Nintendo thinking about Other M's lack of sales

KingBroly

KingBroly

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http://kotaku.com/5688617/nintendo-trying-to-figure-out-what-went-wrong-with-newest-metroid

- Poorly told/written story
- Questionable decisions that lead to the degrading of the Protagonists' character
- Lack of polish in almost every area
- Lack of real Metroid music
- Lack of path-finding
- Extremely linear

Just to name a few. On the bright side, nearly half a million sold in the states so far, so I doubt they'll can the series. But him saying they haven't figured out WHY a story driven Metroid game didn't sell well because the story is told/written poorly makes me want to go 'READ THE INTERNET'
 
That article mentions that Reggie is aware of the story criticisms though. He even mentions having read about the backlash towards Samus' portrayal.

Seems like he danced around it a bit just to avoid disrespecting Sakamoto's team though. Thankfully both sides seem to be aware the game didn't exactly please fans and mentioned they are open to any changes they could bring to a potential sequel.
 
It also has a stupid name.

I'm convinced that bad names and box art are responsible for, like, a bajillion lost sales for otherwise good-to-great games.
 
[quote name='Broken Scout']That article mentions that Reggie is aware of the story criticisms though. He even mentions having read about the backlash towards Samus' portrayal.

Seems like he danced around it a bit just to avoid disrespecting Sakamoto's team though. Thankfully both sides seem to be aware the game didn't exactly please fans and mentioned they are open to any changes they could bring to a potential sequel.[/QUOTE]

Personally, I think there's a ton of strong subtext going on in that interview, but perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Mainly about what they're going to do with Other M and Sakamoto after the holidays. I can understand Reggie wanting to save face, but to say its' unclear as to why it's not selling, it's pretty obvious why I won't recommend it to friends.

The problem with the story and Samus' portrayal is that Sakamoto wrote it as if Samus were a woman first, then a hero; instead of a hero first, who happens to be a woman^. He didn't write the character or the story with care and respect as anyone who's seen it can tell you. There are many instances where Samus is written into situations that are degrading to her character
The opening, The Ridley scene, the Hell run, Sector Zero scene
, sometimes due to a lack of explanation and/or critical thinking.

^ -
What I mean by this is that if you're going to introduce background information, explain to me how her story of being a hero began. That's important knowledge. Instead, we get a horrifying scene that makes Samus out to be a coward even though there is important information behind that. We also get a scene where she's made out to be a whining child towards someone who just SHOT HER IN THE BACK WITH NO PROVOCATION. These are two behind the tool-shed, bullet in the back of the head moments.
 
I don't really "get" how the opening is degrading to her. Many have made that an issue, but I just saw it as her deferring to someone whom she respects. Now, I haven't gotten that far into the game, so I don't know if there are further things that push it over the top, but the opening isn't a problem for me.

Course, many made a big deal out of it in reviews, which perhaps hurt sales. It could also be the control scheme, which many didn't embrace. Lots of risky elements in this title.
 
After all of the cookie cutter Mario and Zelda titles over 20+ years I'm glad Nintendo decided to take a risk with this game.

I'm not one of those who complain about character progression, in fact I'm all for it, as long as it's in service to the story and more importantly the game.

I'm happy we finally get a current day update to Metroid on a console (only took'em 16 years) and they did it right (as far as I'm concerned)

The only issue with Metroid was the casuals didn't embrace it, the core (non-metroid fan) community ignored it since it was a Wii title, and the only people highly interested were the Metroid fanbase and that probably made maybe 90% or more of the sales up right there.

This is a game that would have sold better 3 years ago, bar none.

/sarcasm- "maybe they should have packed something like the vitality sensor in with the game for it to sell better" :roll: /end sarcasm

I don't know if Nintendo is paying attention but the lack of 3rd party core titles (and their sales) have been slipping for the past few years and now its pervaded its way into the 1st party titles.

I think I've said before the trinity of Nintendo used to be Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Well now it's Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon.

That small gap of 16 years I mentioned, well a lot of gamers who were born in that time period without playing a
"new" Metroid title and have no special affection for the game like us "dinosaurs" :lol: who've been playing it since the first one.

I'll bet if I asked my 12 year old nephew what he thinks of Metroid, the first thing he'd ask is, What's a Metroid? :cry:

And there's Reggie's answer in a nutshell...
 
Well, when you do the following in this order, you deserve to be heavily criticized:

- Lay the series dormant for 8 years after delivering one of the best games of all time
- Release fantastic games like Fusion, Zero Mission and the Prime Trilogy to bring good faith back to the series
- Then release a game that says 'no, she wasn't a strong independent woman during these games except Fusion' (The last game in the timeline currently) and takes out most of what is Metroid the series it is known for

You deserve to be heavily criticized.
 
[quote name='Corvin']If they decide to forge ahead with a sequel I only have two words for them: Classic Controller.[/QUOTE]

I can do it in one: Nunchuck

I can also do it by removing another word: Sakamoto
 
Bouncing off of what someone said earlier, I think there are two ways to kill a franchise. Release too many games in a short period of time, or release too few games over too long a period of time.
 
I think uncle5555 nailed it. The game is solid (not the best game ever, nor the worst), but the demographic who buys that type of game is no longer playing the Wii. If this game came out in 2007-2008, it would have sold great.
 
[quote name='KingBroly']When I say the opening I mean
the baby the baby the baby the baby
[/QUOTE]

You'd have to be a hard-core bastard not to be affected in some way by those events, male or female.

In any case, I doubt that was a big reason, because the reviewers didn't focus on that. They focused on her not being the typical anti-authority action hero. Never mind that as a character that she was mostly a blank slate.

I also agree with Uncle that the hard core gamer has mostly abandoned the console.
 
[quote name='iKilledChewbacca']Maybe the fact that is sucked..... ?[/QUOTE]
I don't think the game sucked. Compared to other 1st party Wii games this year though, yeah, it wasn't as great.

The game wasn't horrible. It just had too many little problems that combined to keep the game from being a quality title.

I never did finish the game (I intend to do so soon), but from what I played my biggest fuss was the controls. It isn't my Wii remote either. I just don't think that going into first person mode should be frustrating. More often than not, I would go into FP mode, and my remote would suddenly be picked up as being a good distance to the right or left of the center, causing the screen to move violently in that direction and throwing me off.

I don't know how many times I rage-quit that game just because the controls pissed me off.
 
I liked the game a lot. I've never played any other Metroid games, but still - I found the game addicting and fun. I rarely play games through to completion and... well I haven't quite finished the epilogue and I stopped playing after I got to that final boss and died a bunch of times, but I will get back to it at some point. I pretty thoroughly enjoyed the game. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun. That's enough for me.
 
[quote name='TheLongshot']
You'd have to be a hard-core bastard not to be affected in some way by those events, male or female.

In any case, I doubt that was a big reason, because the reviewers didn't focus on that. They focused on her not being the typical anti-authority action hero. Never mind that as a character that she was mostly a blank slate.

I also agree with Uncle that the hard core gamer has mostly abandoned the console.[/QUOTE]

Well, yes, I can get that she'd be broken up over it, but...EIGHT TIMES in the opening cutscene? That's really creepy. I mean, hopefully Samus realizes that her maternal instincts got a whole bunch of people killed, right? RIGHT? If you tell me that, I become really interested in the character really quick because you twist the series a little bit.

Samus had a character and it'd be wrong to assume otherwise. Retro did a fantastic job mining her character through mystery in the Primes. You saw her as awesome, strong, compassionate, rash, sympathetic, etc. Everything you saw in those games are in Other M, but are done with outlandish actions instead of quiet, subtle things. Her having a tragic past is nothing new either. Her being reserved not so new either. Her going bananas emotionally a couple of times are new, especially when one scene MAKES NO SENSE and isn't explained at all.
 
[quote name='KingBroly']Well, yes, I can get that she'd be broken up over it, but...EIGHT TIMES in the opening cutscene? That's really creepy. I mean, hopefully Samus realizes that her maternal instincts got a whole bunch of people killed, right? RIGHT? If you tell me that, I become really interested in the character really quick because you twist the series a little bit.[/QUOTE]

Are you talking about the beginning of Super Metroid? If so, that doesn't really come across as "maternal instincts" to drop off a child at a laboratory to see if scientists can exploit it. Only those who are making a cold (but maybe rational) decision are going to go the other way and say that the creature must die for the good of all. Then again, Metroids weren't the real bad guys, just those who were exploiting them.

But, it is possible that the baby Metroid's actions crystalized some emotions in Samus, something that she might not have been equiped to deal with given her unusual upbringing.

Samus had a character and it'd be wrong to assume otherwise. Retro did a fantastic job mining her character through mystery in the Primes. You saw her as awesome, strong, compassionate, rash, sympathetic, etc. Everything you saw in those games are in Other M, but are done with outlandish actions instead of quiet, subtle things. Her having a tragic past is nothing new either. Her being reserved not so new either. Her going bananas emotionally a couple of times are new, especially when one scene MAKES NO SENSE and isn't explained at all.
Click to expand...

Course, Prime takes place before any of this. In retrospect, it seems Nintendo did this on purpose because they had plans to do something with the events of Metroid 2/Super Metroid and didn't want an outside studio mucking with that.

As I said, I'm not that far into Other M, so I don't know if there are other things that throw a monkey wrench into past events. But, I don't think any of that has much correlation to the sales of the title, since most of the issues discussed in reviews (which is where most gamers are going to evaluate the worth of whether or not to purchase a game) were things that someone with a short amount of time to play the game is going to come to conclusions with, and that is the opening cinematics and the gameplay early in the game.
 
What I'm saying is that her actions at the end of Metroid II got a whole bunch of people killed. You're telling me that she would be less broken up about killing a whole bunch of people because of her actions than a baby Metroid that saved her? Or at least equally as concerned?

Past events
Metroid II and Super are the only ones touched upon
. As far as I'm concerned the story is a slap in the face to the rest of the franchise, and there's one scene that does it. You'll know it when you see it.
 
Look at the games which Team Ninja has made and their portrayals of women therein. Did people really think that they'd treat Samus with respect and reverence? Hell, I'm surprised that Other M doesn't have a bouncing breasts mode toggle in the options menu.

Ultimately it's Nintendo's fault and it's not like Team Ninja can't produce solid gameplay but holy hell don't expect a strong female lead out of them ever!

Samus should have been Ellen Ripley but Team Ninja only hands-out bad porn actresses.
 
[quote name='Fell Open Ian']Look at the games which Team Ninja has made and their portrayals of women therein. Did people really think that they'd treat Samus with respect and reverence? Hell, I'm surprised that Other M doesn't have a bouncing breasts mode toggle in the options menu.

Ultimately it's Nintendo's fault and it's not like Team Ninja can't produce solid gameplay but holy hell don't expect a strong female lead out of them ever!

Samus should have been Ellen Ripley but Team Ninja only hands-out bad porn actresses.[/QUOTE]

You do realize that Team Ninja didn't write the story, right? Yoshio Sakamoto of Nintendo did.
 
I wish people wouldn't get so hung up on the goofy story in Metroid Other M. The game play is solid. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it addicting. I kept wanting to come back to it. It's up there as one of my favorite games of 2010 (but I don't play as many as most here. Not nearly.)
 
[quote name='Corvin']If they decide to forge ahead with a sequel I only have two words for them: Classic Controller.[/QUOTE]

Never hurt NSMB Wii's sales.

To whomever mentioned boxart, this is part of it.

http://www.metroidwiki.org/images/t...M_Boxart.jpg/300px-Metroid_Other_M_Boxart.jpg

What do you see? Adam, not exactly the most famous Metroid character. Young Samus, not Zero Suit Samus (which became very popular in Brawl and Prime). And then you see Samus in her suit. Except it focuses more on her face behind the visor than the actual suit. Prime featured one consistent image: a full-body image of Samus, in her entire suit. People recognize the large shoulders, the arm cannon, the structure of the suit. Other M's boxart only shows her shoulder and her helmet isn't nearly as recognizable.

Throw in the title "Other M" (huh?) and the only thing drawing people in is the name.

Something else Reggie didn't mention was timing. Other M came out on the last day of August. Summer is always a bad time for games because people are on vacation (and have limited access to TV/internet, where the ads are). When September rolls around people are in school and getting into their sports games and Halo.

Plus there's the actual game itself. After the Prime Trilogy there will be Metroid fans who have only played in a first-person style (even Hunters was first-person). Then you have this first- and third-person hybrid platformer. And no Nunchuk. "The story of Samus can now be told" is the headline on the back. Do gamers really want Samus's backstory? Well, maybe. But the ads show her kicking butt and taking names.

Finally, a combination of being a hardcore game, single-player, and having a Teen rating (not E like Mario and Zelda) will all drive down sales.
 
Wow, they should of just made up some story arc where she's Zero Suit the whole game and get suited up at the end -- maybe implement some cool combat with the light-chain sword thing, have some nice acrobatic segments.

Is game developing really that hard!?
 
Apparently Sakamoto wouldn't let Team Ninja use ZSS more than they did. It's not even in the Story Arc, but the Epilogue. It's a really cool segment to boot.
 
[quote name='panzerfaust']Wow, they should of just made up some story arc where she's Zero Suit the whole game and get suited up at the end -- maybe implement some cool combat with the light-chain sword thing, have some nice acrobatic segments.

Is game developing really that hard!?[/QUOTE]

It's possible that Zero Suit "sexualizes" Samus too much. If you have a game with a heroine in a form-fitting body glove who uses acrobatic moves and a cool weapon it becomes something like Bayonetta.

Who knows? Maybe Metroid needs some spin-offs, but then it could end up like a poor man's Mario. I think if they went the Zelda route (2D on handhelds, 3D on consoles) they could have success. Make Other M 2 more of a 3D shooter/platformer and also have a 2D platformer on the 3DS. That way you get the Super Metroid purists on board, along with appeasing the Prime fans.
 
As someone who's only ever played Metroid games to try them because they're a Nintendo franchise, this didn't even cross my radar. It seemed like a crap spin-off to a non-fan.
 
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