Hello Sean.
Hello emailer.
As I’m sure you know, the Wii is going through rough times. Sales are at an all time low. It’s being outsold by both its competitors. It’s losing market share at an alarming rate. It’s looking less and less likely that it will ever surpass the legendary PS2. What gives?
All game consoles are down. Where did all the PS2 gamers go? No one has yet to answer it. The flat sales of PS3 and Xbox 360 are nothing to brag about but are a failure as gaming continues to decline. The only bright spot was the Wii as Wii’s sales were above PS2’s sales at the start of this generation. It shows that gaming can grow. But the lesson of the Wii is that it defied the Game Industry (which is the reason why it succeeded).
The passionate Wii customer was born because Nintendo promised a revolution in gaming. There was a ‘grace period’ of time where, with Wii Sports as an appetizer, that people were waiting for more such games since the launch. They got it in part with games like Wii Fit. But Nintendo’s response has been to continue their old ways and resume making Gamecube games. (Remember that Wii was opposed by many people within Nintendo.)
Gamecube games are the reason why people did not buy the Gamecube and are the reason for Gamecube’s sales. Making sequels to Gamecube games is only going to transform Wii sales into Gamecube sales which is precisely what is happening.
Wii Music killed the passion for the console as people realized Nintendo’s definition of ‘revolution’ was not what people had in mind. To put it in perspective, Wii Music is to the Wii as E.T. was to the Atari 2600. There is a reason why Nintendo stopped selling Wii Music (which is extremely odd for a holiday flagship title). Sales for the Wii collapsed after Wii Music came out. The lack of quality software and poor software (especially from Nintendo) killed the excitement behind the system.
You seem to be pointing the finger at Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M. I disagree.
Iwata said to investors that Galaxy 2 failed to sell Wii hardware. Sales data shows that Galaxy 2 didn’t ignite Wii hardware. What more is there to say?
I think you are upset because you think by me saying this that I am saying Galaxy is a bad game. But the purpose of first party games is to sell the hardware. That is the reason why the game gets made in the first place. It didn’t do that which is why I say it ‘failed’ in its mission.
Clearly, a Mario Galaxy 3 wouldn’t ignite hardware sales either. However, I suspect Miyamoto is so adamant that 3d Mario sell like 2d Mario that he will make it anyway.
See, these titles are same console sequels. Galaxy 2 offers nothing to the people who weren’t convinced 3 years ago and Metroid has always been the black sheep of Nintendo’s “big” first party franchises. Nintendo knows this. Yes, they were aiming to expand the fanbases with help DVDs and CGI cutscenes respectively but these titles were mere filler until the system needed its next killer app. A time that came around faster than Nintendo foresaw.This is where NSMB Wii comes in.
But Nintendo doesn’t know this. With something like Metroid: Other M, the plan was for it to outsell all other Metroid games. The game was made with the expectation that it would be a hit. As Other M is the opposite of everything most people want in a Metroid game, it didn’t become a hit.
It may seem comforting to think, “Nintendo doesn’t actually believe these games will sell big,” but THEY DO. The reason why the Gamecube’s software didn’t catapult it to sales heights is because the audience didn’t like it. It is as simple as that. But inside Nintendo, they actually thought Gamecube games didn’t sell because they were too hard to understand or too complex. Nintendo viewed the Wii as successful not because it promised a different type of gaming but because it ‘simplified’ gaming. So Nintendo developers, eager to show us their ‘genius’, decided to keep churning out Gamecube games. However, this time they were ‘simplified’. But these games are causing no excitement for the same reason Gamecube games didn’t.
Even though Pikmin 3 isn’t out, I can easily predict it won’t move Nintendo hardware. Why? Pikmin 1 and 2 didn’t. So why would 3? However, Nintendo is making it because they believe it can be ‘simplified’ and made more intuitive. But the mass market isn’t rejecting Nintendo core games because they are ‘too complex’, they are rejecting the substance of these games.
In other words, Sakamoto is completely stunned gamers do not want ‘maternal instincts’ in their Metroid.
In your fantasy world “Mario 5” is God’s gift to gamers. According to you its absence over the 5th and 6th gen almost singlehandedly killed Nintendo. According to you it’s the ultimate system seller. A phenomenon. It’s time for a reality check.
NSMB Wii launched last November to brisk sales across the globe. According to VGChartz.com it is the only game in history to sell more than a million copies a week for more than 2 consecutive weeks. In fact, it did it for 7 consecutive weeks. That’s incredible. The Wii enjoyed its biggest holiday season yet (a price drop and Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit Plus and Just Dance helped too).
The price drop did not help. The price drop came prior to Mario 5’s release.
In fact, price drops have not helped any console long term this generation much to analysts’ shock. Gaming is dying.
Fast forward 47 weeks and look at the predicament we’re in. NSMB sold 68k worldwide for the week ending October 9th 2010. That’s pretty good. The Wii sold 130k this week. That’s terrible for a console that was breaking records left and right just ten months ago. The Wii managed to survive the empty Q4 of 2008 right up until Wii Sports Resort’s launch in August 2009 based solely on the continued strength of REAL hardware movers; Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii. Those games were able to keep the Wii fad burning. Nintendo, seeing the astronomical sales last Christmas, hinged their hopes on NSMB Wii achieving a similar feat (evidenced by the dearth of system sellers so far this year). Didn’t happen.
Here are some numbers from Feb ‘09 for you. The two best selling Wii games:
Wii Fit (66 weeks after launch) – 290k worldwide!
Mario Kart Wii (47 weeks after launch) – 150k worldwide
Wii hardware – 315k
The next best selling game is Wii Play and then a random anime game. So we can safely say this is the Mario Kart & Wii Fit effect, yes?
http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date=39880®=World&date=39873&console=&maker=
And now from the most recent chart for comparison:
Wii Sports Resort – 110k (68 weeks after release)
Wii Party – 100k (starting off significantly slower than Wii Music in the west)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii – 70k (less than half of Mario Kart at same point in lifetime and less than a quarter of Wii Fit’s sales at 66 weeks)
Wii hardware – 130k. Just about the lowest it’s ever been. Also notice the Wii has declined to less than half of what it was selling early 2008 while the PS3 and 360 are steady:
http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date=40090®=World&date=40461&console=&maker=
Nice try. But PS3 and Xbox 360 are not ‘steady’ , but they are drastically down from the PS2 norm set last generation. Xbox 360 is dead in places like Japan which is a repeat of last generation.
But Mario 5 sold out the Wii in America, something Nintendo did not predict, and completely destroyed all analyst predictions of continued Wii decline of that time period (Michael Pachter laughably implied the sales were due to Wal-Mart’s special deal even though the console was sold out at most retailers). Wii sold more hardware in America in December 2009 ever in history. Wii hardware was also pushed up worldwide. NSMB: Wii is the best selling console game in Japan in like a decade.
You’re making the common mistake of looking at a recent sales chart, not seeing Mario 5 there, and say, “Ahoy! Mario 5 has failed to sustain momentum.” Early on in the Wii years, many people assumed Wii wasn’t selling third party software because they didn’t see it in the top ten. But it was present further down the list, humming in the background. NSMB DS doesn’t appear in the top ten, yet it is in the background still selling. Games not appearing in the top ten list doesn’t mean the game is selling bad. And a game appearing in the top ten list doesn’t mean the game is selling good. The top ten list is nothing more than the top ten at a certain snapshot of time. If everything is selling bad, the top ten would not be particularly impressive.
Momentum means hardware sales. Mario 5 did it.
You also do not understand the definition of a killer app. The killer app is not a game that sells the hardware for years. No video game EVER has done this. Not even Wii Sports (as Wii Fit took up the killer app role a year later). Not Space Invaders. Not Street Fighter 2. Not Blazing Lasers. Not Sonic the Hedgehog. No game fits your view of ‘killer app’ that sells hardware ‘for years’.
People do not like buying hardware. What a killer app does is that it pushes people over the hardware gap to get the system. It is the large game library that keeps people passionate about the system and keeps sales high. Wii Sports is the reason why many people bought a Wii. But the true reason for high Wii sales was the vast amount of software that was released on the system. Or to use the PS2 as comparison. GTA 3 was a killer app for the system. But it is the vast PS2 library that kept the sales going. In fact, if the PS2 library was not vast, sequels to PC games few people knew of such as GTA 3 would not have appeared on the PS2. A larger library increases the chances for ‘killer apps’.
But again, no killer app sells a game console for years. Not even Mario. Look at the classic Mario games. Super Mario World did not ‘maintain momentum’ for years (as no game can). The SNES was falling behind the Genesis until Donkey Kong Country came out. Mario 2 and 3 were huge phenomenons when they came out and were sold out. But neither made the NES sell forever. And even the original Super Mario Brothers ran out of ‘hardware pushing’ steam after a year or two. There is a myth that Super Mario Brothers sold all NES systems which isn’t true. There were many bundles of the NES such as including sports games or even the robot prior to the Super Mario Brothers bundle.
I’ve always disliked Iwata’s phrase of ‘evergreen’ titles which is greatly misleading. There is something called ‘warm markets’ and ‘cold markets’. With a ‘warm market’, the product sells very fast and drops quickly afterward. In a ‘cold market’, the product sells consistently over a long period of time but not huge volume at once. This also matches the Core and Expanded markets. The Core market is ‘warm’ and know when the next game is out. The Expanded market does not know when their game is released, and it discovers the game slowly over time.
The reason why I am saying this is that the original Super Mario Brothers game and the NES/Mario bundle sold to a cold market. There was no such thing as a console market in the mid-eighties in the United States. It had crashed after all. Retailers wouldn’t stock it. This is why the NES and its software of the first half of its history had a very long tail. The market was cold and it wasn’t until 1988, past two years that the console came out, that the NES began selling like crazy and became a huge phenomenon. In the original test market in New York of 1985, retailers only sold 50% of the NES systems.
The NES was 100% Expanded Market since there was no prior gaming market.
It seems Mario 5 is selling more akin to a Call of Duty game (sidenote: Modern Wafare 2 showed up in the lastest NPD top 10 while Mario 5 is nowhere to be found) than a true evergreen. And its effect on hardware was decidedly short term. Super Mario Galaxy 2 succeeded in its purpose of filling a gap in the year, keeping the fans content and bringing in a nice little profit. Mario 5 fell short of its expectation to carry the Wii past Christmas. Why is this? I’ll leave that up for you to decide.
P.S. I do happen to agree that Other M is a flop in every sense of the word.
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The Wii was still in short supply and out of stock in many places after Christmas of 2009. And Mario 5 kept selling strongly.
When Mario 5 came out, people were very excited. I ran into an old friend of mine whose gaming tastes are “Old consoles were awesome but all this 3d stuff ruined gaming” and he is referring to Nintendo franchises. When I spoke to him, he said, “When Mario 5 came out, I played the hell out of that game! But I tried Mario Galaxy 2 and…” his voice winced. “It just isn’t the same.” The passion this gamer had, ignited by Mario 5, was gone after playing Galaxy 2.
Passionate customers are like a fire burning. There was intense passion and advocacy behind the Wii in the early days because the Wii was moving AWAY from the Industry type games and toward ‘REVOLUTION’. Everyone loved the first taste of THE REVOLUTION and wanted more. When Nintendo put out Wii Music and Gamecube games (like Animal Crossing Wii which doesn’t really feel new), it was like Nintendo dumped a bucket of cold water on that fire. All that was left was burning embers. The fall in sales was so fast that Nintendo had no idea what was happening. From 2008, when the Wii was SOLD OUT, just a year later Nintendo was furiously cutting the price on the Wii and even that didn’t make a difference. Wii Fit Plus came out and kept sales of the Balance Board going. Wii Sports Plus also helped. But sales didn’t really jump. Then came out Mario 5.
All of a sudden, a huge fire seemed lit. Wii was, suddenly, sold out yet again.
When Galaxy 2 came out, people remarked that “Galaxy 2 is taking away sales from Mario 5.” This wasn’t true as Galaxy 2 wasn’t selling anything differently from Galaxy 1 (plus Mario 5 had already moved huge numbers). But it does appear the ‘fire’ that was ignited by Mario 5 was extinguished.
You could make the interpretation that Wii sales, for 2010, declined after Galaxy 2 was released. Now why would people who were buying the Wii for Mario 5 disappear (if they did)?
Perhaps we must be open to the possibility that 3d Mario and 2d Mario cannot co-exist on a console. The Wii sold huge numbers based on the direction people thought Nintendo was going. When Nintendo revealed they had no interest in ‘Revolution’, Wii sales rapidly declined. With Mario 5, they went back up. And then they declined after Galaxy 2 came out. Could people have thought Nintendo was going to move a certain direction with gaming when Mario 5 came out but the energy died when Nintendo came out with yet another Gamecube-esque game?
I disagree with Iwata’s interpretation of the decline in gaming market to be due to mere ‘disinterest’. I believe it is a ‘boycott’ attitude among consumers. They dislike the direction gaming is going (which is being driven by the Industry). People like myself did not buy the Gamecube or other consoles because of ‘disinterest’ but due to the general direction gaming was going. This is why if a 2d Mario was on the Gamecube, I would be tempted to get it, but the entire library and Nintendo’s clear direction for their main franchises would push me away.
Why did people not buy the Virtual Boy? Was it due to just ‘disinterest’? Or was there a broader feeling that they didn’t like the direction of gaming that console heralded? I believe it was the latter.
Nintendo’s “Revolution” of the Wii was seen by the market as defiance of the current direction gaming has been evolving. This tapped into a huge amount of people.
No, a single 2d Mario game will not sell a console forever. The reason why I harp on 2d Mario is because it represents what gaming actually is and what gaming ought to be. It is a signpost that points to the correct direction gaming should take.
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