6th March 2004, 1:38 PM
Quote:You called me a moron and said that I was wrong!
The fact you think that proves that you have serious comprehension issues! As I said, I am uncertain.
This was my first statement.
Quote:Nintendo needs to spread out releases, for sure, but the 'all in the last few months' thing worked so well last year that I'm not surprised at all to see them trying it again... though for consistent sales having more titles in the other 9 months would, I would expect, help a lot... it's just annoying to see so many games at once. Especially for Nintendo where unlike the others the other 9 months can be REALLY thin... others have SOMETHING to fill in the gaps (mostly third party).
The 'all in the last 3 months' thing worked great by a overall sales perspective. Now as I said I admit that I should have mentioned the price drope here but that doesn't really affect my point that much... maybe you are confused because I am not certain about what the right course should be. I mean, as I detailed I hate how we have so few games in the first 9 months and definitely think that it hurts Nintendo in sales for most of the year, but my concern is how many resources they have. Nintendo needs to be able to put up a strong fight at the holidays, with a lineup equal to its competition. Due to lack of third party titles they need to make a lot of the games themselves. They can only make so many games.
So the question (that I don't have an answer to) is: 'how many of those holiday titles could Nintendo afford to release in the rest of the year, and still be competitive enough during the holidays?' And the related issue of advertising and popularity... as we have agreed on, their advertising has intermittently been bad or inadaquate, and frequently both. Now we all know that Nintendo can't match Sony's resources, or Microsoft's, but that is the competition so they can't let them flood the airwaves (especially Sony) with nearly no response for most of the year as they do if Nintendo really want to compete. This ties in with the games thing... but Nintendo does have SOME big games in the first 9 months. They just under-advertise them and pull out their marketing only in the end of the year. While when applied well like last year it works, I think this is not a long-term success strategy. You need to compete year round, not just in November! Nintendo is NOT doing that and their current strategy will not lead to that ever happening, I think. Now how Nintendo can change this... that is obviously a tough question... I know we've discussed this to death before but it's still a major issue...
If Nintendo wants to remain a major player they need to try to play on a level playing field. in their current state I just don't see that happening... not without year-round competition. But attaining that would be a very, very hard task...
Quote:Well reviews can help some times. Obviously for crap like Enter the Matrix bad reviews don't affect it, but for smaller titles good reviews can help. But the thing is that PoP had a really good marketing campaign and it looks amazing in motion and in still screens, yet it sold really poorly. WHY? What is wrong with this world??!
Preaching to the choir... :) I know I've complained many, many times about how poor the tastes of the average gamers are...