Metroid 3: Darker, more mysterious, and the marketing’s just fine
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 2:49pm by Jack
Tycho over at Penny Arcade sums it up nicely:
I keep hearing that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption isn’t being promoted very well, but the person saying this always seems to know about it, and then when people share this complaint in the thread those people also seem to be “in the know.” It ships on the twenty-seventh of August, if you weren’t aware - but since you almost certainly are, we needn’t dwell on it. What we should be dwelling on are the series of teaser vids that Retro has been trickling out. Metroid’s largely mysterious heroine has always been a huge draw for me, and it’s a strange case where going into deep detail about the character might actually damage the mystique. But the universe she operates in need not be vague, which is why these clips are such a rich meal: the Aurora Unit trailer that modernizes ancient Metroid canon in a classy way, and there’s a treat at the end of the Valhalla trailer that ties it all together. They both cover a setting that has gotten darker and more sophisticated, tones we don’t typically associate with Nintendo.
Again, I blame the Internet for any troubles on this one. Just like when all those Wiimotes were “breaking televisions” I doubt very much that there’s a marketing drought going on right now for Metroid 3. What I think happened is some popular columnist or Internet forum member somewhere decided that Nintendo was pissing all over hardcore gamers for some odd reason or another and decided to find an Ahab’s Whale that would smear Nintendo and make it do an about face and appeal to hardcore gamers, dammit! It’s basic reverse psychology.
On a side note, there’s something weirdly wrong and insipidly stupid with the hardcore community lashing out at Nintendo for not being tough enough. Weren’t these the same idiots who couldn’t wait to make fun of Nintendo’s GameCube for being a piece of kiddie candy?!
Does Nintendo need to show more TV commercials to sell Metroid 3? Nope. In fact, I think they’d help sell Metroid about as much as those Halo 3 Mountain Dew cans will help sell Halo 3 to people who don’t own an Xbox 360. As in, not at all. Do they need more Internet marketing? As Tycho points out, that’d be throwing money on a fire — things on the Net are already ramped up. The best advertising is already in place for Metroid, and we’re all a part of it just by discussing it, watching videos and even complaining about it.
Does the Metroid preview channel only reach Wii’s with online enabled? Obviously. But the message reaches out to the friends of those Wii owners, and their families, and their friends, etc. Basically, the marketing is being done pro bono, and that’s ok. Any more marketing would be a complete waste of money. Some people argue that this might be true, but if Nintendo did marketing in addition to it, then Metroid 3 would sell even better. Not really. This is because word of mouth and a solid product trumps that any day of the week. No one’s watching normal TV these days anyway. An added bonus for Nintendo is that this discussion gets non-online Wii’s online even faster.
Metroid 3: Darker, more mysterious, and the marketing is just fine, thank you very much.
August 22nd, 2007 at 4:23 pm
I’ll say one thing about you, Jack -
You DO love to write!
:o)
August 22nd, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I don’t think we’ve been saying that Metroid Prime 3 Corruption has not been promoted very well, I think we’ve been saying that MP3 has not been promoted by Nintendo much. And as you mentioned in your article, this might not be a bad marketing strategy, but the fact remains that Nintendo is not marketing Metroid Prime 3 that much, period. And I think we were asking “why?”
If you are correct, and it’s all about the viral marketing, then our question will be answered once the game starts selling like pancakes!
(I’m getting my copy on the first week’s release, by the way, since , as I keep saying like a broken record, MP3 is one of the reasons I got a Wii.)
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:48 pm
As I think about this issue after that first article on infendo, I still come to the conclusion that Nintendo is not fully marketing Metroid Prime. Now, I started to see that Nintendo has to rely upon two kinds of people to buy MP:3: the hardcore Nintendo fans and the hardcore. They’re getting the hardcore Nintendo fans into a tizzy (especially me), but I don’t think they’re reaching out to the people that only have a 360 or PS3. There are some that would love to play a game like Metroid Prime, but don’t really go online and have only purchased a 360 or PS3. They may not even know what the word “Metroid” means. That’s a whole other market to focus on, and Nintendo seems happy to not even recognize them. The Nintendo faithful will make Prime 3 a success, but it will not be as successful as it could have been, had they gained every action/adventure fan’s attention.
They’re doing more with the Nintendo faithful than I ever thought possible, especially with the Metroid Preview Channel, but they’re not advertising to all gamers; just their own.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 am
FUCK THE HARDCORE.
Hardcore gamers are a bunch whiny piss ants, aren’t they?
“I’m too GROWN-UP and MATURE to play with “kiddy” Nintendo games!”
I need some explosions, strong language and darker storylines to prove to my college buddies how much of a MAN I am!” And so they’ll grab hold of anything they can in their tireless efforts to diss Nintendo.
I’m sick and tired of hardcore gamers; I’m sick and tired of there even being a need for the term “hardcore”. I truly wish Nintendo would just ignore this supposedly important demographic and go back to making games, particularly Metroid, the old-school Nintendo way without all the unneccesary Americanizations that have crept into the series thanks to those geniuses at Retro Studios.
But I’m the only person who thinks this way, aren’t I?! I’m just one raving loon who is sick of Metroid being treated like a “hardcore” franchise and less like Mario and Zelda are—games with which you grew up on. No need to tamper heavily with the formula now that I’m 23, thank you, Nintendo. What was fun then is fun now, and I can do without efforts to “modernize” anything.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:40 am
“In fact, I think they’d help sell Metroid about as much as those Halo 3 Mountain Dew cans will help sell Halo 3 to people who don’t own an Xbox 360. As in, not at all.”
I think you’re wrong. Yeah, JUST sticking Metroid on the sides of cans or something might not be enough to boost sales, but getting it out there with the word of mouth and positive buzz backing up it would do WONDERS for Metroid’s sales.
Microsoft gets this. People are going to be saying how wonderful Halo 3 is and putting it out there in commercials, happy meals and pop cans and blah blah blah is going to saturate people’s minds.
Imagine how well Bioshock would sell if it had a good advertising campaign to back it up (what? You actually think Bioshock is going to sell well? HA!)
Don’t discount the power of advertising. Study after study after survey after poll has shown that saturating the market with ads ala Halo 3 is VERY effective. If it wasn’t, people wouldn’t do it.
And do you REALLY think the Wii would have sold as well as it did were it not for those commercials? Every “New Gamer” I know who owns a Wii or is interested in one was completely unaware of what it was until they saw those commercials.
It went from, “Oh, he’s just talking about some silly video game system. I don’t care because I don’t play games” to, “Wow, I saw that Wii on a commercial last night. It looks REALLY cool.”
The funny part about all this is that the people saying Nintendo is marketing Metroid just fine are the ones who are stuck in the Hardcore Gamer Echo-Chamber. Metroid’s marketing is great…if you pretty much bop around on gaming sites and such all day long.
What it comes down to is that Nintendo isn’t marketing Metroid like the system selling game it SHOULD be. People are rightfully disappointed by that and Nintendo is stupid for failing to take advantage Metroid gives them.
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 am
Metroid 3 is Super Metroid. Sorry to be anal.
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 am
I agree with Killer
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I think that there are a lot of people in an “echo-chamber” here. The advertising for this game is the same as any other. Halo3 mountain dews aren’t going to get people that don’t know about Halo interested. The target is people that already know what Halo is. Nintendo gets into diminishing returns with expansive marketing like that. Look at Twilight Princess, how much did/ has that title sold on word of mouth alone? There is NO TP website by the way. If you stop and remove yourself from the equation things don’t look the same. Making a few thousand more dollars more that took you a few hundred thousand more to earn is poor business planning not a great thing.