Overlord: Dark Legend is a hardcore game, title has a chance to sell well
Posted on February 9, 2009 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii
“Yeah, for the Wii [it’s a hardcore game]. I mean, there are elements of it that are still fun [for casual players] and you can still get involved with it. But I think it’s definitely more of a hardcore game than you’ve got on the Wii at the moment. The other thing that the Wii’s done is opened a market for the people who perhaps weren’t into gaming before. So people who were bit scared because [gaming] was a bit too technical and a bit too geeky have suddenly been brought in because of the Wii. And I think this gives us an opportunity to show them that the Wii can actually do games like this, and it actually works and it can make good fun. So there are two distinct groups there that we’re going for.” – Codemasters brand manager Dan Robinson
“Part of that would be the marketing spending [concern of third-party hardcore games selling on Wii]. If it’s a Nintendo game, they put a lot of money behind it. But also, I think fans have got a lot of faith in titles from first-party, and being a third-party, it’s been important for us to get Nintendo on our side and get them really behind the game. They’ve seen it, and they think it’s great because it’s something different. With the original game, fans saw it and they thought they knew what was coming, but then they saw it and thought, “Hang on, this is something different.” It got viewed as “Fable” mixed with “Pikmin.” That was how it was seen, which is no bad thing from our point of view! So I think you’re right, in that first-party titles tend to be more successful, but they tend to get more support. They get on TV, that helps. But I think this title’s got a chance! It’s a good game, it’s something different, and I think if we do it right, it will attract the right sort of audience that will buy it. I mean, people like it because it’s like “Pikmin” and they’ve got the different colors, different abilities and you can send them off to do different things. But it’s also totally different. The minions are evil. They kill things and set fire to things; you don’t find “Pikmin” doing that!” – Codemasters brand manager Dan Robinson
Mr. Robinson also mentioned that there was a realization early on that the development team shouldn’t simply port of Overlord/Overlord 2. If they had done that, Codemasters would have been “slighted.”
