Editorial: An Open Letter To Nintendo Of America

Disclaimer: These are the thoughts and opinions of Game-Boy and are not a reflection of the thoughts and feelings of GayGamer as a whole.

Dear Nintendo of America,

I hope that all is going well for you. I heard that the DSi has really taken off. Selling over a million DS/DSi's in one month is something to be quite proud of. However, the reason I'm writing today is because of something I don't think you should be so proud of. I'm speaking of the recent release of ExciteBots: Trick Racing, of course. According to Gamasutra, the bizarro-sequel to ExciteTruck only sold 13,000 copies in its month of release. While I realize that games don't evaporate one month after their launch and there's always to possibility that game sales can pick up thanks to word of mouth, it's safe to say that things don't look so good for your Bots at this point. Being one of the few people that picked the game up at this month I feel compelled to tell you that it's not the game's fault for this. I'm really enjoying the strange pairing of solid race mechanics and wacky minigames. It doesn't reinvent the wheel (or robot), but it's a solid racer and one that I'm happy to recommend to everyone with a Wii. So why didn't this game sell? If you ask me, I think the problem is with your marketing team.

To get to the bottom of this, let me take you back to when I purchased my Wii on launch day...

I'm a card-carrying Zelda fanboy, so when you announced that Twilight Princess would be available on launch day, I knew that I had to run out and pick up a system as soon as I could. As lengthy and epic as that game is, as soon as I defeated Ganon once again the next game I picked up was ExciteTruck. I immediately fell in love with the game and its unique vocabulary of quirkiness. I loved it so much that I persuaded many of my Wii-owning friends to give the title a chance by loaning my copy out. At this point I think that can say without a doubt that my copy of ExciteTruck has seen more use than my copy of Twilight Princess ever will. But as good as this game was I didn't pick it up because of raving reviews, a fantastic demo, or even seeing a commercial. I picked it up because there was nothing else available on Wii at that point that was worth my time.

Fast-forward to April 2009, we've already seen the release of Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros. Brawl, Metroid Prime 3, and a plethora of other incredible games. Any game that gets released at this point has some tough competition ahead of it. To make any type of impact on the market, a publisher really needs to know how to show a game off to generate any hype. I know that you guys know this because you're doing such a great job of getting the word out for some of your others games, but it felt like ExciteBots' press push was phoned in. It felt like you guys relying on the same "nothing better to play" rationale in which I purchased the first game without realizing that there are now other games worth playing on Wii.

It didn't help that the game was announced two months before its release with no screenshots or video available to the media for next week. While that might sound like a lot of time to drum up interest, that's like a few seconds in time for print media. If you were talking about Mario, Link, or Samus, magazines might have rearranged things at the last moment, but ExciteBots doesn't have that kind of pull so there was no chance it would get any favors.

There are a few other factors that only worked against the title, such as web-only trailers, a minimized at best presence on the Nintendo Channel, and the complete lack of a retail store demo, but when added together it seems like this game was sentenced to retail failure from day one. This is extremely disappointing because the game worth playing and the people that have the biggest vested interest in making it a success seem like the first group of people that gave up on it.

I'm not sure if you realize this, but you guys and gals over at Nintendo of America are a rather controversial figure on gamer forums at the moment. From the confusing selection of games that do/don't get localized to PR gaffs that insult the wishes of your own users, there are a lot of people who aren't happy with you right now. I used to think that you were simply misunderstood by most people and that you guys still knew a good game when they see it, but everything relating to ExciteBots points in the opposite direction. The next time you feel like releasing a game that's even slightly outside of your million selling casual fare, could you at least pretend that you're trying? You don't have to go all out, just some more advanced notice, screenshots that make sense, stuff like that. I know there are more than 13,000 people that would like to play games like this and I want them to know about them.

Your concerned pal,
-Game-Boy