Topic: Capcom Announces First Wii Game (by Inafuna)

[Smoke39]

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Originally posted by: Pittbboi
The only one that is is Excite Truck, and it just serves to illustrate my point. A lackluster, unoriginal racer that's too short with crap for multi-player.....

Excite Truck is full of awesome. O:<

[TerribleOne]

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Originally posted by: Kairon

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Originally posted by: ShyGuy
Excite Truck, Project Hammer, and Disaster: Day of Crisis are made 'specially for you.

All half steps. None of them really likely to break the mold to establish names for themselves. Destined to be quality games relegated to the dusty shelves of history, remembered alongside the likes of Baiten Kaitos and P.N.03.

Now we're on the same page. That's exactly what i meant. We need Nintendo Game: 1, 2, 3 and Special Edition in the next 10 years that actually have a strong Million+ fanbase. And its not a coincidence those games sell systems too. I'm not saying Nintendo needs to step away from the "Blue Ocean" strategy, but it would be nice to take the manhours to produce Mario Party 14 into the production of a risky new game to capture the minds of old and new fans.

[ShyGuy]

....So, you want games MTV says is hip so your friends will think the game is cool and popular, right?

Edit: We seem to have an army of Mini-Ians. We can list dozens of games that meet the "criteria", but if they don't tickle their fancy, they simply don't count.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

^ The light of truth shines thru.

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Originally posted by: TerribleOne

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Originally posted by: Kairon

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Originally posted by: ShyGuy
Excite Truck, Project Hammer, and Disaster: Day of Crisis are made 'specially for you.

All half steps. None of them really likely to break the mold to establish names for themselves. Destined to be quality games relegated to the dusty shelves of history, remembered alongside the likes of Baiten Kaitos and P.N.03.

Now we're on the same page. That's exactly what i meant. We need Nintendo Game: 1, 2, 3 and Special Edition in the next 10 years that actually have a strong Million+ fanbase. And its not a coincidence those games sell systems too. I'm not saying Nintendo needs to step away from the "Blue Ocean" strategy, but it would be nice to take the manhours to produce Mario Party 14 into the production of a risky new game to capture the minds of old and new fans.

That is too rosy of a picture.  Don't confuse the success of the NES with the *kind* of success Nintendo is trying to nurture right now.  The competition was different back then, the marketing was different, and I wouldn't assume the old games were special with regards to risk since the WHOLE MARKET was still young and pretty much driven by risk (or simply differentiation and quality), and the paying audience wasn't influenced nor divided like it is today.

You're assuming Nintendo's effort in making such a risky great franchise actually pays off, that the game is excellent, that the game generates its own buzz, and that Nintendo gives it an effective initial marketing push.  That's a lot to ask for considering Nintendo hasn't had all those good pieces rightfully fall into place since Ocarina of Time was released.  Oh wait, you didn't say it had to be excellent (then i must doom it to failure, on the other hand we have Pokemon).  Look at their history of "major" titles that had to compete in last gen's marketing landscape.  Mario Sunshine?  Failed game, failed to hold the market's attention.  Pikmin, Metroid Prime?  Good "new" games, marketting efforts failed to hold the market's attention.  Twilight Princess?  Good game, but it's getting a boost by the market's previous dissatisfaction (take a guess why) and therefore not succeeding purely by its own merit.  And 3rd parties, well, PoP: Sands of Time?  Despite critical success and noticeable marketing, it flopped; series had to lose some integrity before garnering more consumer attention.  BG&E?  Critical success, no significant marketing, all around flop.  The only major traditional Nintendo console game to succeed in these regards lately would be SSBM, it didn't even have an in-yo-face marketing campaign to begin with yet still sold along side GCN units long after the price drops.  We won't really see what games are the real successes until they're actually released.  There's several obstacles like, what does the market really want?  Can you MAKE the market want what you want them to want?  Some games the market didn't care for, others Nintendo failed to make the market want.

Sure, Nintendo can take more risks.  But it's Nintendo's job to court the market, and it's the market's job to buy into it.  Ideas are good, but these days they're not enough.  At the moment, the failures of the competition seem to be just as important as a good product.

[Adrock]

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denjet78 wrote:
Well, traditional games are a dying breed.

Define "traditional games."

Nintendo doesn't necessarily need to create new IPs to become relevant again in the console space. They need great exclusives, significantly more than they have the past 2 generations. For the most part, PS3 and 360 get or are getting the most notable ones: old and new franchises. Currently, only Ubisoft with Red Steel has offered Nintendo a Wii exclusive built from the ground up on the platform.

As much as I'd love to see Nintendo create something new (like during the SNES days with Star Fox and F-Zero), I see attaining stronger 3rd party support as a more important issue. So far, Wii has gotten scraps and ports from developers with a few exclusives announced and little to no concrete info available (case in point, this very thread). Getting a strong franchise old or new (but not a gaiden or spinoff) from a 3rd party developer would probably help Nintendo more. It encourages other developers to follow suit since the general consensus is that owners of Nintendo consoles only buy Nintendo games. We all know that's not true. Gamers love good games. Even the most devoted Nintendo fan would buy a 3rd party game if it didn't suck ass.

[Kairon]

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Originally posted by: Adrock
As much as I'd love to see Nintendo create something new (like during the SNES days with Star Fox and F-Zero), I see attaining stronger 3rd party support as a more important issue. So far, Wii has gotten scraps and ports from developers with a few exclusives announced and little to no concrete info available (case in point, this very thread). Getting a strong franchise old or new (but not a gaiden or spinoff) from a 3rd party developer would probably help Nintendo more. It encourages other developers to follow suit since the general consensus is that owners of Nintendo consoles only buy Nintendo games. We all know that's not true. Gamers love good games. Even the most devoted Nintendo fan would buy a 3rd party game if it didn't suck ass.

Is this the "we need more third party support but we don't know how to get it" speech?

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Originally posted by: Professional 666
BG&E? Critical success, no significant marketing, all around flop.

This is why I used BG&E as an example of what gamers wanted from Nintendo. Not the marketting part, but the critical success -> flop part. I could just as well have also used Viewtiful Joe as an example... these types of games are very risky, and probably too risky for Nintendo to divert their attention too.

Besides, like I said before, EAD is busy tackling two major pushes: the non-game push and the franchise done-right push. They've probably got a lot on their hands already.

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[KDR_11k]

No they didn't. Not in any meaningful way. The Cube is the very definition of a flop.

Do you think the Cube would have sold just as well without those games?

Halo sells systems but even with all their games Microsoft only managed to get a draw with your very definition of a flop. Halo is no bigger of a console seller than Nintendo games. They pander to the same niche they had the last time minus the people that got tired of it. If MS's strategy was only Halo 3 they'd lose hands down.

So the games that "sold Cubes" aren't going to sell Wiis in the amount Nintendo wants.

No but if you use those to bring the Wii up to GC sales and then use other games to leap over the bar you make it easier to get over the bar than if you tried to leap from zero with those new games.

I don't mean a literal Halo equivalent. I mean something new and different that attracts the same amount of attention that Halo did. Something that younger gamers identify as one the "their games". A game that everyone is playing and everyone knows about. An "it" game.

Halo was so dear to many because it was the only title most XBox owners agreed upon as good. If you had an XBox you had Halo or you had wasted your money. Halo wouldn't have been nearly as successful on the PS2. To archieve such a huge market penetration you need a bundled game or a diamond in a pile of crap. Unless Ninendo deliberately turns their franchise games into crap they aren't going to create the vast contrast that made Halo so bright in most people's eyes.

[Galford]

Here another reason I brought up the 360 and Halo.

Nintendo has some momentum right now.  Right now their "Blue Ocean" strategy is working.  MS is not sitting by and letting this slide.  Remember Bill Gate's comment about Nintendo being their primary target?  To keep that momentum going I think needs decide which game is going to be the big thing this holiday and run with it.

Personally I believe that game to be Mario Galaxy.  Mario has appeal to the crowd that Nintendo is catering too and has some cache amoung older hardcore gamers.  I'm just worried this Christmas will be a repeat of 2004 when MP2 came out.  There's nothing more frustrating then watching a 9 year old playing MP2 on a kiosk and asking if this is the new Halo.

Isn't Inafune working on DMC4 right now?

[KDR_11k]

He's a game designer, one project is hardly a fulltime job for him.

[ryancoke]

If capcom is working on a megaman game, I would love to see one on the lines of Megaman Legends and the Misadventures of Tronn Bonne for PS1.  Make the game an action rpg in a 3rd person view with wiimote aiming. That would rule.

[TerribleOne]

I thikn some of you are very confused as to what Nintendo's strategy is.
Remember: Nintendo wants us to change the way we play, not what we play as some of you are pointing out. We got Wii boxing vs Fight Night. They both have different way of playing and use the HARDWARE to their advantage, which is what Nintendo doesnt directly want to compete with MS and Sony against. With that being said, the game is still.... boxing. Its outlandish to think that Nintendo has given up on traditional gaming(I'm looking at YOU million seller NSMB)

It's Nintendo's choice to make it "traditional" or "innovative" but we need something new here. Like seriously, if Nintendo doesn't start now, the 15 yr olds of 2015 are going to go elsewhere for their fan fanboyism.

Capcom is known to have good franchises. At least we can hope they can create something that wont be quickly forgotten.

[Ian Sane]

"Maybe EAD can't be in three places at once?"

The new stuff doesn't have to come from EAD.  DKC was huge on the SNES and that wasn't EAD.  Now that was an old franchise but it was re-invented for a new generation.  They could do something like that, provided they don't overdue it like Bomberman on the Xbox.

One thing I thought of was my own perception of games during the NES era.  I never played games like Frogger or Pac-Man in their prime.  Those have always been classic old games to me.  They're fun and I like them but I only became really familiar with them as a I got older and more mature and made an effort to try out some of the games before my time.  But I have no connection to those games.  I don't identify with Frogger or Pac-Man.  My memories with them are based on when I first played them but they're not part of my youth or anything like that.  When I was a kid the NES was the first introduction to gaming for myself and most of my age group.  At the time we loved Mario and Mega Man.  Those were our gaming icons.  We regarded Pac-Man as old.  It was this dinosaur game from before our time and not worth our attention.  That's not a good attitude to have but kids and teens think that way.

To a younger gamer the older franchises are like that.  They're relics so there is less of a NEED to play those games.  Now if Nintendo can turn Day of Disaster into a mega-hit then that's great.  That's what they should try to do.  But right now I see that the "big guns" that are getting hyped the most are the old franchises.  That's fine for someone my age but it isn't going to sell as well with the Playstation or Xbox era gamers.

[KDR_11k]

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Originally posted by: ryancoke
If capcom is working on a megaman game, I would love to see one on the lines of Megaman Legends and the Misadventures of Tronn Bonne for PS1.  Make the game an action rpg in a 3rd person view with wiimote aiming. That would rule.

I think that wouldn't really be a Megaman game, it's just Zelda in a futuristic setting (and hey, flooded world!). While I do think Rockman Dash is enjoyable I don't really count it as a Megaman game, mostly because they completely changed Megaman's history.

[Adrock]

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Kairon wrote:
Is this the "we need more third party support but we don't know how to get it" speech?

No, it isn't. There are a lot of way Nintendo could get more 3rd party support. They already did the hardest thing which was to find a way to separate themselves from the competition and make people care about them again. The controller has instantly made Nintendo a significant player. Right now, it's a matter of "Where do they go from here?"

For the past 2 generations, if there was a bad choice to be made, Nintendo made it. More specifically, they stopped listening to everyone or maybe they never did. For example, developers said, "The licenceing fees are too high and we don't want to pay for expensive cartridges." Nintendo said, "Deal with it." Besides Nintendo f-ing up, Sony basically did everything Nintendo wasn't.

With 360, developers asked Microsoft for more RAM and they put more RAM in. Granted, it cost them billions of dollars, but everyone's happy. Nintendo doesn't need to go to such  extreme lengths. Flaunting the wallet is something only Microsoft can do and get away with. Nintendo has gotten suckered into a bunch of ass deals like The Twin Snakes. They paid for and used one of their own teams to develop a port of a 6 year old game. It's not about simply paying for exlcusives or paying so a game isn't exclusive to another console, it starts with talking with developers and working with them. Nintendo could ask Square Enix, "We want a new Chrono game. What do we need to do?" and you start from there.

When it comes to building the sucessor to Wii, Nintendo should ask developers what they would like to see. They can't appease everyone but they can at least make compromises and show that their imput matters. If developers want more buttons on the controller, Nintendo should seriously consider it. After all, it's not the buttons that make the controller more user-friendly. Nintendo really has to get over the "our way is the only way" mindset. I've noticed improvements, but some things continue to raise question marks. Friend codes on Wii? What the hell?

[Kairon]

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Originally posted by: Adrock

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Kairon wrote:
Is this the "we need more third party support but we don't know how to get it" speech?

No, it isn't. There are a lot of way Nintendo could get more 3rd party support. They already did the hardest thing which was to find a way to separate themselves from the competition and make people care about them again. The controller has instantly made Nintendo a significant player. Right now, it's a matter of "Where do they go from here?"

...

When it comes to building the sucessor to Wii, Nintendo should ask developers what they would like to see. They can't appease everyone but they can at least make compromises and show that their imput matters. If developers want more buttons on the controller, Nintendo should seriously consider it. After all, it's not the buttons that make the controller more user-friendly. Nintendo really has to get over the "our way is the only way" mindset. I've noticed improvements, but some things continue to raise question marks. Friend codes on Wii? What the hell?

I understand what you're saying and agree with you. But I think it'll be a real tightrope for Nintendo to walk concerning designing the Wii's successor, Nintendo's always designed the controller with an exact image from Miyamoto and what their internal teams envision in terms of software. But I also believe that trying to accomodate third party needs is important. Maybe instead of directly letting third party interests conflict with and spoil the integrity of their design process, they should instead ask third parties what they want extremely early in the design process, then set those third party requests as secondary objectives for the controller and other hardware: Nintendo's vision will still remain the most important thing in hardware design as it should be, but they'll know from the beginning the requests of third parties so they can try to implement as much of that if they can fit it in with their designs. The design process would be just as internal and secretive as ever and third parties wouldn't have any say, but Nintendo would have already learned from third parties possible secondary goals to pursue at the very beginning.

Ah, but what can Nintendo do now?

Excuse me while I indulge my inner fanboi rage... MAKE FRIENDS WITH INDEPENDENT DEVELOPERS! WHAT YOU NEED NINTENDO IS NOT NEW IPS, BUT THE FRESH, NEW UP AND COMING DEVELOPERS WITH THE VISION TO MAKE THOSE GAMES ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET!

*ahem* sorry...

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[zakkiel]

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Remember Bill Gate's comment about Nintendo being their primary target?

If Nintendo were really what Microsoft sees as its biggest threat, it would never admit as much. You don't ever boost the image of your chief opposition like that. The comment proved to me that they're still primarily focused on Sony. That will probably change, and quickly.

[wandering]

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I don't mean a literal Halo equivalent. I mean something new and different that attracts the same amount of attention that Halo did. Something that younger gamers identify as one the "their games". A game that everyone is playing and everyone knows about. An "it" game.

I think the Wii could very well see such an "it" game. And it'll be thanks to the motion controller. It makes things happen. Someone, somewhere will come up with an idea for a multiplayer deathmatch type game that makes heavy use of motion control. It will be developed as a side project in a studio no one's ever heard of, and be completely ignored when it's shown off at E3. And then it'll be released and, to everyone's surprise, take the world by storm. Teenagers will play it with their friends non-stop for the next five years.

[IceCold]

In a perfect world (without friction), Pikmin would have been the bestseller of the last generation. In the real world, it was lucky to sell 1.7 million or whatever. It wouldn't matter if Nintendo threw millions into advertising it; it still wouldn't have been a blockbuster. That's just how it is in the world today. As hardcore gamers, you'd like to think that new IPs which are very well received critically and are marketed well will sell millions and spur hardware sales. It doesn't work that way. There's a lot of risk involved with this sort of game, and more often than not it won't achieve all of that.