I wonder if Jeff Gerstmann will reconsider his answer to my question at PAX East about the wisdom of keeping the Red Steel name. I think a lot of people got burned by the first one and don't read reviews or anything else that would inform them of the sequel's quality.
I think this is dead on. I was honestly surprised to hear that Red Steel 2 was any good. The first game blows so I assumed the sequel would as well. I didn't even look for reviews, it was just dumb luck that I heard it was decent. There were people on this forum talking about it during development but I just figured this was wishful thinking and that it made no sense to get hyped up about a sequel to a game that sucks by a third party that treats the Wii like a joke.
Good for Ubisoft for getting their **** together (they did the same with Assassin's Creed 2) but if this game bombs, it's probably the brand name. The whole idea of a sequel is to associate a new game with a successful franchise. It's supposed to be low-risk because those that liked the first game will be looking forward to the sequel. But it seems like the whole purpose has been lost here. You don't make sequels to lousy games because there is no positive brand recognition. It's like Ubisoft has been so conditioned into thinking "sequel, sequel, sequel" that they failed to acknowledge the whole point. I question the logic in making an Assassin's Creed sequel as well since that first game was the butt of jokes with the target audience.
Though if I know that Red Steel 2 isn't crappy like it's predecessor, why haven't I bought it? Well personally I don't care much for Ubisoft but a big part of it is third party Wii games typically don't grab my interest. Since I bought a PS3 many games that I'm interested in have been released or announced or already existed when I bought the system and I haven't had the time to get around to them yet. I went from the Wii, where I felt I owned every game I was interested in and was begging for something new, to the opposite where there is a backlog of titles I've been meaning to try. Red Steel 2 sounds good for a Wii game but when I own another console beyond a Wii, why would I bother with such a title? The upcoming Metroid and Mario titles are games that have the potential to be good PERIOD regardless of what platform they're on so those are the sort of Wii titles that continue to capture my interest. But when I don't even have time to sample all of the best of the best then it seems like a waste of time and money to settle for "pretty good" games.
This is the Wii's big problem and I think it's going to be a problem until the Wii 2, when Nintendo can more or less reboot and start fresh. The Wii third party support has never cut it for anyone who owns another console. And Nintendo positioned the Wii as everyone's second console so I think a lot of the target market for a game like Red Steel 2 is in this situation. The third parties **** the bed, anyone who cared had to buy a second console, and now nothing but their abosolute BEST work stands a chance because someone who owns both a Wii and one of the other consoles has access to a good 90% of the absolute best games and has no reason to settle for anything else. They think they just have to compete with the best third party titles on the Wii but they're wrong. Ubisoft may very well be competing with themselves in that the new Splinter Cell was just released on the other consoles and is going to attract more attention than Red Steel 2. A big chunk of the target demo on the Wii is probably playing Splinter Cell on their other console.
Topic: Red Steel 2 Sells 50,000 According to NPD (Read 12442 times)
