While Brain Age did sell 19 million copies, that's not quite as much as Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. wound up pushing. The DS sold well because of the Mario games, Brain Age, and Nintendogs. Though I would say that if you drop Brain Age and Nintendogs the DS would still sell obnoxiously well due to the Mario games.
You could have said the exact same thing last year about Kid Icarus and now it is one of the most anticipated titles for the 3DS.
Anticipated by who? People on forums and the press? They aren't a good indicator of the general public's interest. I'm betting Kid Icarus will sell a tenth of the figures that a Mario or Zelda game will pull for the 3DS.
Have you seen the trailer of Kid Icarus in 3D (i.e. on the 3DS)? The game is fucking beautiful. If Nintendo promotes it right Kid Icarus could do well, especially if the online functionality is online and fun.
I liked Kid Icarus on the NES but I'm not going to buy into the hype that the 3DS game will be that amazing. We'll see when it comes out but I think people are letting hype and excitement cloud their vision. Also I recall seeing some video or stills from Kid Icarus that seemed to look very good and then others that didn't look so good. So I'm not sure what the deal is there, but the graphics don't need to be top notch as whether or not the game is fun to play matters most.
And neither graphics nor gameplay matter when it comes to sales figures... The name matters, and since it's a game on a Nintendo console not called Mario or Zelda, it won't sell nearly as much a game with Mario's face on the cover.
Its like we're back in the early 80s with tons of casual atari 2600 games being sold to people who play games once with family during a holiday and thats it. Microsoft especially has abandoned catering to the hardcore market. As long as they can come up with one shooter a year they feel we're taken care of. Whats going to happen is that gamers are going to leave the 360 just as with what happened to the wii. The casual market can never sustain a gaming console. I think Nintendo showed, even with demos from other systems. that they are thinking about real adult gaming now. Its funny that the one thing everyone wanted from nintendo, a dual core modern SNES, they'll never give us. I think they just don't want to invest in state of the art hardware and rely on control gimmicks to compete. They don't want to let go of even a fraction of the casual market who love the gimmicks.
That's hardly fair. Being a Nintendo gamer does not make one blind to graphics and gameplay. The reason that 3rd party/non-franchise games don't sell well is because no 3rd party can match the quality of Nintendo EAD and other 1st and 2nd party dev groups. When I had my Gamecube, the 1st and 2nd party games were the only ones worth playing. Even major 3rd parties(such as EA) made terrible games. They lacked the visual quality, depth and story of any Nintendo made title. I became tired of wasting my money on games that sucked. So, I started buying only games that were Nintendo developed and produced. I have yet to be disappointed. (Actually, TP on the Gamecube sucked at first, but it got better with time. I wasn't too fond of SSBM when I first got it, either. ) However, you are a fanboy for some Microsoft or Sony. Your arguments are invalid. I also have a rule: if any character in the game carries a gun or any character in the game bleeds, I won't play the games. That rules out about 90% of popular titles on the Xbox and PSthree. I'm a guy in my early 20's. I'm the target market for these games, I just don't enjoy them.
lol. I'm a fanboy for nobody, except maybe Treasure and pre-death-of-DC Sega. This isn't about "Nintendo gamers" or anything, it's about the general public, and the fact is that Nintendo IPs outside of Mario, Zelda and the casual games on Wii and DS don't sell all that well, whether it's due to bad marketing or whatever. edit: I guess you could add Donkey Kong and Animal Crossing to that list, but more obscure franchises like Punch-Out, Excite____ and even Metroid Prime have sold very badly.
Define "very badly": Punch-Out has sold 1.22 million worldwide (and I wouldn't really call Punch-Out "obscure" anyways) Metroid Prime 3 sold 1.59 million worldwide, and the series has sold 7.29 million to date. Sure, these numbers are bad if compared to Mario Kart or NSMB, but find me a game whose sales aren't bad when compared to those games.
And Pokemon, DQIX, the Zelda titles, etc. That system was definitely a multi-trick pony if there ever was one, sales-wise. I still want a Pikmin game on the 3DS...
I'm pretty satisfied with what Nintendo discussed as far as software for 3DS. Luigi's Mansion 2 looks pretty f-ing awesome. Star Fox 64 3D is apparently coming out in September, which I am very much looking forward to. Super Mario looks kinda weird - like an isometric view of a 2D Super Mario game. Sort of like a Sonic 3D Blast version of Mario. Could be cool, though. That new Kirby Wii game also looks really pretty. Sound effects just like the SNES games.
I think it's pretty safe to say MP3 flopped, since the original MP sold about twice as many copies, and MP2 sold only about 300k less, and this was on the GC, which had a hell of lot smaller install base than the Wii. Plus, MP3 came out at the height of Wii hype and still didn't sell. MP3 could be considered one of those "adult" games Nintendo is apparently trying to move towards...hmm....
Also, I noticed something funny in the Nintendo presentation video. There's one part where the camera is up next to the orchestra. You can see a trumpet player or something talking to another player. You see the one guy make this "awww... yeah..." face. He nods his head and makes a sort of growling look and you can see him mouth "yeah." Gives you the impression that they were talking about something censorable.
Exactly. All I'm seeing in this thread is a pervasive inability to deal with the fact that the big corporations in gaming are becoming more mainstream as the years go by. Which is fine, you know, have a moan if you want. Don't pretend like everyone's about to go bankrupt and gaming as a whole is going to die, though, that's just daft. Someone said Microsoft no longer cater to the "hardcore", which... I don't really know how to approach that, maybe our definitions differ. What the industry term "core" gamers are going to be the lifeblood for Microsoft and Sony for years to come, especially since the casual crowd are increasingly getting their games on their smartphones, Facebook etc.
As a hardcore Saturn fan I hate to admit this, but the Xbox360 really is the best console ever for 2D shooter fans.
People saying that MS is neglecting the hardcore market are probably just confused cause they are trying to promote the Kinect and other casual features. But this doesn't mean that hardcore games aren't still coming out on 360. They are still coming out regularly. But they don't have to promote them on their own, the developers themselves do that. I guess MS could make more of an effort to try to get exclusive releases to give the impression they care more about hardcore gamers but that really doesn't help them.
