Updating now whilst listening to the NVC podcast.

Matt says that Konami are doing no advertising or marketing for Silent Hill, despite it being a good game. When will publishers learn? He has completed it 1 and a half times and the review is up on IGN today/tommorrow.

He also says the game is 6 and a half hours long. But there are incentive to replay it. Psyche profile thing.

gamingeek said:

Ravenprose said:

Why spend money advertising third-party Wii games when third-party Wii games don't sell? Konami is doing the right thing!

Then again, since third-party Wii games don't sell, then why even bother making third-party Wii games in the first place? D'oh!

They dont advertise the games, then complain when they don't sell. It's like releasing Modern Warfare two years late with no advertising and no screens and no previews and then complaining if it sells 1k copies.

EA did not advertise Dead Space Extraction. I'd like to see a publisher make a triple A game with the same resources behind it and marketing spend as they would put on a HD title and then see the results.

There was an article I read about 6 months ago or so about how 3rd parties were failing to advertise and ultimately don't sell games. The article referred to the Wii being a Mass Media device, rather than just a gaming console and thus needed mass media advertising.  It was basically a different way of saying a large chunk of the Wii's audience is a casual audience that gets their information from TV rather than game reviews and websites.

It's not a coincidence that the games like Raving Rabbids, Mario and Sonic and the Special Olympics, and most of Nintendo's games have commercials and ultimately sell pretty well. Even just looking at Nintendo's own games, it's not a coincidence that one of the few games that Nintendo didn't advertise - Excitebots - sold like crap.  

Dvader said:

What the hell do they mean they fixed all the issues with PH. The problem with PH is that it was PH. This game needs to have nothing in common with PH to be fixed.

Watch the video review, it even says that the dungeons rival the complexity of older games.

EA on WIi

Riccitiello began by clarifying his position on the Wii. Ultimately, he's still happy with his company's success on the platform. “I'm not as negative on it [as you might think], but I tend to be a little less sugar coated in our earnings calls, so if you stack up my language against some of our competitors' CEOs it can come across that way because I did tell people that the Wii business was coming in below expectations. But let's be realistic about what really happened for EA on Wii this year. Our year-to-date Wii revenues have doubled versus last year; we have a 19% share. I don't think any third party publisher has a share higher than that on any platform... I'd have to double check that; we're in the 20s on 360/PS3 and Activision may be up there on one of those platforms. But Wii is a very successful third-party platform for EA," he said.

He then defended EA's own Wii failures, noting that publishers (EA included) are still figuring the system out. "I think it's also fair to say that people are still grappling with it. I think Dead Space Extraction was one of the best pieces of software built on the platform and it did not perform well. It's a strong IP but for some reason it did not resonate in a way that brought consumers to the store to buy it. And Madden hasn't performed to my expectations so far this year, even though it's a fabulous piece of software. EA Sports Active and our Hasbro stuff have done really, really well. So you start to create a certain perception in your mind of the type of consumer that works on the Wii, that's a little different, doesn't have the core gamer in mind, etc. But there are an awful lot of core gamers that have this platform and there are oftentimes some surprising breakthroughs that feel pretty core."

He added, "I think the Wii is confounding to people because it's so darn big and successful. Even this year, what most people perceive as a down year, they're going to sell just in the Western markets somewhere in the mid-teens of millions of hardware units, which is a blow-away success for a console. And yet it's lower than they (and we) originally thought. But that's a little bit like saying they won the Super Bowl by a smaller point spread."

The bottom line would appear to be that catering to and marketing to that Wii audience is going to remain a challenge for publishers. As Riccitiello points out, this has always been somewhat true for Nintendo consoles, but we think the problem has been exacerbated on the Wii.

Riccitiello continued, "Did I think Dead Space and Madden were going to succeed on the platform? Yes, and I believe to this day that anyone who picks up those products will have a good entertainment experience that's worth more than we charge for. They look great, they play great, and are every bit what a hit should be and they didn't resonate. And I'm very proud of the teams that built them. So I think we have continued learning to do with the way people interact with that piece of hardware, and how you market to that consumer. I think, in general, publishers have had trouble finding sustained success and consistent understanding of what makes a success on Nintendo platforms historically because they're so oriented towards first-party content like Mario and Zelda. So I think the Wii is going to be an evolving picture [for third parties]."

Australia vs Germany.

Brazil vs Portugal

Dvader vs Edgecrusher.

Let the balls commence!

Iga_Bobovic said:

Dvader said:

Who gives a fuck vs couldn't give three shits.

Stop lying to yourself.  

I will watch probably 10 minutes of world cup like I did last year and that was basically the last ten minutes of the finals. (got to see an awesome head butt!) But it would make me smile if the US beats England just cause they care so much and we care so little, it would be great.