Gaming Did ARMS Fail?

[MCNX]

Now yes I am aware that arms sold over 1.6 million meaning financially it was a success but did it fail to maintain a large playerbase 2 months after launch?

 

[MCNX]

Personally I think it did

Around the time after Splatoon 2 came out it felt like people had just forgotten about the game and I can see why. In my opinion the game was only fun for the first 3 hours then I found myself bored with it as it sits as my least played first party switch game at only 3 hours. I felt the game didn't have any content to it and instead of fixing that problem like Splatoon 1 did they added some characters didn't notice improvement and gave up saying that 5.0 will be the last major update.

 

[LogicIsHansom]

I believe so. I feel it just didn't catch on like Nintendo had hoped and I feel their support kinda waned and afterwards just died off mostly. I believe if they had worked on the game play a bit more, worked on fleshing out the world some more, gave it more support like maybe even adding some other Nintendo characters as surprise DLCs, it'd be a bit more successful. Overall I personally enjoyed the game and thought it was pretty fun though.

 

[Wolfy]

I don't believe it was a bad idea, but with other multiplayer games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2; Nintendo just couldn't keep enough people around for it to have it's own following of dedicated players.

 

[jt_1258]

Well, with new ip's it boils down to throwing what ya have at the wall and hopeing it sticks. Sadly not everthings works out.

 

[RyanTheArchivist]

Well, with new ip's it boils down to throwing what ya have at the wall and hopeing it sticks. Sadly not everthings works out.

good concept just didnt have enough to keep it interesting

 

[osaka35]

I'd imagine the fan-base for fighting games, particularly boxing games, is a bit smaller than some others. I know things like Injustice were huge, but I'd imagine even great success in the fighting genre results in less numbers than decent successes in others, like first-person shooters (or am I just biased?). Well, except for smash. But is smash the exception?

My experiences with Arms and company are "Oh neat! let's play this game for 5 minutes, get bored, then play an hour of mario kart". Also the fact it's only two people at a time makes it less party-friendly.

 

[Leozairus]

Nintendo Gave ZERO support to Arms in EU and NA, for some time the top ranking players changed their names to "SupportEU / SupportNA", hard to keep a competitive game interesting without competition ... If you look for Arms JP, they still have solid ranked player base and problably casual too ...

 

[FAST6191]

Fail or fail to live up to the hype?

I remember playing it at the Nintendo pre release event for the Switch and being generally underwhelmed. The reviews hit and some discussions in such things got a bit heated. I don't know if it was people looking for stuff to play and going with "something, anything" or mistaking "innovation" (which I maintain it was not but different discussion) for good.

Anyway I would be surprised if it had -- for something to maintain a playerbase it has to have... tight, fair, balanced predictable are possibly the wrong words (see any number of things that have to house rule their way to a workable game, or find people playing with the same few options where the game theoretically affords far far more). The controls (they are motion controls so were always going to be laggy, floaty or similar) then made it unpredictable and unfair.

 

[Deleted User]

the fact it's only two people at a time makes it less party-friendly.

The rest of your points are valid, but I'd just like to point out that you can have four people playing at the same time on one screen. It's a complete mess but it's there.

 

[nando]

i don't even fell like pirating it.

 

[DocKlokMan]

New update announced:

"This may be sudden but... tomorrow, Ver.5.4 will be released!

1/2https://t.co/45TpHsEl59

— ARMS (English) (@armsfan_eng) September 18, 2018

 

[pedro702]

well it sold well so it didnt fail, but its had to keep an 1on1 game very popular, its much easier to keep team based or lots of players online games like mario kart 8 and splatoon.

 

[FAST6191]

well it sold well so it didnt fail, but its had to keep an 1on1 game very popular, its much easier to keep team based or lots of players online games like mario kart 8 and splatoon.

Are sales the only thing one looks at to determine success or failure?

Anyway are more than two player games that much easier to sort? From a design perspective and a player perspective it can be a radically different sort of effort* but I have never noted one as being easier than another to sustain a population. Something like Tetris on the DS was more or less active until it died and there are any number of other games that have been just fine.

Game lengths, the nature of drop in/drop out and amount of randomness tolerated might vary but I never would have said it is easier to sustain one way or the other.


*though even then multiplayer games can be radically different from each other depending upon the nature of interaction -- games with none being called a race, then you have varying amounts and types of interaction or scoring beyond that. On the game player side of things then two player vs three player is a very different concept (anybody sensible in a three player game where you can interact with each other will join with one of the other players to force them out of the game and in turn increase their chances of winning).

 

[RitchieRitchie]

I hated ARMS to begin with, then loved it and played it non-stop but when I got to around Rank 13 and realised I'd never get any better as I'm not good enough the game just became frustrating. Sold it for roughly the same amount I paid for it as i wouldn't go back to it but for a while I thought it was great - and I am someone who would never normally play fighting games.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Are sales the only thing one looks at to determine success or failure?

Anyway are more than two player games that much easier to sort? From a design perspective and a player perspective it can be a radically different sort of effort* but I have never noted one as being easier than another to sustain a population. Something like Tetris on the DS was more or less active until it died and there are any number of other games that have been just fine.

Game lengths, the nature of drop in/drop out and amount of randomness tolerated might vary but I never would have said it is easier to sustain one way or the other.


*though even then multiplayer games can be radically different from each other depending upon the nature of interaction -- games with none being called a race, then you have varying amounts and types of interaction or scoring beyond that. On the game player side of things then two player vs three player is a very different concept (anybody sensible in a three player game where you can interact with each other will join with one of the other players to force them out of the game and in turn increase their chances of winning).

Depends on the context. If we're talking about financial success, then yes - and that's all that matters to the company's bottom line.

 

[SomeGamer]

It may have failed, but it's definitely my favourite and most played Switch game by far. Rank 18 and not planning on stopping anytime soon.

 

[RitchieRitchie]

It may have failed, but it's definitely my favourite and most played Switch game by far. Rank 18 and not planning on stopping anytime soon.

Rank 18? Well done, you must have kicked my ass a few times on the way up

 

[SomeGamer]

Rank 18? Well done, you must have kicked my ass a few times on the way up

IDK haha Still looking for people to play with but yeah, not much success. And I began the game like I'm never going to even get past GP lvl 4.

EDIT: For the record I'm pretty bad at Smash so I'm perfectly balanced. This being pretty much the only fighting game I'm half-decent at.

 

[radicalwookie]

I tried the game and really didnt like it. Did it fail? I dont think so, theres a lot of people playing it apparently