Remember when Nintendo of America famously balked on the original Xenoblade, eventually localizing it only after Nintendo of Europe “took the plunge” for them? It turns out Xenoblade Chronicles was one of the best JRPGs of last gen, sold enough to become a modest success despite its GameStop exclusive status, and probably would have sold more if it had been localized before the game was pirated to an insane degree.
Now there's a sequel. Xenoblade is still a relatively new IP, and its latest entry, Xenoblade Chronicles X, features the largest world ever put onto a Nintendo console, must have cost an unusually large amount of money for a Nintendo game, and was highly anticipated after its initial reveal. It's a AAA Nintendo game, a spiritual successor to one of the best JRPGs of all time, and best of all? We've known it was coming to the West from day one.
We thought they had learned. Nintendo of America recently put a lot of muscle into pushing new IP Splatoon, which many online thought would bomb, and it paid off gloriously. The game was a smash hit, and added a strong new IP to their repertoire. It even covered a genre Nintendo hasn't been a force in since GoldenEye 007. So when Nintendo's big Black Friday game got delayed, they needed something to fill the spot. It was the perfect time to put the Xenoblade Chronicles X localization on the fast track and show this IP the support it deserves as one of the releases fans have wanted most, after Zelda Wii U.
Except Nintendo of America didn't do that. Instead of trying to establish the Xenoblade IP as a Nintendo staple and give it a push on the biggest sales week of the year, they backed Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash. A game we know almost nothing about outside of some early, very boring gameplay footage. A game in a spin-off franchise that's faltering in sales and quality, and that may not even have online play. Could these fears be allieviated in the future? Sure, but it doesn't change the fact that Nintendo spent a fortune acquiring a developer that makes great JRPGs, gave them a ton of money to make a massive, open world JRPG with online multiplayer, then just gave up on trying to really sell it.
It's not like sci-fi has reached a new height of popularity in Western pop culture at the moment or anything. Who would want that nerd crap, right? No, bland looking tennis games, that seem to offer less than their handheld counterparts, are what the people want now. It's not like Nintendo could put some back into pushing Xenoblade Chronicles X and try to establish a new franchise that people want more of, in a genre and setting they're woefully lacking in. Crazy talk is what that is.
That's not the only failure of Nintendo of America's horrible marketing this season, though. Fatal Frame 5: Maiden of Black Water is getting a super bum deal. I don't know if you follow gaming trends too well, but horror games are sort of the 'in' thing this past year. The Silent Hills cancellation seems to have only fueled the resurgence of the genre.
In the past year: Five Nights at Freddie's has become an internet phenomenon. Resident Evil REmake HD became Capcom's fastest selling digital release, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 was a hit (and the best RE game since RE4), and Capcom announced their plans for the Resident Evil 2 Remake fans have been clamoring about for over a decade. Soma has been a success, and Allison Road has taken the place of Konami's doomed Silent Hills. Oh, and Until Dawn was freaking awesome and turned a tidy little profit, already setting the wheels in motion for a sequel.
With all of this hype for the horror genre, and the appropriateness of the season, you'd think Nintendo would be sitting pretty. The genre's hot, the season's perfect, and Fatal Frame 5: Maiden of Black Water is by all accounts a solid, scary game.
Yet Nintendo of America has relinquished it to being an e-Shop exclusive title. No physical release here, just a 20gig download-only title on a system that only comes with 32 gigs, at best, before you take into account vital system information. No notable advertising to speak of either. The ending to their “Extremely Spoopy” trailer may as well just be Nintendo drowning protagonist Yuri Kozukata in her tub, because that's what Nintendo of America has done to this game.
Now some of you Nintendo defenders may point out that both of these games have been released in Japan for a long time now, and neither was particularly impressive in the sales department. Fair enough, but most games sell terribly in Japan because of their cultural and social-economic problems strangling the life out of almost all console releases. Japanese sales are a terrible, absolutely awful indicator of a console videogame's global success.
Nintendo of America should take a page from Activision and learn to advertise their damn games. Just look at this excerpt from Polygon's interview with former Call of Duty director Dave Anthony:
“When we have a new product that has elements we're not sure how people will respond to, we market it," he said. "We market it as much as we can, so that whether people like it or not, we essentially brainwash them into liking it before it actually comes out.”
It works too, just look at how mediocre games like Watch_Dogs break new IP sales records, selling 4 million copies in a week. It's proof that advertising works, and it works to a frightening degree. I generally find myself disgusted with Activision's business practices, so it feels weird for me to say this, but Nintendo of America needs to steal a page from Activision's playbook.
That's a pipe dream, though. Nintendo can't even get out of their own way with the free advertising that comes from LPs, a huge source of free exposure, and they didn't learn their lesson after the success of Splatoon. Like a dog that's been conditioned the wrong way, Nintendo keeps learning the wrong lessons from its experiences.
If I were a third party developer, especially one that needed a publisher's help to push a game, this treatment for Non-Mario/Zelda/Pokemon titles sure as hell isn't what I'd want to see in a business partner.
