By tealovertoma on Aug 6, 2009

It sold “okay” though, didn’t it? It’s not like it was a particular expensive title to produce… pretty sure they – at the very least – broke even.

By Ponkotsu on Aug 6, 2009

Yeah, Svensson seems to be one of the only people who’s openly insisted the game was a failure. Capcom Japan actually praised its sales, and for a no-name new IP (With no advertising) ultra-niche point and click adventure game that couldn’t have even worked – let alone found an audience – on another platform, it managed roughly sleeper hit level sales. The game found its audience and sold to them, but Capcom USA – and Svensson in particular – have a track record of seeming to have a chip on their shoulder about the Wii.

Where Capcom Japan’s largely been positive about their Wii ventures, while Svensson in particular has been quick to write off anything and everything on the Wii – even when they haven’t advertised any of their non-Resident Evil Wii releases here, and their RE Wii titles have all been hits – while at the same time shielding blatant HD platform failures (Like the Bionic Commando titles – reviving a classic franchise and trying to target it at an audience that never played the original and has no nostalgia for it was a bad move on their part, no matter how you look at it.) from criticism. You don’t hear “We screwed up” on things like that, just “Hey, these Wii games that’re actually picking up an audience and gradually selling by word of mouth instead of exploding onto the market to extremely frontloaded sales despite a complete lack of marketing are failures because they’re not out-the-door HD hits!”

There’s basically been a lot of excuse-making at Capcom USA for avoiding Wii support, and it really hasn’t been until this year that we’ve started to see some serious efforts with titles like Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Spyborgs, and Monster Hunter 3. Nintendo’s already announced that they’ll be advertising Monster Hunter 3 themselves (In a rather unprecedented move, and a notable one considering that the game just exploded onto Japanese shelves and will be a crucial title in getting Japan’s core audience onto a console where they’ve mostly just been on the DS this gen.) as they will be Dragon Quest X in the future. But if Capcom doesn’t properly advertise Spyborgs and Tatsunoko on TV (And they’ve got plenty to work with for those), it’d just be another indication from Capcom USA that they’re looking for excuses not to support and simply continue to complain about the Wii.

Zack & Wiki was a very niche title that they didn’t push and treated here like it was supposed to compete with major HD titles with big marketing campaigns in terms of sales. The Resident Evil games sold very well between the extremely popular and recognizable IP and actual marketing. Dead Rising was a missed opportunity, largely mishandled by Capcom and left entirely unmarketed upon release when it should have at least gotten TV ads, considering that it was still a fun, well-done game that much of the press and blogs were out to sink as soon as it was announced because the idea of a 360 game being successfully downported to the Wii was such an insulting concept to them. (And thus, it was met with tons of hyperbole about how the original game was a nonstop sea of zombies when that wasn’t in any way true, either – concept art was full of that, but not the actual game itself, and the Wii wasn’t far behind in terms of on-screen enemies, while they had MUCH better AI on the Wii and were actually aggressive.) That was written off as a failure, while it’s continuing to see slow-burner sales common to worthwhile Wii games (Like Zack & Wiki saw) with no advertising. Okami Wii actually outsold the original PS2 game. (Even when they initially tried to sabotage its launch sales on the Wii by dropping the PS2 version to 20 bucks then. A move not unlike the impact the PS2 port announcement Resident Evil 4 got just before the original Gamecube version hit the market.) And Mega Man 9 was pushed with great vitriol away from Wii exclusivity in the west at launch, when unsurprisingly, the HD crowds ignored the game and it just sat on XBLA and PSN as those graphically-obsessed audiences didn’t care about an NES style game to begin with – they just didn’t want a new major sequel like that to be on the Wii, with the incredibly self-entitled attitude common to the PS3/360-obsessed crowd, despite how much even big games struggle to break even, let alone profit, on those platforms.

Basically, Capcom’s actually provided a lot of worthwhile, quality Wii games this generation which have, in turn, sold well on the whole, but not as well as they could in the non-RE games’ cases due to a serious lack of actual commitment to the titles on Capcom USA’s part. There’s been a notable slant against the Wii since the beginning of the generation (Even when the Resident Evil 4 port hit to hefty sales for a port, indicating a strong early market ravenous for games like that – an appetite Capcom for some reason opted not to follow through on sating.), their big, hyped, and advertised games all going exclusively to the HD platforms, even when met with lukewarm sales, considering the ridiculous sales numbers (Far above even average successful PS2 numbers) necessary to actually make anything resembling a notable profit on those platforms. Capcom USA’s spent a lot of time talking down to and generally dumping on the Wii audience here, and after numerous ports and disdainful treatment, consumer confidence in Capcom has been shaken here, and only just now are we really starting to see titles from them that could work to turn things back in their favor if they’re actually smart about their marketing and approach to the Wii audience. (Even Ubisoft admitted their flood-of-shovelware strategy and efforts to write the Wii off were a mistake this year, following No More Heroes becoming one of their biggest Wii successes and indicating to them where the actual demand is.) It’s time to get humble and advertise their games. Even if we don’t see another Zack & Wiki, it’s time to stop acting like nobody bought it, and it’s time to focus on an upswing in software support and actual marketing, taking the Wii audience seriously as the market leading platform it is.

If EA and Ubisoft can admit their mistakes and work to turn things around – with success, at that – Capcom’s no less capable. Too many third parties have invested heavily in HD platform advertising while refusing to put out commercials for Wii titles at all, far too many have ignored the reality of this generation. The PS3 and 360 are nowhere near dominant in any region, nor selling remarkably well. Very few types of games actually see notable sales on either platform, and even major games – like Crackdown – have been lucky to so much as break even in sales, while still not making money. Budgets are unsustainably high on those platforms and the actual audiences are dangerously small for development platforms that expensive, when both would need audiences buying ALL kinds of games in numbers that’d put the PS2 to shame to really be successful, and neither is anywhere near that nor heading in that direction. And on top of that, there’s even been a good bit of testimony lately to that XBLA and PSN games mostly sit on their respective servers and don’t sell – unshockingly, given the audiences fixated on huge name blockbusters with extremely expensive graphics over indie or smaller scale gaming. They’re not healthy platforms, while the Wii has shown itself to be the best console of the three to support in terms of both finding an audience and making an actual profit when you take the system and its audience seriously and actually MARKET your game. The sheer amount of incredibly poor decision making that’s taken place in the first few years of this generation – and been rationalized to death with arguments that don’t hold up under scrutiny – is simply mindboggling, and so far, Svensson himself has made a name for himself for being part of the problem. One hopes he’ll eventually get past his own rather open biases and redeem himself.

Wow, this turned out rambling. Kudos to anyone with the guts to get through this comment, haha.

By Patrick M on Aug 17, 2009

I think I also read about a guy from capcom saying that there will never be a sequel.
It sold so bad they might even consider trashing the whole game. As far as im concernd, Capcom dosn’t want this game to exist and is trying to get rid of it.