Something I noticed.|General Gaming Discussion|Forum|SNES HUB

Hahahahahahahaahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOW SOMEONE IS SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE!!!!!!!!

Ahem*

Fear not, Mark, as they have suffered plenty.  The flak is in the sales.  Mario’s numbers were cut in half after the transition to 3D.  Metroid MOM was a bomb that may have sunk the franchise. Zelda sales have rapidly declined since Aonuma took charge.  Luigi’s Mansion does not sell, though you could argue that Luigi had no gameplay definition in consumers minds as he just plays 2nd fiddle to Mario.

These companies need to learn that they do not define what a game is. WE DO. There is a reason I do not buy most modern games and haven’t since the N64 era.  I am voting with my wallet as are millions of other gamers who dropped off after the transition to 3D systems and did not return until the Wii and DS.

I do not even try to understand the “Hardcore” or the critics that sell them their drugs anymore. In the era of HD they are not enough to sustain this industry anymore.  Suffice to say there has ALWAYS been a critical bias towards “creativity”(which ironically enough almost ALWAYS resembles anime in appearance and concepts) and Nintendo in particular.  Like movies the games they love are the same ones that the audiences despise and refuse to buy. There is a total disconnect between the customer and the critic in videogames and everything else since the critic believes himself to be the enlightened opinion on a mission to elevate the masses.

I do not listen to critics since they do not have to purchase the games or books or movies.  It is far easier to appreciate “art” and “creativity” when you get it for free.  Thus a game like SS that sells like shit for a Zelda game is praised by critics who then scorn the masses for being too “dumb” to get Aonuma’s brilliance.

If the game developers would make games for the customer instead of the Snob critic and the Lifestyle gamer who is leveraged by them, perhaps gaming could begin growing again….

The problem is that the people who read these sites and buy these magazines are not an audience with enough dollars to sustain these HD-era budgets. Ask an average family in Gamestop or Wal-Mart what Metacritic is. They don’t know and they don’t care.  They don’t have time to look up such things outside of holiday shopping.  If it looks fun or better yet was recommended by a friend then they buy it.

Here is the demographic for Gamespot:

Audience Profile

• Male: 96%
• Average age: 25
• Ages 18-34 years: 89%

Sound like an expanded audience to you?  These sites only have influence over the “hardcore”.  And we will need more than this shrinking demographic to go forward.  look all around you as publisher after publisher and developer after developer throws themselves upon the sword of HD development.  Do most people care about HD graphics and Cell processors and blu-Ray players?  No.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…….

The Game Industry is not just in a transition period, it is in jeopardy. The macro environment has changed. Economic growth has turned into economic depression in the West. Population growth is no longer there. Development costs have quintupled, and the industry no longer has new markets to expand into to spur growth.  All this in the service of a fickle and shrinking demographic (the hardcore gamer). If someone wishes to argue that the Game Industry is growing and getting stronger everyday, please attempt to do so. I would love to hear it because even at Neogaf and Gamefaqs no one is pretending that the Game Industry is having ‘good days’.

Naturally this implosion has turned into a war on gamers who are bieng increasingly blamed as game studio after game studio implodes and as game developers begin to make up for their shrinking xcustomer base with things such as DRM, Nickle-And-Dime DLC,and Streetpasses.  Of course this will only fuel the decline further as it will limit the product only to the most obsessive fans. If these practices sound familiar perhaps it is beecause we have already seen happen in the Anime industry where now only the most obsessive fan is “all-in”, and thus leveraged by the Anime companies with ludicrous pricing and limited availability.  All for a product that only appeals to a tiny aspect of the population (have you seen most anime today?  It’s fucking creepy and outside the realm of mass market). 

Let’s rewind back to the start of the Seventh Generation. Nintendo said the Game Industry was in big trouble because all the ‘growth’ wasn’t actual growth but riding macro economic trends such as population growth, gamers-getting-older-and-having-more-disposable-income, multi-console ownership, additional territories to sell to thanks to globalism, and so on. Gaming stopped growing in relationship to society around the SNES/Genesis Era. Since the macro economic trends wouldn’t continue and costs would keep rising, gaming would inevitably decline.

Nintendo offered a turning point to the Game Industry. The Game Industry could keep doing what they are doing and enter decline OR they could change their ways and enter actual growth or, in times of macroeconomic decline, stability. I think the choice is obvious. When the Seventh Generation started, I assumed that all game developers would choose the better profitable path.

I was wrong.

I was wrong because I thought that in this economic downturn game developers would at last begin to look at the bigger picture concerning the relationship of their jobs to society. The Golden Age of gaming, marked by games being made for blue collar workers who typically do not have time for a 20+-hour slog in a fantasy world. Today that link has been severed. Iwata complained in 2005 that the Game Industry was just making games for itself.

Taking a page of the NES past, Nintendo’s proposition of the future was to make games for normal people as opposed to the obsessive freaks (which Game Industry’s marketing has propagandized as ‘hardcore gamers’). It made sense to make games for normal people. Normal people did not care so much about the ‘graphics’, for example. Therefore, costs could be kept down or in check instead of going bankrupt trying to sell to the freaks.

Nintendo’s Growth Proposition symbolized by the Wii, was declined by the Game Industry because game developers and the critics who push the products don’t want to be connected to normal society. They wrap themselves in gamer culture (whatever the fuck that is) and pride themselves on their exclusivity. This of course happens in every industry but usually it is small niche companies that serve the need of these snobs (Hollywood has IndieFilms, Grocery has Upscale markets like Whole Foods). Most peopel could give a shit less and just buy whatever brand satisfies their need.

I remember Hideo Kojima being offended by Brain Age and Wii Sports. These same developers and publishers smeared these people as ‘casual gamers’ as if games were supposed to take priority over the real world, as if families and those with jobs were to be excluded. To arrogance is exemplified in the attitude that 3rd party companies used when dealing with customers such as myself. ‘Casual game sales will fuel hardcore game development’. So the only purpose of the non-typical gamer is to buy a cheaply made ‘casual game’. This would fund hardcore game development. What happened is that “casual” money vanished and now game companies are going bankrupt because they can’t fund the ‘hardcore’ games.

Even Nintendo was no different than the Game Industry on this. They were hoping the people who made the DS and Wii a success would then travel over to buy the games Nintendo wanted to make such as Mario Galaxy, Zelda SS, and Metroid: Other M. Instead, the normal people stayed with Wii Sports and moved to games Nintendo didn’t want to make such as 2d Mario, DKC, and Wii Fit. As a result Nintendo has abandoned these gamers, returning to the “hardcore” and profit-loss.

The Game Industry had the opportunity to sell $60 games to normal people. They abused this to sell us junk like NSMBU and NSMB2 and so we have done more than turn away. They now are making the Game Industry bankrupt since they have left the industry again. Gamers like myself will not buy a WiiU or a PS4 because we see no need to. And yet game developers keep saying gamers like myself are ‘stupid’. Perhaps we are the smart ones. We know that if we wait that we can get the same game for 15 bucks when the easily-manipulated hardcore gamer sells it to GameStop for another game he won’t play.  WHO”S THE STUPID ONE!?!

What is the Game Industry about? It is about games. I laugh at all these people trying to find a scapegoat to the Game Industry’s misfortune to be anything but the games. “It’s the smartphones.” “It’s the changing Internet.” “It’s the stupid casuals.”

Or Maybe the games suck?

“No, The games are amazing, just look at the metacritic scores.”

What was the metacritic score for Wii Sports? you know, the best-selling game of all time?

Here are the Game industry developers on NeoGaf:

We deal in many harsh realities, whether they’re sales figures or platform health or whether something lives up to the hype. These facts can be heartbreaking at times, but they are not reason to get personal. Address arguments, not people. Have preferences, but try not to let those preferences lead to cognitive dissonance, even if you’re financially and emotionally invested.

This was referencing not the common gamer but the game developer (as Neogaf has many game developers on it). The ‘heartbreaking’ and ‘financially and emotionally invested’ are not about a gamer playing ‘console war’ on the Internet, it is more about the Game Industry meltdown. How is PlayStation All-Stars selling by the way? How is PC gaming sales demolishing the overpriced junk on the Xbox 360 and PS3? It’s because of the games.

The Game Industry revolves around games (not the developers, the developers are irrelevant and their beliefs and opinions are irrelevant) and gamers (the overwhelming number of real gamers, the ones who made Tetris and Mario 3 and Sonic a success before these games were twisted to sell to the “hardcore”

The Game Industry’s response to the Wii eruption was to say, “We will put out junk casual games to fund the hardcore games we want to make.” It is so funny that the Game Industry thinks they can choose their direction. Today the “Hardcore” buys the junk game for full price (or collector’s edition) while everyone else will eventually get the same game for less than ten dollars!

And you know what?  It serves them right…

………………Didn’t mean for that to be an essay LoL!

Just noticed I began three paragraphs with “you’re right” LOL.

Interesting point re: developers needing more life experience.  It is true that we are now seeing games being developed by folks who grew up gaming.  Obviously, this was not possible in the early days.

That said, I think a big reason all games are starting to look the same is due to a general risk aversion from publishers, not necessarily a lack of creativity on the part of the developers.   This is of course due to the massive increase in development costs, as you’ve pointed out. I’m sure if you let developers run wild, we wouldn’t be getting annual Call of Duty and Halo games..  

I will call you out on calling 3D Mario a failure.  Super Mario 64 and the first Galaxy were BIG successes.  Were they as big as New Super Mario Bros or New Super Mario Bros Wii?  No, of course not.  That said, they outsold Yoshi’s Island and Super Mario Land 2 by a wide margin.  Super Mario 64 matched the sales of Super Mario 2, which in itself is an accomplishment.

Also, we have to make sure we’re comparing apples-to-apples here.  New Super Mario Bros Wii was a pack-in game.  Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt was a pack-in game.  Of course, Super Mario World was a pack-in game.  It’s not fair to compare the sales of pack-in games and non pack-in games directly.

You’ve likely seen this before, but here’s a neat infographic comparing Mario sales: 

http://www.vg247.com/2010/09/1…..ince-1985/

Consider also what the purpose of first-party software is.  If it is not selling hardware or bolstering the brand then you are wasting your money.

3D Mario does neither better than 2D Mario can.

…………………………………………………………..This has been an amazing discussion…

Yamauchi famously said that the console “Is a box you buy to get to Mario.” You can apply this to all systems because it is about the games and not the hardware. the SEGA Genesis was the Box you bought to get to Sonic. The Xbox was a box you bought to get to Halo ect.

The Wii was a box you bought to get to Wii Sports, and later to get to NSMB Wii. That does not change the fact that these games would still sell tens of millions without the bundling as evidenced by NSMB Wii, which was sold out for months and months sans bundle.  Wiis were STILL sold as people picked up a Wii and the separate game. It sold well over half of its copies before a shocked Nintendo could prepare the bundle. Also Keep in mind that millions of Wiis were already in homes thanks to Wii Sports, Mario Kart, and Wii Fit, so the bundle impact of NSMB Wii was lessened.

As far as The Mario games you listed as Failures No argument with Sunshine.  That was a train Wreck! I would actually argue that Galaxy 2 was a moderate success despite bombing because it was built on the same engine and was essentially a level pack, so It did not cost much. 

I would also depend on how you define failure.  As I said 3D Mario still does leaps and bounds better than most ANYTHING else, but in comparison with the series 2D entries it falls short. It has also NEVER moved Hardware as it can definitely be argued that Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye 007 Ocarina of Time did more to move N64 hardware than Mario 64 since you can trace the largest hardware spikes to these games.

The primary purpose of 1st party software is to sell hardware.  The secondary purpose is to uplift the brand and/or serve an otherwise unavailable appetite.  Since it can only be argued that 3D Mario moved hardware on the N64 I would attribute this to novelty.  I definitely think that you may have a point about the climate at the time as there was genuine excitement for 3D.

As for giving Nintendo credit remember who you are talking to Lol!  If Nintendo wanted credit from me they would have dropped Nintendo land and bundled NSMBU.  I do not think it would have saved it for the reasons you have given but they would certainly be in a better position.  Still it will be useful because I predict that it will sell to over half of WiiU owners WITH NO BUNDLE, finally settling the bundle debate once and for all.

Oh, and nothing compares to SMB3 EVEN TODAY.  If we had something that compared we wouldn’t still be playing SMB3 LoL!

You are correct on this. I still say that a bundled NSMBU would have sold more hardware, but the ultimate point is that the WiiU is unnecessary.  Developers need to learn that it is the customer who decides when an upgrade occurs.

Funnily enough, the WiiU may well still win by default….We will see when more info comes out about the PS4 and whatever the fuck Microsoft has.

Thanks for getting us back on topic Masamune!

You’re right about 3D Sonic for the most part.

Have you tried Sonic Colors or Sonic Generations?  Both games got 3D (and 2D) Sonic right; especially Generations!  Generations is one my top 10 favourite games this gen; I can’t say enough great things about it.

I never tried Other M myself, but I’ve watched a lot of the story cut scenes on YouTube and most of the complaints about Samus’ character are on the money.  They made her a whiny, self-doubting wuss, not the confident self-assured bad ass she appeared to be in all other games.

That review is on the money.  Let us know what you think when you get it!