Penny Arcade on marketing
Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 8:56am by Jack
The recent comic at Penny Arcade is spot-on, but for once I’m linking to the commentary that’s provided alongside it by Tycho. He discusses how uncomfortable everyone’s become now that Nintendo has rewritten the rule book on gaming (tore it to shreds with its bare hands, then manifested a new one out of thin air is more like it, I suppose).
No one, aside from Nintendo, really knows what to do right now. Rumors persist that Sony is crafting itself a PS2 waggle wand and a $99 price point for the PS2. Microsoft execs look absolutely ridiculous as they try and market “kid-friendly” fare for the Xbox 360. Honestly, if you had told me 18 months ago that one day Microsoft’s Xbox division was going to start looking like that 35-year-old guy who tries to blend in and be cool at a college party, I would have laughed in your face.
PA:
With the compact E3 about to begin, the tactical nature of the conflict (Note: marketing, competing — j.l.) will become more brutal. People get even nastier when they’re vying for second place than when they’re fighting for first. When you’re playing for scraps - and rest assured, dear readers, that you and I are the scraps - you have to get all of them to make it work. Nintendo has simply skipped the first phase - building the brand with us - and jumped straight to the mainstream play. It’s worked flawlessly. And it’s made their competitors increasingly uncomfortable.
Things will start to get ugly, dear readers, as those people who feel threatened by the Wii’s success — for whatever their reason is — begin to lash out. Just ask Gandhi. It will be ugly, but it’ll be fun to watch. That is, when we’re not having a blast with Smash Bros. or Metroid Prime 3.
On an unrelated note, I had a dream last night in which I wielded a 5-foot broadsword and dodged cannonballs.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I am reminded of a quote I heard awhile ago. It was back at the beginning of the year, when Sony was still trying to brush off Nintendo’s success. It sounded a good prediction, and in hindsight is crystal truth:
“First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.”
-Mohandas Gandhi
June 28th, 2007 at 9:50 am
That’s the thing about great quotes from great people, Soup.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
And when you’re playing yet another Metroid and SSMB game, I’ll be playing Bioshock and Mass Effect… ; ) Gotta love those new IP’s Nintendo!
June 28th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I dunno stalis. This was about marketing, not original IP. I’ll half agree with you though — Mass Effect looks promising.
BioShock, however, looks like yet another FPS to me. But hey. it’s underwater.
June 28th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Yeah, sorry I was a “little” off-topic, BioShock looks to me like what I wanted from Metroid Prime series. Atmospheric, FPS action-adventure…
June 28th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
You couldn’t imagine Microsoft as a dorky out of place 35 year old a year ago? read this:
http://www.geekonstun.com/mt/archives/hd_allard_050605.html
Stalis: You’re forgetting exactly how Nintendo is dominating right now. The new IPs are things like Nintendogs, Brain Training Wii Sports and (to a greater or lesser extent) Animal Crossing. You simply chose to ignore them because they don’t connect with you, obviously being a hardcore gamer of sorts with a penchant for the ex-PC style game.
The fact is I might enjoy these things too, but we are most definitely in the minority, and no one but NIntendo is admitting to it.
The biggest problem in the industry is that the games are made by hardcore gamers for hardcore gamers.
June 28th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
It does seem like hardcore gamers on the other two platforms are starting to accept that they’re a niche market now. “Sure, you’ll be playing what everyone else in the world is playing…. but I’ve got my new FPS! You can’t take that away from me!”
I can’t wait for the ads this fall/winter that basically go, “PS3 does what Nintendon’t!”
June 28th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
There was a great quote on gamesindustry.biz about two years ago where Peter Moore, having heard absolutely nothing about what Nintendo’s sytem was or did said ” we see them as a niche player”. My brother and I laughed even then at how in one sentance he relegated every child, woman, person over 50 and adult who likes family friendly entertainment as somehow being in the minority. This also implied that somehow the male 18-34 year old with a disposable income and an existing love for games had suddenly multiplied to continent size levels.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Elmer I that made me laugh pretty hard! I enjoy watching the so called “Hardcore” crowd feeling that there little island is under threat. It happened with the DS and now with the Wii. Nintendo reinvented its direction and everyone else just keeps Status Quo. I look forward to some of the games on the Xbox 360 and one or two on the PS3, but I’m feeling more love for my PS2 and Wii than for the others.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
The obsessed tech-nerd that represents a small part of “hardcore” gamers has a desire of uniqueness, he plays difficult complex technical games on high-end material because they are inaccessible to the vast majority, it gives him a sensation of power, superiority & again uniqueness, he IS the one, only he can grasp all the elements that are necessay to play & master these kind of games. Wouls everybody soccer moms, grandpa & 6 year-old little cousin Tim start to play their kind of games, they would call blasphemy, they would feel dirty & vulgar.
The tech-nerd “hardcore” way, requires to much investment for game companies, long complex eye-candy games that need huge highly qualified teams & gaming devices (be it PC or PS3) that are expensive, hard to grasp & time consuming to the beta consumer, it’s like manufacturing a space shuttle to any single nerd consumer everytime he wants to fly… That would kill the game creativity 1st & industry then… To me Super MarioKart is the definition of great game, accessible yet complex & deep, easy to get in but hard to master, fun & easygoing, it doesn’t need eye-candy graphics or effects or gore or tits to rely on, despite having a cute aspect it is truly a bloody game, where you have to be vicious & show great skill to obliterate the oponents… in battle-mode, MarioKart gave me the same hunting rush that I had playing GoldenEye in multi-player… where is the #$%&$#% bastard!!! I want to send him to hell!!!
June 28th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
stallis- i feel you. noting nintendo’s casual bent is an unpopular thing on this forum. just weeks ago, these threads said that nintendo’s casual market wouldn’t threaten hardcore gamers. but now hardcore gamers are being called a niche.
new IPs like brain training, nintendogs, and wii sports really don’t capture me the way bioshock, mass effect, assassin’s creed, gears of war, etc do.
play what you want, but big N is really focusing in on those casual gamers, to my personal disappointment… maybe atari’s jenga IP for the wii will be what draws me in?
June 28th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
@deepthought
I understand what you and Stalis are saying, but you forget that more than Nintendo makes games for the Wii. It amazes me sometimes that people think only Nintendo makes games for Nintendo systems. Microsoft has very few new IPs, and none that wow me. They have great games cming, but not from them. Sony’s LittleBigPlanet piqued my interest, but not for very long.
I do think that GameGod’s comments are warranted. I’m old enough to remember great games that had to do with great graphics and effects. Anyone remember Contra? It was graphically normal for the time, but brutal without the cheat. There is a middle ground between mini-games and HD.
June 28th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
actually, itsd just the enormous about of fps that dominate microsofts system that gets people ridiculing it. if it only had more diversity.
and any rpg that isnt shooter related will fail. at least it will fail to make the company money, which it needs to sell 300k-400k to do. its not that we dont like the hardcore gamer market, many of us want those big games too. its just that microsoft has made it hard to support both markets, sort of closing up the hardcore market, making exclusive instead of inclusive, by making gaming alot more expensive, unlike last gen when all styles of gaming were on equal footing. they also put up barriers to entry like pay to play for fps and most other games that PCs still dont have to deal with, though with sony and microsoft in the PC online market i fear they may be ruining that too.
amongst other stuff thats not balanced to allow for others besides the gaming obsessed to get into it easily. there can be balance, microsoft and sony are just choosing not to find it, so we laugh at them for being so closed to the world.
nintendo is interested in all markets, with “hardcore” games coming out later this year: no more heroes, BW2, MP3, SMG, RE:UC, SC:L, and many more. its only 3rd parties fault for not having even more games out. but nintendo did recruit some of those, and some came on their own. also with sports games coming out in force, and many with online. racing games also. theres something for everybody, and online is coming slowly but surely for many things. its just that 360 owners tend to rub me the wrong way with their closed-mindedness that i tend to look down on them for hurting gaming in a way.
think of it this way. if nintendo werent here to keep gaming varied and cheap, 2 things would happen. you would still have most games on the ps2 for a few more years, and companies would still be bleeding money trying to survive the HD generation, but the ps2 is slowing down, thats inevitable, and the software sales even before the wii came along were slowing. next-gen was too expensive, last-gen was slowing down, whats the market to do. the exclusivity that hardcore gamers enjoy so much on their consoles bites them in the butt in the end. HD just isnt ready yet, whether you want it or not. it hurt the market to go there so soon, and it hurts gaming for a system on top to only focus on a few genres, because theirs less people interested in the system, and they pay less attention to games they may have been interested in buying if they owned the system for other games also.
you have a smaller market because of less games, and higher costs. indie developers barely even work on the HD consoles because of the enormous barrier to entry. its nintendo that will pull them in. it wants to, and it wants the hardcore as well as the casual market, its just the only one understanding that both are necessary to survive.
June 28th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Maybe a couple weeks ago other people were saying that games appealing to all age groups wouldn’t threaten the hardcore niche, but I wasn’t here for that thread.
It’s easy for people who’ve come to gaming in the last 10 or 15 years to think that what they call “casual gaming” is something new. I’m willing to bet that I’ve been playing videogames since deepthought and stalis were in diapers, if they were born at all in 1976, and it was something everyone did, or at least tried, but no one spent 16 hours a day doing it. In other words, it was all casual, even the “hardcore” stuff (which at the time meant “space shooters”.) I’m overjoyed to seeing it return to a pastime anyone can enjoy, not just obsessive nerds.
That said, I’ve played a lot more Zelda than Wii Sports on my Wii. I’m a pretty obsessive nerd, just not the FPS-playing type.