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.)