9 replies to this topic

[Epic Kirby]

My brother is a sony fanboy and I often tease him about the Wii's massive worldwide sales but he often brings up how Nintendo 'sold out' to the casual markets when they brought out the Wii and the way they market the DS.

We do get a lot of hardcore 1st party titles from our best franchises, Zelda, Mario, Metroid and Kirby of course . But we do get a lot of shovelware titles and casual market titles, brain training, brain academy, Wii sports, cooking mama, face training, style boutique, Peppa pig (the list goes on). You would never see Peppa Pig on 360

As much as I love Nintendo I did feel a teeny weeny little bit let down, sometimes seething in envy shaking my head to face training while PS3 and 360 fans play Fable, Halo, Mass Effect, FF, Bioshock. 360 and PS3 have less sales because they make games that their fans however small a number, would want to play instead of focusing on casual audiences.

Nintendo is trying to rectify this with the 3DS and now it seems PS3 and XBOX are jumping to the casual train to get more sales (Kinect and Move).

Doany Nintendo fans feel betrayed by this or do you just see it as Nintendo trying to reach more audiences, even if it stretches the allegience of their old audience?

[Wertville]

It's not Nintendo's fault, it's 3rd party developers' fault.
Nintendo makes plenty of 'Hardcore'(What a foolish word) games, all the shovelware is made by 3rd parties.

[rant]The worst of the bunch is Namco Bandai. They go as far as releasing a game... Then releasing a remake of the game a year later on PS3 with better everything! They've done that to Microsoft, too! I'm not buying Tales of Graces just for that! [/rant]

[Feld0]

I don't think Nintendo's letting the hardcore down at all. It really depends on what you classify as "hardcore," but Nintendo has put out an enormous list of excellent first-party titles, from Zelda to Metroid to Kirby to Mario. Their hardcore games usually don't receive as great a marketing budget because hardcore gamers don't exactly need the franchises they love advertised to them all the time.

And Wertville's right - it's really the third-parties that are making all the shovelware. Nintendo doesn't actually go as crazy out with casual games as you might think - and those that they do make are usually quality experiences nonetheless, if a bit simpler and shorter than Mario's galactic adventures, or Link's quest to slay Ganondorf.

[Gamer]

If you mean "Hardcore" as a hard game, then yes, probably. I beat the Wii Mario games easily. I can barley beat Super Mario Bros.! (The NES Version.)

If you mean "Hardcore" as having popular games and good ones, the heck no! Mario Galaxy 2, New Mario Bros. Wii?

[Roy]

All the hardcore are still getting their games.

[Goose74]

No i don´t think that Nintendo left the core Audience standing in the rain. First of all there are more than one sides to this story.

1. The definition of a Hardcore or core gamer/game today. What is a core game? Some would say Call of Duty or some other Shooter and some would say all the Mario games. So, which one is right? i would say that it has nothing to do with the games instead it has to do something with the player. If you play a lot of games and don´t mind about gettin a game which is hard to complete than i think you are a core player. See my point i guess.

2. 3rd partys had a hard way on Wii because of the new direction the Wii taught them. Before the Wii the definition of a gamer was easy and they know how to make a good game. With the Wii and its gathering of a new audience the easy definition of a player was not so easy anymore. Thats one point why you have so many games that don´t do well on Wii. Second is a problem of their own. Gettin a Wii Version of a game later on the market than the HD Versions is utter BS. Most Wii gamer have a HD-Console too so they will buy the HD-Version instead waiting half a year for the Wii-Version. So the publisher don´t have to cry why the later released versions don´t sell (but they put all the problems on the Wii as a platform).
Also it is a reality that most games don´t look so good because most publishers won´t put much effort into a good programmed version for Wii. Wii GPU has much different technic to work than the HD-Versions and most producers an programmers just try to port and than they get bad results. You can see with The Conduit that if a publisher knows the system and its specials and flaws you can get superb looking games.

3. This is the biggest problem of the Wii. The Nintendo gamers. (don´t hit me before you read the rest )
Most gamers allways asked and cried for more core games and some content for more mature gamers. 3rd partys put some very excellent games on the market (Mad Word, Dead Space Extraction, Red Steel 2, Monster Hunter ...) to feed the gamers. But what happend next? Most of the core base won´t buy the really good titles. So if i were a publisher and i would see that Nintendo games sells like hot cakes and my own good titles (good review score and good critics) won´t sell than i also would have my problems with giving the core guys that always cried for those games much credibility. If you want more core games than you have to buy the core games that are out so the publishers know there is a market for it. So we as gamers have to get real and think about it if we also have a big pie of the cake in gettin the Wii nearer to shovelware.

But it will all be good. As we see with the 3DS Nintendo is gettin back to the roots (core gaming) and now all the publishers will get all the Wii shovelware games to Kinect and Move (this is what happend right now). Microsoft an Sony will have the same Problem with the Casuals as Nintendo had before.

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards.

Goose74

[Roy]

People seem to get distracted by all the shovelware they see on TV etc, and start to judge nintendo because of that.
However, the hardcore games are still being released, but the sheer amount of shovelware is disappointing.
For example, if there was a pile of gold, it would be great.
However, if said pile of gold was covered in manure, then people would think it was bad, even though the gold was still all there.
Yeah pretty odd metaphor IMHO.

[dannyboy]

I honestly think the wii games are getting quite easy and i can complete them in a few days so I would like it if they made a harder and longer game but not over hard cause that's just as bad

[Wertville]

You want a Wii game that will last you more than a few hours?

Get Rune Factory Frontier.

I beat the game 138 hours. Still lots of bonus content.

[Waller]

I don't think so, 360 and PS3 get fable, Bioshock, etc. But Wii gets Mario, Zelda, Kirby and much more first party titles.
So no, hardcore fans get lots of hardcore games on the Wii, you just have to look for them.