get Clio awards, it's to get people to buy stuff.  I'd say Nintendo's got a pretty damn good handle on advertising, considering they are dominating the industry and pulling in record profits for the industry too, and also being one of the very few companies even having profits and not massive, gut-busting losses.

Wii Fit Alone is a testament to their ability to use their position in the market to market things.  Yeah, sure you'll say non-gamers and casuals, but isn't the ability to get people dis-interested in your product to turn around and buy it better advertising than making a few feel-good TV ads for people who are already interested in the first place?

Yeah, Excitebots came out in a pretty bad time, Market recession, tax Month, belts-tightening, competing with Mario Kart in the same sphere, low-key advertising from Nintendo.  Shame, but it doesn't reflect on Nintendo as a whole, nor does it mean it would have been #1 if Nintendo did some complex viral campaign with fake blogs or blasted advertising across every screen.
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Offline Ian Sane

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #55 on: May 21, 2009, 01:26:20 PM »
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Care to give any recent examples?  Maybe more than just a random game here or there?

For me it's just their history.  Throughout the entire Gamecube generation Nintendo released the same types of ads where there's some goofy little skit and about three seconds of gameplay footage and no indication whatsoever of what the game is about or why you should buy it.  You had to know the game ahead of time to have any clue what was even going on.  And the Gamecube underperformed.  Not the only reason for that but still I think it's clear that marketing style was not effective.

Fast forward to the Wii and the "Wii would like to play" campaign.  Suddenly Nintendo has ads that actually demonstrate what the game is about and why you would like it.  They also have a product in Wii Sports that just naturally grabs everyone's attention.  Sales are through the roof.  The same type of ad for Metroid Prime 3 though doesn't have the same effect.  And "Wii would like to play" seems to be a rare exception.  The Mario Kart Wii ads were the same sort of thing we would see on the Gamecube.

Okay, so why did Mario Kart Wii sell so good if the ad sucked?  Well because unlike the Gamecube the Wii is actually successful so you have a large audience looking for games to buy.  You can get away with lousy ads when you're the market leader because you don't have to sell the system itself with each ad.  With Mario Kart Wii you've got a popular character in a popular series on a popular system.  You pretty much just have to say "this game exists" and you let the money roll in.  On the Gamecube pretty much every ad had to sell the viewer on buying a Gamecube as well.  You couldn't just say "hey look here's a new game" because most of the buying public didn't have a Cube and needed a reason to buy one and Nintendo's typical ads didn't give them that reason.

The fact that Nintendo was so inept at marketing for an entire generation, the fact that they thought the ad campaign for Wii Sports would work for Metroid Prime 3, the fact that with Mario Kart Wii they went back to the exact same sort of ads that flopped on the Cube, the fact that the poor reception of their last E3 caught them completely off guard, and the fact that Excitebots isn't being advertised at all suggests to me that they don't really know what they're doing and fluked out once.  While I think Nintendo has shifted to a more casual focus I've never observed a real overhaul with how the company does things.  Many of the flaws they had with the Cube remain.  They still do things weird for no reason.  They're still stubborn.  The only difference is the Wii is a big success and the Cube wasn't.

But I don't see a Nintendo that's now totally on the ball and does things correctly that the old Nintendo would have fucked up.  They're as frustratingly inept and clueless as before fucking up routine stuff that any moron could have got right.  It's just that this time they managed to make a game that everyone in the world paid attention to and by some miracle actually advertised it well.  And that kind of one-time success can allow them to coast and get away with screw-ups that would completely handcuff a console in last place trying to get a foothold.  But they're not suddenly marketing geniuses that can do no wrong.

Offline jakeOSX

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #56 on: May 21, 2009, 02:15:02 PM »
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i think there is a lot of truth in Ian's post. Nintendo doesn't seem to know how to advertise itself very well.

Care to give any recent examples?  Maybe more than just a random game here or there?

i think the fact that i can't give examples may prove my point. when i think nintendo ad, the most recent ones i can remember are the two guys in the smart car. before that i remember metroid prime 2 with the gymnist girl, but all in all i don't remember them.

now i am talking TV ads here. naturally you see print ones in gamer mags more often, but TV? if they are there, i am missing them, and i am the core audience.

edit: i remember the animal crossing wild world with the animals visiting someone's house.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2009, 02:19:37 PM by jakeOSX »

Offline Stratos

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #57 on: May 21, 2009, 03:40:40 PM »
I miss seeing more of Reggie. He hasn't appeared much since last E3, has he? I always viewed him as a figurehead Nintendo fans listened to and could be used to promote games to us. Is this just because he's been promoted and doesn't oversee advertising anymore?
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #58 on: May 21, 2009, 03:46:45 PM »
I miss seeing more of Reggie. He hasn't appeared much since last E3, has he? I always viewed him as a figurehead Nintendo fans listened to and could be used to promote games to us. Is this just because he's been promoted and doesn't oversee advertising anymore?

He probably bought Scrooge McDuck's Moneybin and has been busy swimming in all that cash Nintendo's made the past few years.  Othewise, he's probably been busy preparing those extensive financial Powerpoint presentations they put out at E3.  It takes a long time to put together something so thoroughly effective at boring all of us to tears.  -_-'
« Last Edit: May 21, 2009, 03:48:28 PM by broodwars »
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Offline Stratos

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #59 on: May 21, 2009, 04:06:21 PM »
I miss seeing more of Reggie. He hasn't appeared much since last E3, has he? I always viewed him as a figurehead Nintendo fans listened to and could be used to promote games to us. Is this just because he's been promoted and doesn't oversee advertising anymore?

He probably bought Scrooge McDuck's Moneybin and has been busy swimming in all that cash Nintendo's made the past few years.  Othewise, he's probably been busy preparing those extensive financial Powerpoint presentations they put out at E3.  It takes a long time to put together something so thoroughly effective at boring all of us to tears.  -_-'

Maybe they could get a license to use LittleBigPlanet like Sony did for their presentation ;)
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Offline broodwars

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #60 on: May 21, 2009, 04:14:08 PM »
I miss seeing more of Reggie. He hasn't appeared much since last E3, has he? I always viewed him as a figurehead Nintendo fans listened to and could be used to promote games to us. Is this just because he's been promoted and doesn't oversee advertising anymore?

He probably bought Scrooge McDuck's Moneybin and has been busy swimming in all that cash Nintendo's made the past few years.  Othewise, he's probably been busy preparing those extensive financial Powerpoint presentations they put out at E3.  It takes a long time to put together something so thoroughly effective at boring all of us to tears.  -_-'

Maybe they could get a license to use LittleBigPlanet like Sony did for their presentation ;)

Alright, Nintendo to use Animal Crossing: City Folk for their E3 Presentation engine confirmed.   ;)
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Offline Stratos

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #61 on: May 21, 2009, 04:14:51 PM »
That would actually be pretty cool.
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Offline NinGurl69 *huggles

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #62 on: May 21, 2009, 04:15:36 PM »
Those Nintendo presentations are absolutely riveting.  It's the stuff internet memes are made of.
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Offline Deguello

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Re: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?
« Reply #63 on: May 22, 2009, 08:33:27 AM »
Just as a response to both Ian and Jake's posts, it seems like marketing has zero to do with success, because anytime a Nintendo game sells well, it seems to do so independent of marketing, and anytime a game dies it is solely due to marketing.  We still have no baseline company for who has great marketing with which to compare.

And really what makes "good marketing?"  Ian, you said the Mario Kart Ad sucked.  Obviously not because the game not only sold more than Double Dash, it completely destroyed it by a factor  of more than twice.  So what about it sucked other than " I didn't like it."  Remember.  Point of ads.  Sell games.  Not give jollies to self-described hardcore gamers who knew ahead of time and got the joke and had an idea of the ad before hand (this is what you DON'T want, right?)

Jake, I didn't want an example of an AD, I mean an example of a series of games, either unrelated or connected, that suffered at the hands of Nintendo's poor marketing, and not just a random flop here or there, which every company has.  As an example of what I'm looking for, Sega had a stint of terrible advertising in the late years of the Saturn, where they bumbled through their biggest titles by undershipping them, not even letting people know about the game, and just a general disinterest in video games.

And both of you totally glossed over Wii Fit, possibly because it just eviscerates any point you might have had.  This game is nearing 20 million sold.  In one damn year.  Obviously it's marketing worked, right?  Or is marketing totally unrelated when it's a success?  It seems the opposite with you, that Success never Nintendo's son, but Failure always is.

Again Excitebots failure in sales is a shame, but it's not the most important game ever, just like GTA: CW isn't.  People are trying to read too much into that game, like it's some kind of harbinger that "mature content" isn't suitable for Nintendo systems (funny, because eariler the DS was characterized as some only old fogeys and middle aged men/women owned), when a myriad of factors contributed to it's small performance, part of which is that the DS is a FIERCE battlefield with many games competing for dollars, and Rockstar doesn't get all the success just because they show up. Companies had been working hard on the DS for years, and Rockstar shows up in the 5th year and wants a cut just because they are Rockstar?  They aren't that important, and their failure definitely isn't an indicator of anything on the DS (Considering that device is also breaking records.)
« Last Edit: May 22, 2009, 09:51:48 AM by Deguello »
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