Nintendo: piracy not behind poor sales

Maikel Steneker

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Metroid: Other M is not a good example. It's relatively hard to pirate due to it using a dual layer DVD. You'd assume that Metroid: Other M sells a lot more than SMG2, but it doesn't.

What Iwata says here is the thruth. Pirates will always hurt your sales, but good games sell anyway.
 

dinofan01

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monkat said:
QUOTE said:
It is true there is always the influence of piracy, but it is important for us to increase the number of our consumers who are willing to shell out their money to purchase our products.

QUOTEPiracy Not Behind Poor Sales

The topic is pretty misleading.
Not really. A few lost sales does not equal poor sales. The poor sales is from other factors and Iwata is saying the major other factor is quality.
 

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TwinRetro said:
Maybe if you wouldn't shove a Seal of Approval to every game that passes your glance, MAYBE poor sales wouldn't be so much of an issue.

I REMEMBER WHEN THE OFFICIAL NINTENDO SEAL OF APPROVAL ACTUALLY MEANT SOMETHING!!!
That's a misinterpretation of the seal. The seal never told you whether a game was good or not, it just told you that nintendo have approved it. Even if it did mean that a game was supposed to be good, they could still put it on every game, it's their opinion whether or not a game is good.
 

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TwinRetro said:
Maybe if you wouldn't shove a Seal of Approval to every game that passes your glance, MAYBE poor sales wouldn't be so much of an issue.

I REMEMBER WHEN THE OFFICIAL NINTENDO SEAL OF APPROVAL ACTUALLY MEANT SOMETHING!!!

The standard of unplayable garbage released for the NES far, far surpasses even DS shovelware. Some NES games could barely even be classified as a game they were so broken. Go and play Captain Planet, Dr Jeykll and Mr Hyde, Muscle and Super Pitfall and tell me the seal ever meant something. Muscle didn't even have sound. The game was silent for christ's sake!
 

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this is nintendo's way of saying: yeah guys so we really dunno why we let the DS fall into shovelware, which has made it such a crap handheld lately with almost no games, but not to worry things will change with the 3DS

... come on, piracy doesn't have an impact on nintendo/let alone the gaming industry

millions are lost each year to it

lets say that everyone has download some odd 200 roms ... thats a shit load of money.
 

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Maz7006 said:
this is nintendo's way of saying: yeah guys so we really dunno why we let the DS fall into shovelware, which has made it such a crap handheld lately with almost no games, but not to worry things will change with the 3DS

... come on, piracy doesn't have an impact on nintendo/let alone the gaming industry

millions are lost each year to it

lets say that everyone has download some odd 200 roms ... thats a shit load of money.
But would you bought them all when you didn't pirated them?
Besides 2009 was the first time in years that their yearly profit didn't grow.

Source
 

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So called 'shovelware' is not a reason for declining DS sales, it's often the thing which keeps it going. Imagine/Horse titles sell well and the consumers of those titles rarely pirate them. And who cares if the platform is making games for other audiences? There's an absolute ton of fantastic games on the DS and no-one forces you to play the games aimed at 12 year old girls with a horse fetish. The PS2 was the same, millions of crap games, hundreds of good ones. It's what happens when a system is popular, deal with it. Or would it be better for the DS to be like the Dreamcast, a small amount of good titles that aren't enough to prop up the system on their own?
 

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most probably they will concentrate on quality rather than piracy but they have an initial move to put AP on 3DS
it is very interesting that SMG2 scored such high scores while if u check torrents or filesharing sites or even dolphin emu users, many have an SMG2 (most probably downloaded) copy which they want to play
maybe 100k ppl did not buy the game though 30k could have done so
 

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Nintendo is forgetting one important thing about the poor sales...prediction. You can't expect sells to be in the millions each time an all-star game comes out. It depends on the customers interest and economic cashflow. Pokemon will always sell no matter how many pirates d/l the game and plays them. When Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft expects a game to shell out in the millions it usually don't turn out that way. It's not written in stone that each game release is going to sell over 5 million units. However, despite these poor sale strategics it doesn't stop developers to improve from their shortcomings. The main target of poor sales is distributing 3rd party games.

Even if casual gamers were to buy those kind of games, it doesn't stray from the gamers who knows a bad game when they see one. Gamers in general require a taste in certain games and shovelware isn't one of them. I bet you that not all casual gamers buy those shovelware games. Despite of this, some developers think its ok to spew out those horrid games that takes up space in the gaming library. Out of ALL the Nintendo games from the DS section, there are like 50-79% of those games sitting there on those shelves. In majority of those units not selling, its hurting the developers and not Nintendo. No I'm not saying go buy shovelware, this just shows that most gamers are willing to pay 50-60 dollar games due to its quality and not quanity.

SEGA screw themselves in the foot each time they push out a half-ass Sonic game that most Sonic fans knows that SEGA can do better. In the end, SEGA chooses to be lax and distribute whatever game that can think of and slap the word 'Sonic' on them
 

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Canonbeat234 said:
You can't expect sells to be in the millions each time an all-star game comes out.

Um, yes you can. Even Nintendo's "worst" seller that they thought would sell a bagillion copies, Wii Music, sold 2 million copies. Nintendo doesn't release Mario games thinking they'll only sell a few. Microsoft doesn't release Halo games thinking they'll only sell a few. Activision doesn't release Call of Duty games thinking they'll only sell a few.

As for Sonic he just doesn't sell as well because his popularity plummeted. Mario essentially won the platformer war and Sega lost the hardware war as well. They had no mascot to flagship their consoles and Sonic essentially became just another third party character. A lot of people know who he is but he's not nearly as big a household name as Mario is.
 

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So what Nintendo are saying is this... "Piracy isn't as much of an issue because we can always focus exclusively on casual titles that the pirates won't even want to pirate, instead of the ground-breaking titles that cater for both hardcore and casual gamers. We still make lots of money, potentially even more than before, and only one segment of our user base suffers."
 

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Guild McCommunist said:
Canonbeat234 said:
You can't expect sells to be in the millions each time an all-star game comes out.

Um, yes you can. Even Nintendo's "worst" seller that they thought would sell a bagillion copies, Wii Music, sold 2 million copies. Nintendo doesn't release Mario games thinking they'll only sell a few. Microsoft doesn't release Halo games thinking they'll only sell a few. Activision doesn't release Call of Duty games thinking they'll only sell a few.

As for Sonic he just doesn't sell as well because his popularity plummeted. Mario essentially won the platformer war and Sega lost the hardware war as well. They had no mascot to flagship their consoles and Sonic essentially became just another third party character. A lot of people know who he is but he's not nearly as big a household name as Mario is.

Way to go McGuild maybe SEGA should get rid of their mascot and focus on alternative games indeed.
 

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I've always thought on-line cheating was a bigger concern for Nintendo than pirates. I'm not saying it's not a priority, just not a top one. They seem to put a lot of work into the initial design but once/if it's broken put no real effort into fixing it. It might also have something to do with the fact that pirates generally spend a lot more money on things than non pirates
 

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cwstjdenobs said:
I've always thought on-line cheating was a bigger concern for Nintendo than pirates. I'm not saying it's not a priority, just not a top one. They seem to put a lot of work into the initial design but once/if it's broken put no real effort into fixing it. It might also have something to do with the fact that pirates generally spend a lot more money on things than non pirates

Online cheating doesn't affect money flow for them so it doesn't matter. If it's a community complaint it goes near the bottom of their list, if it's a problem that involves them maybe getting less profit then it's at the top of their list.
 

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Guild McCommunist said:
Online cheating doesn't affect money flow for them so it doesn't matter.

Yes it does. It's cheaper to make a fun online multi-player game than a good single player one. For a start you don't need to put as much money into AI design, you don't need as many levels, or any where near as much design work putting into them. If people think there is no chance of playing a game without a bunch of cheats ruining it they won't buy the cheaper to make online games.
 

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Wintrale said:
So what Nintendo are saying is this... "Piracy isn't as much of an issue because we can always focus exclusively on casual titles that the pirates won't even want to pirate, instead of the ground-breaking titles that cater for both hardcore and casual gamers. We still make lots of money, potentially even more than before, and only one segment of our user base suffers."
You're just making your own baseless assumptions here. The article even says that the "ground breaking titles that cater for both hardcore and casual gamers" (in this case Mario Galaxy 2 and Pokemon BW) are selling like crazy and Nintendo attributes that to the quality that they put into the games.
 

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cwstjdenobs said:
Guild McCommunist said:
Online cheating doesn't affect money flow for them so it doesn't matter.

Yes it does. It's cheaper to make a fun online multi-player game than a good single player one. For a start you don't need to put as much money into AI design, you don't need as many levels, or any where near as much design work putting into them. If people think there is no chance of playing a game without a bunch of cheats ruining it they won't buy the cheaper to make online games.


Mario Kart Wii has its fair share of cheaters but it still sold over 22 million copies.

Nintendo's expertise is not in online gaming anyway. It's in single player or local multiplayer gaming. The only good Nintendo game that comes to mind that had a well-structured and enjoyable online was Mario Kart Wii (don't say SSBB had good online, it sucked online).

RaaTheGodEater said:
QUOTE(Wintrale @ Oct 9 2010, 09:52 AM)
So what Nintendo are saying is this... "Piracy isn't as much of an issue because we can always focus exclusively on casual titles that the pirates won't even want to pirate, instead of the ground-breaking titles that cater for both hardcore and casual gamers. We still make lots of money, potentially even more than before, and only one segment of our user base suffers."
You're just making your own baseless assumptions here. The article even says that the "ground breaking titles that cater for both hardcore and casual gamers" (in this case Mario Galaxy 2 and Pokemon BW) are selling like crazy and Nintendo attributes that to the quality that they put into the games.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Pokemon Black and White are far from groundbreaking. SMG was groundbreaking but SMG 2 was just a bunch of levels that played like SMG (even if it was still awesome). Pokemon Black and White is still using a decade-old gameplay formula with little else changed outside of making the combat look slightly fancier (not by much though) and some minor additions like every Pokemon game before it has done. Even then, SMG 2 and Pokemon B/W won't sell nearly as much as far less enjoyable games like Wii Play (which sucked but sold a bagillion copies) or Nintendogs (again, sucked but sold a bagillion copies).
 

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Guild McCommunist said:
Mario Kart Wii has its fair share of cheaters but it still sold over 22 million copies.

Nintendo's expertise is not in online gaming anyway. It's in single player or local multiplayer gaming. The only good Nintendo game that comes to mind that had a well-structured and enjoyable online was Mario Kart Wii (don't say SSBB had good online, it sucked online).

Can't really argue with you on that point, but MK:Wii is the game that I was thinking of that put a lot of people off of online play on the Wii.

And you seem to be forgetting third party devs. A lot of them do specialise in online. And they don't just pay for the SDKs. They have to get the DVDs pressed by Nintendo or a licensee, get the cases from Ninty (all money in Nintendos pocket even if the game flops), a percentage of the sale price of every copy sold (not the profits), a percentage of the sale price of every DLC/microtransaction, a cut for using their payment system on top of that, a cut for hosting the files on NUSD and probably bandwidth costs as well. It also wouldn't surprise me if games/apps had to use Nintendo servers, or at least go through them for the initial connection. Well except for maybe the streaming video services (iPlayer or Netflix or whatever).
 

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