By now, I’m sure you’ve seen Cowboy Jed and his Mario Kart Emporium on TV a few dozen times.  Apparently we’ve seen the end of the “We would like to play” guys and their Smart Car.  So what should Nintendo focus on for their next ad campaign?  More importantly, what will the new slogan be?  My suggestion is for them to hire DMX and have him yell: “Wii.  What?!  Wii.  Word!!!”  Okay, maybe not.  Help me out here … share your suggestions for a new Nintendo slogan in comments.

A Harvest Moon Wii tractor pull? A real-life F-Zero supersonic racing circuit at the Bonneville Salt Flats? Mario juicing for his upcoming Super Mario Sluggers baseball promotion?

Nintendo will hold a pretty cool marketing promotion in NYC tomorrow as a man dressed as Mario hails cabs for Manhattanites, free of charge. What follows are just a few of the wild new Nintendo marketing promotion ideas I would like to see the Big N implement for some of their other first party games in 2008.

See what I mean after the jump and add one of your own.

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If there were a causal relationship between critical praise and commercial success, Capcom’s magnificent Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure would have sold a few million copies by now and this wouldn’t even be an issue.

Unfortunately, most Wii owners are ignoring Capcom’s imaginative masterpiece. Despite the fact that Z-Dub has received a continuous stream of universally positive press and is currently the fifth-highest rated game on Wii, surpassing even million-sellers like Super Paper Mario and Guitar Hero III, the game moved a paltry 30,000 copies in its first two weeks on North American shelves and sold even fewer on the increasingly enigmatic island of Japan.

Some affectionate Z-Dub advocates have cried foul on Capcom’s part, alleging a diminutive and negligent advertising campaign doomed the daring new IP to poor sales before it even hit store shelves. But on the company’s official online bulletin board, one Capcom employee has defended the Z-Dub advertising strategy.

Apparently, it was there. Gamers just didn’t notice.

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For more than a decade, it has been common knowledge within the gaming populace that third-parties struggle to sell their games on Nintendo consoles. For one reason or another, the Nintendo audience generally doesn’t respond to mass sellers like Tony Hawk, Need For Speed or Call of Duty.

This tradition hasn’t changed much on Wii. Madden sales have bombed two years in a row, and even the impressive, Wii-focused Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 has been received with minimal fanfare.

But it has finally happened. A mainstream game published by a third party company has achieved massive success on Wii. RedOctane’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has sold 1.1 million copies in America alone since launching on October 28.

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Considering Super Smash Bros. Brawl releases in Japan on January 24th, it’s no surprise to see marketing plans beginning to emerge. Let’s just hope Brawl will have larger launch figures than Galaxy did. Here’s links to more Brawl commercials with 90% less hyperventilating Japanese gamers.

Here, here, and here

link

This past weeks “big” marketing subject was concerning declining sales and usage of the Wii in Japan. Famitsu publisher, Hirokazu Hamamura released data (taken from a Famitsu survey) that shows 67% of Japanese Wii owners hardly play the system anymore. Don Reisinger of Cnet tech specialists recently blogged his latest rant on the state of low Wii usage in Japan.

….But besides my own preferences, I can’t help but think that the Wii is in trouble. Sure, some go out and tell us about the Wii sales figures, but there are no figures showing us that people actually play Wii games. Worse, Wii video game sales barely scratch the top ten when matched with titles from Microsoft or Sony — another dust competitor.

Could it be that the Wii is nothi (more…)

“The princess is in another castle.”

I really, really hope some diminutive Toadstool re-utters those famous words next month. Just once. It’s cheesy, sure, but the blatant nostalgia, combined with what are shaping up to legitimately be the best visuals and innovations on the system to date, could make my head explode.

You know what else makes my head explode? Ignorance.

Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo’s quirky marketing workhorse for the past 15 years, will be leaving the company very shortly. We know her for some wacky one-liners and questionable Wii-related promises to the press, but believe me the majority of what her and her team did for Nintendo was done behind the scenes with careful study and execution. A major reason for the success of both the DS and Wii today is one part product, one part marketing and one part execution. I doubt Kaplan had her hands in the cogs and wheels of the Wii when it was being built in China, Korea or wherever, but you can bet once it was all shined up and ready to go she and fellow marketer George Harrison were on that system like white on, well, a Wii. (more…)

First, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime won BrandWeek’s Marketeer of the Year award. Today, the rest of Nintendo caught up to him by winning Ad Age’s Marketer of the Year award with nary a specialized gamer soda or crying doll in sight.

Question: Can a new product not only radically revive a company but also reinvigorate an entire industry? Answer: Wii. […] “They have absolutely changed the industry,” says Julie Shumaker, VP-sales for in-game agency Double Fusion and former Electronic Arts national sales director. “They brought people who don’t consider themselves gamers into gaming. Data show people … still don’t consider themselves gamers — and they own a Wii. Sheer marketing brilliance.”

Perhaps the biggest coup in this article, however, is the parting shot fired by outgoing Perrin Kaplan. (more…)

We often joke about Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime’s no holds barred quotes and conference keynote bravado, and we really shouldn’t since he can apparently fly and shoot lasers from his eyes.

But on a more serious note, he really does appear to believe in his products and that they will, ultimately, extinguish conventional thinking about video games.

For that Brandweek has bestowed their Marketer of the Year award on Reggie’s ass kicking brow. (more…)

I doubt they realize what they’ve done. The couldn’t possibly, unless it was some kind of grand satire experiment where they themselves were trying to epitomize — using a mirror — what was wrong with their medium. A certain web site today gave Halo 3 (which I am 100% positive will be amazing for a Halo game) a perfect score. They weren’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last, and that’s unfortunate.

How ironic that a vote of perfect purity actually betrays how sick the industry’s press has become. (more…)

When Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii was revealed via trailer back at E3 2006, we wanted to feel the “improved” gameplay as soon as possible. Most of us knew, however, that Brawl wouldn’t be playable at E306, but expectations were high for a showing at Leipzig 06. Nothing. Fans then looked forward to the Nintendo World event where demos of the company’s latest games were to be shown. That day came and went with still no sign of a playable version of SSBB. Both GDC and E3 2007 showed no demos. Really Nintendo…where’s my Smash Brothers?

This repeating pattern struck me when I realized that we would be playing Brawl in less than three months! I don’t want to pull a Matt Casamassina, but don’t you think we should of at least seen a playable version for the public? Take a step back and look at the other two mega hit titles. We had both Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy demos playable at E306, Leipzig 06, Nintendo world, GDC07, E307, and Leipzig 07. I know Nintendo is known for keeping a tight lid on their projects, but has this embargo gone on for too long? Being a huge fan of the first two Smash Brothers, I want more than just daily screen shots. I want to see this title in motion.

What do you think Infendo? Is it about time we see some gameplay, or should the hype train roll on?

We all know the story. Ever since the launch of the NES, the video game market has exploded. Within 21 years the gaming industry went from being almost extinct, to one of the fastest markets that can closely compete with Hollywood. The 7.4 billion dollar market has managed to capture 67% of Americans.

So where’s the market now?

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Nintendo has kicked off a Month Of Metroid.  You should probably have a new message from Nintendo on your Wii today letting you know that a special Metroid Prime 3 preview channel is available to download from the Wii Shop Channel.  NintendoGal has put together a video of the experience for your viewing pleasure.

Other Metroid related events in August:

August 13 - Metroid released for Virtual Console
August 20th - Super Metroid released for Virtual Console
August 27th - Metroid Prime 3: Corruption released for Wii

Are you ready for a Month of Metroid?

This morning during breakfast I saw a commercial for a cheery looking children’s movie about talking animals and then noticed the camera pan up to reveal the now-famous Animal Crossing character K.K. Slider (Totakeke in Japan). The commercial was for an Animal Crossing animated movie that was released this week on DVD and is apparently about a girl named Ai who moves into a town inhabited by Animals only to fulfill a mysterious prophecy (found in a bottle message) by planting a tree during a winter festival. The DVD will set you back ¥3,990 but comes with a limited edition pouch (which isn’t shown on the website, grrr). Check out the official site to learn more about the films staff and characters, as well a myriad of merchandising that the movie inspired.

Ok, OK. There are certainly hardcore gamers out there, but there’s a point to made in here somewhere. The point is that for Nintendo, the phrase “hardcore gamer” is about as relevant to their bottom line as tube socks. Microsoft themed tube socks. It’s irrelevant to Nintendo because I seriously doubt Reggie or Miyamoto or Iwata sit around big stuffy conference rooms sweating bullets over whether or not the big and all-powerful hardcore gamer is going to like their shiny new systems. And it’s not that they can say this now, after 18 months of Wii and DS successes, it’s that I doubt they said anything like it when they were first designing both systems back in 2004 or 2005.

So why would they do this? Why would they ignore the “base” and pander to the sporadic, unreliable “non-traditional gamer?” Isn’t it obvious? It’s because they’re both a myth, at least as far as Nintendo and its strategy is concerned. (more…)