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Nintendo discontinues three more Wii titles
Wario Land Shake, Mario Strikers Charged, Battalion Wars 2
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*crickets*
I actually put some of the blame on the game's US performance on its publisher X-Seed. These guys bring over some of the greatest games and they all end up selling very poorly. It's not just a case of the games selling poorly due to the nature of the games. These guys just can't market themselves out of a paper bag. Just look at this list from the past 2 years:
Retro Game Challenge
Half Minute Hero
Little King's Story
Rune Factory: Frontier
Avalon Code
It's like a greatest hits of games no one ever played. You'd think at least one of these games should have broken out or at least been respectable. Nope. And sadly the trend probably won't change with their upcoming games:
The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces
Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon
Ragnarok Online DS
Why the hell can't these guys take out a freaking commercial or do some decent advertising? If I were a developer I'd stay away from these guys. They know how to doom a good game.
Well that and they delayed LKS for the NA launch. Which is weird the EU version has more languages, why would the NA localization last longer? I think that is one of the reasons Muramasa was taken away from X-seed and given to Ignition.
You know you want it.
WTF? The PS3 one looks like an AK-47 with a scope, the Wii one looks like..I don't know.
Whi would you want a sniper scope on an assault weapon with shitty long range performance?
Edit: And you have an ironsight blocking the scope anyway! *facepalm*
Probably. And apparently it paid off using Ignition as a publisher. Vanillaware was suppsedly happy with the game's sales. And that delay is also another good reason for the LKS' notsogood sales. Originally it was set for a May or April launch if I recall, with nothing else too high profile around it. Then they push it back so that it launches 5 days before Wii Sports Resort. . . brilliant timing X-Seed. Nicely done.
But I know for a fact that Mexican prostitutes are very cheap, so are you saying the HDD are also very cheap? And if they are, why are you not buying them? I am confused.
I had an email exchange with one of the (few) guys at XSeed about their marketing and it basically comes down to money. They don't have any. They are trying to build a reputation on the quality of their titles. They are open for suggestions as to how to improve their marketing though.
They do a substantial amount of print advertising in the US in gaming publications, but they need some help. The ad for Retro made it look like it was a compilation, and the naming of Half-Minute Hero sets up all sorts of misconceptions about the value of the game (it is an awesome game incidentally, but the title makes you think you'll be paying full price for a 30 second flash game).
Xseed has stuck in there for a long time bringing games to the US that the major publishers would not, they deserve the support of the core community, I hope they don't go the way of Working Designs.
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RE5 controls - okay so there is an RE4 controls mode? I'll certainly switch to that then. RTFM on me.
My bad.
Let's just keep it at "they're really expensive", without any analogies of carnal nature.
Holy shit I posted two news stories. Been a while since I moved my lazy ass for the improvement of the community. Let's just hope I didn't duplicate anything.
Money certainly help make things easier, no question about that and I get that they're trying to become the new Atlus by releasing good quality niche games. But they're still making too many big mistakes. EVERYTHING about Retro Game Challenge from the ad to the box art was handled wrong. Plus I don't think they're doing enough on the guerilla marketing side of things. If you don't have the money for TV and big print ads, do something small and usual. Hell just dressing a few cosplay chicks and putting them on a webcam, and doing a few give-a-ways can get you a ton of attention.
Besides that, there's so many simple things that companies don't seem to do like blogging, PR releases and media kits. I'm half tempted to start up a little consulting business to just teach small publishers the basics of marketing because so many times it seems like they just ignore it.
^Well drop them an e-mail, I'm sure they'd be interested.
They do seem to have good press contacts, which was helped by including half of them in RGC
Play gives them some press (but then Casey Loe and Dave Halverson wrote the localization for RGC).
Retro Game Challenge - Heard its good but obscure DS game
Half Minute Hero - Is this downloadable only or something, PSP?
Little King's Story - yeah yeah I know I should get it, but it was never going to sell
Rune Factory: Frontier - What
Avalon Code - who?
The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces - WTF
Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon - Is this that woman weirdo game
Ragnarok Online DS - An online DS game...
They make niche games, they are never going to sell as good as people want them too.
NOOOO...!!!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN ? ! ?
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN ? ! ?
DOES THAT SAY CHARACTER... COUNT-D O W N... ? ? ?
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Now Playing: Golden Sun Dark Dawn, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and DKC Returns
^That's the bottom line. If your differentiator is quirk, you ain't going to be Activision.
MS: "There's no need to launch a new Xbox"
-- they are right, and I for one am happy that these console cycles are longer. Who do you think will jump first Sony or Nintendo? I'm guessing Ninty.
I actually emailed someone there about their Skycrawlers cover. I couldn't understand why they didn't have or couldn't use any of the movie resources. She/he actually responded - was very pleasant, and mentioned trouble getting artwork to use but also mistook me for someone that just wanted the anime cover. I could understand them not wanting to use the anime cover (even though I do like it) but what they went with instead was terrible considering the great artwork that should be at their disposal. Hell, get someone in Japan to take some closeups of the plane that they built for promo purposes. They need help promoting their quality product for sure.