Topic: Does Nintendo Hate Excitebots?

[ShyGuy]

I've become as disillusioned with NOA as Billy F'n Berghammer.

[NWR_pap64]

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.

Couldn't agree more.

While Pro shows up...

LOL casual gaming is doomed.

[broodwars]

I've become as disillusioned with NOA as Billy F'n Berghammer.

Assuming that's a bad thing, I agree.  I don't know exactly what it is that started it (maybe the infamous Nintendo E3 Press Conference last year, which led to me purchasing my first ever non-Nintendo system in the PS2), but over the past year or so it's just been difficult to muster up the ol' lifetime Nintendo fanboyism I used to have.  I really want to revive the old passion, but it's just not there right now.  Among other things, Nintendo's marketing isn't helping matters.  I'll be curious to see how well Punch Out sells, considering the only ads I've seen for it have been brief little commercials or flash banners on gaming websites.

[KDR_11k]

You guys whine a lot about NoA... Imagine you'd get NoE.

[Plugabugz]

http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie.php?filename=TA2564 - I never saw this.

[RABicle]

Who knows, maybe Nintendo is trying to emulate what NAL did with Animal Crossing in Australia. Basically Wild World came out on DS, nobody bought it. And then over a year later they suddenly promoted the **** out of it and it flew into the top ten all formats chart. Maybe NOA want a piece of this surprise action.

[Yoshidious]

Just a note on Metroid Prime 3's sales: I've also heard previously some vague and conflicting reports on how well it has done, but the recent publishing of Nintendo's internal figures on Wii and DS million sellers (worldwide, life-to-date) sheds some light on this:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/nintendo-reveals-wii-and-ds-million-sellers

Metroid Prime 3 is not on the list referenced in that article, so I think we can be sure now that it has not yet sold more than a million copies worldwide. It therefore has probably performed somewhat better than Echoes, but would be much farther behind Bioshock than 300k at this point.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Just a note on Metroid Prime 3's sales: I've also heard previously some vague and conflicting reports on how well it has done, but the recent publishing of Nintendo's internal figures on Wii and DS million sellers (worldwide, life-to-date) sheds some light on this:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/nintendo-reveals-wii-and-ds-million-sellers

Metroid Prime 3 is not on the list referenced in that article, so I think we can be sure now that it has not yet sold more than a million copies worldwide. It therefore has probably performed somewhat better than Echoes, but would be much farther behind Bioshock than 300k at this point.

Umm Greg, those are fiscal million sellers, Nintendo only tracked games that sold at least a million between April 1 2008 - March 31 2009 in those results. I recently wrote an article about it and it sounds very similar to what I wrote for the site:  http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=18394

There are a total of 91 different million sellers on DS, and 54 million sellers on Wii (these figures include first and third parties).

[NWR_Lindy]

I don't think the "slow burn" philosophy applies to all titles.  A lot of the games that I hear associated with that phenomenon are games that had big brand recognition to start off with (Call of Duty 4 on DS, for example), or were re-marketed in some way.  If Excitebots isn't re-marketed down the line, it's doing to die a quick death.

13,000 copies in two weeks is awful no matter which way you cut it.  It clearly shows that the market that should have known about the game, and would have bought it, didn't even know about it.  Excitebots is a quirky title, and if people aren't shown its strengths they won't know anything about it.  Heck, they probably wouldn't even know it's a racing game.

[Yoshidious]

Though the article refers to life-to-date numbers (obviously Wii Sports hasn't sold 45 million copies in just the past year), you are correct that those life-to-date numbers are only given for the first party games that sold a million units in this specific fiscal year. Where I made a mistake is looking at a chart where the games were ranked by life-to-date numbers like so:

Wii: Life-to-Date (Fiscal Year)

1. Wii Sports - 45.71 million (24.15 million)
2. Wii Play - 22.98 million (11.47 million)
3. Wii Fit - 18.22 million (16.37 million)
4. Mario Kart Wii - 15.4 million (15.4 million)
5. Super Smash Bros Brawl - 8.43 million (3.58 million)
6. Super Mario Galaxy - 8.02 million (1.92 million)
7. Mario Party 8 - 6.72 million (1.86 million)
8. Link’s Crossbow Training (w/ Zapper) - 3.76 million (2.05 million)
9. Animal Crossing: City Folk - 3.38 million (3.38 million)
10. Wii Music - 2.65 million (2.65 million)
11. Super Mario Sluggers - 1.26 million (1.26 million)

It appears as though it is a chart of the biggest life-to-date sellers on Wii, but of course this omits other notable big sellers that didn't reach the million mark for the past fiscal year specifically like Twilight Princess (which I believe has sold at least over 4million so it would easily make an overall LTD list). The chart's scope would have been clearer had they been ranked by this fiscal year's sales, with the LTD figures given in parentheses.

Going back, the last official numbers for MP3 I can recall were at about 1.1million (this is in around Jan 2008), so again in the overall LTD charts it would appear over the million mark for sure. 

[jakeOSX]

i did see an excitebot add somewhere random and big, like the front of yahoo, but i don't remember now.

i think its title throws people off, excite bots doesn't sound like a racing game to most people.

[Stratos]

i did see an excitebot add somewhere random and big, like the front of yahoo, but i don't remember now.

i think its title throws people off, excite bots doesn't sound like a racing game to most people.

Yeah, the game title and cover may send mixed messages to consumers about what the game entails. Plus any reference to 'mini games' during races may scare away some non-casual players.


Also, did Boom Blox have a re-branding? That may be a good example of where word-of-mouth carried the day and I think it could be the closest comparison to Excite Bots. Bot have strange and unclear titles and quirky gameplay features and both were received favorably by critics.

[Yoshidious]

The most concerning thing for me about Excitebots' weak sales in the US is the idea that they might influence NoE to not release it in Europe at all. It still hasn't been announced officially here yet for some reason, so it is possible that NoE's decision-making on what to do with Excitebots could be influenced by these numbers (as the poor Disaster: Day of Crisis sales in Europe may have sealed its fate in North America). 

[Flames_of_chaos]

The most concerning thing for me about Excitebots' weak sales in the US is the idea that they might influence NoE to not release it in Europe at all. It still hasn't been announced officially here yet for some reason, so it is possible that NoE's decision-making on what to do with Excitebots could be influenced by these numbers (as the poor Disaster: Day of Crisis sales in Europe may have sealed its fate in North America). 

Sounds like an Eye for an eye situation if that happens and poor Greg's hunger strike would never end .

[Stratos]

The most concerning thing for me about Excitebots' weak sales in the US is the idea that they might influence NoE to not release it in Europe at all. It still hasn't been announced officially here yet for some reason, so it is possible that NoE's decision-making on what to do with Excitebots could be influenced by these numbers (as the poor Disaster: Day of Crisis sales in Europe may have sealed its fate in North America).

Maybe we could arrange a game exchange program with you folk on the other side of the Atlantic? I'll send you Excite Bots if you send me Disaster?

Maybe this was kept so close to the chest that NoE didn't know until we did that it was coming out now so they didn't table it into their release schedule. That wouldn't surprise me that the different branches do not communicate very well with each other.

[Yoshidious]

Maybe this was kept so close to the chest that NoE didn't know until we did that it was coming out now so they didn't table it into their release schedule. That wouldn't surprise me that the different branches do not communicate very well with each other.

At this point I still expect Excitebots to come out here eventually, and so I think you may well be right Stratos, but I remain somewhat concerned by the chance that my theory may end up being accurate.

[Stratos]

Maybe this was kept so close to the chest that NoE didn't know until we did that it was coming out now so they didn't table it into their release schedule. That wouldn't surprise me that the different branches do not communicate very well with each other.

At this point I still expect Excitebots to come out here eventually, and so I think you may well be right Stratos, but I remain somewhat concerned by the chance that my theory may end up being accurate.

And jumping upon that concern there is the worry of this growing trend to not bother releasing games in other regions if they bombed in another. Especially in the case where PAL-land gets screwed in the optimization department and the game bombs that could be a really big issue.

Has Sega even SAID anything about the PAL/Madworld debacle? I still can't get over how you guys were treated on that one.

[Mop it up]

I think it is kind of silly to judge how well a game will sell in one region based on sales of it in another region. They are different markets, just because it didn't fare well in one place doesn't mean it wouldn't in another. An extreme example of this stupidity is Sin and Punishment for the Nintendo 64. It was specifically designed with the North American market in mind since it had the largest N64 userbase, but it was released first in Japan. Based on its poor sales in Japan, it never made it to North America. Where's the logic there? Did it take a bathroom break or something?

[Stratos]

I think part of the logic there was that the N64 was near the end of it's lifecycle and GameCube was just gearing up. A number of titles always fall through the cracks or get transfered to new systems at those times. Eternal Darkness, Dinosaur Planet and Resident Evil Zero were ported. Animal Crossing for the GameCube was actually a port of the Japanese N64 version so it could have happened for S & P but they just didn't think it would be worth the effort from a financial point of view.

And who knows, if they had brought it over, would people have viewed it in the same light like they do now? It has been a forbidden fruit of sorts since it never came over before so that made it all the more sweeter to gamers.

[Peachylala]

So basically, Nintendo is to the Wii as Squaresoft was to the SNES to PAL users.

Makes sense to me.

[Mop it up]

I think part of the logic there was that the N64 was near the end of it's lifecycle and GameCube was just gearing up. A number of titles always fall through the cracks or get transfered to new systems at those times. Eternal Darkness, Dinosaur Planet and Resident Evil Zero were ported. Animal Crossing for the GameCube was actually a port of the Japanese N64 version so it could have happened for S & P but they just didn't think it would be worth the effort from a financial point of view.

This would suffice if the game weren't released at all, but it doesn't explain why it wasn't first released in the region it was intended for.

[Jonnyboy117]

Sounds like an Eye for an eye situation if that happens and poor Greg's hunger strike would never end .

More like pinky toe for brain.  Disaster isn't nearly as awesome as Excitebots.

[Infernal Monkey]

13,000 copies in what, 10 days isn't bad at all. =o I agree about the lack of advertising hurting it though, what with 'core' gamers refusing to actually buy/play anything on the Wii, you need more of that crucial 'casual' mass-market attention.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Yeah, Nintendo should've green-lighted "ExciteDogs" instead, things Amerikans would actually THROW MONEY AT.  How Nintendo allowed ExciteBots to advance from the doodle-on-napkin phase is a completely mysterious joke.  Was it intentional bait just to excite the GoMeatCowboy audience and the rest of the whiney Nintendo blogosphere?  "Here is your non-casual Nintendo-published game, we listen to our fans, enjoy."  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.

ExciteBots sells 13,000.  Apparently that's all Nintendo fans add up to.  Nintendo was right to keep ExciteBots a secret.  It's not casual enough to warrant the degree of publicity Rythm Heaven got.

[Ian Sane]

I've always found NOA to be, well, completely fucking clueless with marketing.  So while the "Wii would like to play" campaign did well it doesn't necessarily mean that NOA's marketing department actually knows what they're doing.  After all they DID apply that same type of ad to Metroid Prime 3 which really didn't make any sense for that type of game.

NOA may be as surprised by the Wii's success as everyone else and while they know something worked they might not know exactly what that was.  So all this stuff with ExciteBots isn't necessarily part of some grand plan by a master marketing genius.  And it might not be Nintendo setting up their own title for failure.  It might just be a marketing department that has no idea what they're doing but fluked their way into success once and are trying to do it again.