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Non-Hentai Video Games / Re: It's a thread! (Games discussion, etc.)
« Last post by JG on November 11, 2025, 11:01:58 am »Last year I really hit Nintendo's marketing wing hard for a number of missteps, such as bumbling through the month of October. (Continuing into 2025, stomping all over the DK Country Returns launch with a very unimpressive Switch 2 reveal trailer, then forgetting they never covered Xenoblade Chronicles X in a Direct or Twitter videos until review embargoes lifted and places like IGN started properly covering it.)
This Metroid Prime 4 deal really takes the cake, though. If you asked me on January 1 what known 2025 game needed a Nintendo Direct the most (choices being DK Country Returns HD, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Pokemon Legends Z-A, and Metroid Prime 4), then Metroid Prime 4 would certainly be the one to cover. Its been 18 years since the last Prime game, which is far longer absence than the other series, is probably Nintendo's most expensive game ever, is a series that has soft appeal in Japan and needs more advertising there, and its (re-)introducing a major antagonist that only the hardcore-ist of fans know anything about in Sylux. If you then told me we'd have NINE Nintendo Directs in 2025, and not one of them was for Metroid Prime 4, I'd have through you crazy and Nintendo insane. Jury is still out on you, but Nintendo... hard to debate it.
In the west, its been bad. Very bad. Almost but not quite terrible, thanks to last week's recent trailer which actually started to make the game look as good as we expect. We saw too much of the Federation research base and the forest level of Viewros, and not enough other biomes, and every second of Samus footage made her look slow, as if constantly walking under water. And despite being a 4K/60fps and 1080p/120fps game, which is raw power Nintendo should promote, all they did was a small text caption for a mere 2 seconds in the April 2 show and didn't mention it again until the latest trailer. Got about 40 minutes of Treehouse coverage in April, but the Nintendo-employee assigned to do the game had no idea what to do and terribly struggled using the mouse controls - they spent nearly half an hour fruitlessly battling the game's first boss and couldn't hit the weak points, which only served to make the game look unplayable. Nintendo needed to correct the Treehouse debacle with new video and just wouldn't do it. And until the recent trailer, everything looked like it was in slow-motion: Samus was moving like she was walking underwater and the psychic beams took several seconds to make their way through enemies. Add in the London Underground ad snafu and you can tell this was badly handled on multiple fronts.
In Japan, the market where Metroid needed the most advertising to overcome disinterest, its been even worse. All they've ever seen are the three bad trailers. They still haven't even got the good trailer the west got last week or the new Power Up Your Play campaign video that shows some Metroid Prime4 gameplay in it. neither are on Nintendo's Japanese Twitter or Youtube page and I'm not even sure if they get them. At some point, Nintendo's marketing department just completely gave up on the game in Japan, despite it being the most important market to advertise in. Failing without trying is not the Nintendo way. (Japan also never got the retrospective art book, which Nintendo had known about for well over a year and could have easily found a Japanese publisher to print.)
Then there's what Nintendo did do this year instead. The Mario Kart World Direct is widely viewed as the worst game-focused Direct they've ever made. It showed nothing that the April 2 show didn't except a few P-switch puzzles: it wasn't remotely needed, especially a mere two weeks after the April 2 show covered the same stuff and still seven weeks to launch. (Had it been done in May, it might have landed with more success.) After DK Bananza's Direct, I think just about every Nintendo fan expected one for Metroid Prime 4, but it never arrived. Once we got the December release date, we all knew a Direct would likely occur in October, as game-focused Directs are usually around 7-10 weeks lead time. With only Pokemon Z-A mid-month, there was plenty of time to work in Metroid Prime 4 coverage. Instead, we got that Pikmin Close to You video in early October, which could have been done at any other time, so a week of advertising was sacrificed there that did nothing to help game sales. We got an unprecedented second Air Riders Direct when one was enough and the over hour and forty minutes combined of the two could have easily been condensed to a single hour with better editing, so they lost the third week of October for just doing something that hadn't ever been done before and didn't need to be done at all. Then in the final week of October, they do the Animal Crossing DLC promotion. ACNH sold well, nearly up to 50 million copies. But with DLC at only $5 a pop, and even a best-case scenario of 20% attach rate for a five-year old game, Nintendo's going to pull down $50 million USD at most. Metroid Prime 4 will clear that in about a million sales. Is Nintendo really trying to tell fans that MP4's sales potential is less than a million copies!? If its that bad, why spend a small fortune to make the game? They made the game, now they have to do the job to sell it - and just aren't trying. Now, here, in the last possible week to advertise, we're getting the Super Mario Galaxy movie trailer that we should have seen as part of the September 12 year-long celebration kick-off. This whole arrangement through October and November was planned, and planned to ensure Metroid Prime 4 never got any advertising window after September 12. Shame on Nintendo.
Not to mention the lack of a Metroid Prime 2 and 3 game to fill out the Metroid slate on Switch, something they have done similar sized series like Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion. They had eight years to prepare for the launch of this game, and eighteen months from announcement last summer to launch in a few weeks. Only two Nintendo-published games have gotten 18 months of lead time in the last ten years: Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp, delayed for external reasons, and Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo's previously most expensive title. More than enough time to do it right; embarrassing to get it so wrong. Nintendo just simply failed Retro Studios and the fans.
I really hope the sales are there and it's in the Metroid Dread sales level despite Nintendo's poor coverage of the game. It really looks like the desire to not advertise the game is a backdoor method to ensure the game sales are less, and this would give Nintendo an opportunity to close their most expensive studio and use the money elsewhere on cheaper-to-make games. It'll be very disheartening if Nintendo closes the studio because of lower than expected sales, when it wasn't Retro's fault.
This Metroid Prime 4 deal really takes the cake, though. If you asked me on January 1 what known 2025 game needed a Nintendo Direct the most (choices being DK Country Returns HD, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Pokemon Legends Z-A, and Metroid Prime 4), then Metroid Prime 4 would certainly be the one to cover. Its been 18 years since the last Prime game, which is far longer absence than the other series, is probably Nintendo's most expensive game ever, is a series that has soft appeal in Japan and needs more advertising there, and its (re-)introducing a major antagonist that only the hardcore-ist of fans know anything about in Sylux. If you then told me we'd have NINE Nintendo Directs in 2025, and not one of them was for Metroid Prime 4, I'd have through you crazy and Nintendo insane. Jury is still out on you, but Nintendo... hard to debate it.
In the west, its been bad. Very bad. Almost but not quite terrible, thanks to last week's recent trailer which actually started to make the game look as good as we expect. We saw too much of the Federation research base and the forest level of Viewros, and not enough other biomes, and every second of Samus footage made her look slow, as if constantly walking under water. And despite being a 4K/60fps and 1080p/120fps game, which is raw power Nintendo should promote, all they did was a small text caption for a mere 2 seconds in the April 2 show and didn't mention it again until the latest trailer. Got about 40 minutes of Treehouse coverage in April, but the Nintendo-employee assigned to do the game had no idea what to do and terribly struggled using the mouse controls - they spent nearly half an hour fruitlessly battling the game's first boss and couldn't hit the weak points, which only served to make the game look unplayable. Nintendo needed to correct the Treehouse debacle with new video and just wouldn't do it. And until the recent trailer, everything looked like it was in slow-motion: Samus was moving like she was walking underwater and the psychic beams took several seconds to make their way through enemies. Add in the London Underground ad snafu and you can tell this was badly handled on multiple fronts.
In Japan, the market where Metroid needed the most advertising to overcome disinterest, its been even worse. All they've ever seen are the three bad trailers. They still haven't even got the good trailer the west got last week or the new Power Up Your Play campaign video that shows some Metroid Prime4 gameplay in it. neither are on Nintendo's Japanese Twitter or Youtube page and I'm not even sure if they get them. At some point, Nintendo's marketing department just completely gave up on the game in Japan, despite it being the most important market to advertise in. Failing without trying is not the Nintendo way. (Japan also never got the retrospective art book, which Nintendo had known about for well over a year and could have easily found a Japanese publisher to print.)
Then there's what Nintendo did do this year instead. The Mario Kart World Direct is widely viewed as the worst game-focused Direct they've ever made. It showed nothing that the April 2 show didn't except a few P-switch puzzles: it wasn't remotely needed, especially a mere two weeks after the April 2 show covered the same stuff and still seven weeks to launch. (Had it been done in May, it might have landed with more success.) After DK Bananza's Direct, I think just about every Nintendo fan expected one for Metroid Prime 4, but it never arrived. Once we got the December release date, we all knew a Direct would likely occur in October, as game-focused Directs are usually around 7-10 weeks lead time. With only Pokemon Z-A mid-month, there was plenty of time to work in Metroid Prime 4 coverage. Instead, we got that Pikmin Close to You video in early October, which could have been done at any other time, so a week of advertising was sacrificed there that did nothing to help game sales. We got an unprecedented second Air Riders Direct when one was enough and the over hour and forty minutes combined of the two could have easily been condensed to a single hour with better editing, so they lost the third week of October for just doing something that hadn't ever been done before and didn't need to be done at all. Then in the final week of October, they do the Animal Crossing DLC promotion. ACNH sold well, nearly up to 50 million copies. But with DLC at only $5 a pop, and even a best-case scenario of 20% attach rate for a five-year old game, Nintendo's going to pull down $50 million USD at most. Metroid Prime 4 will clear that in about a million sales. Is Nintendo really trying to tell fans that MP4's sales potential is less than a million copies!? If its that bad, why spend a small fortune to make the game? They made the game, now they have to do the job to sell it - and just aren't trying. Now, here, in the last possible week to advertise, we're getting the Super Mario Galaxy movie trailer that we should have seen as part of the September 12 year-long celebration kick-off. This whole arrangement through October and November was planned, and planned to ensure Metroid Prime 4 never got any advertising window after September 12. Shame on Nintendo.
Not to mention the lack of a Metroid Prime 2 and 3 game to fill out the Metroid slate on Switch, something they have done similar sized series like Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion. They had eight years to prepare for the launch of this game, and eighteen months from announcement last summer to launch in a few weeks. Only two Nintendo-published games have gotten 18 months of lead time in the last ten years: Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp, delayed for external reasons, and Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo's previously most expensive title. More than enough time to do it right; embarrassing to get it so wrong. Nintendo just simply failed Retro Studios and the fans.
I really hope the sales are there and it's in the Metroid Dread sales level despite Nintendo's poor coverage of the game. It really looks like the desire to not advertise the game is a backdoor method to ensure the game sales are less, and this would give Nintendo an opportunity to close their most expensive studio and use the money elsewhere on cheaper-to-make games. It'll be very disheartening if Nintendo closes the studio because of lower than expected sales, when it wasn't Retro's fault.
