Nintendo: Petitions "Don't Affect What We Do"

Hero of Lime

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Jun 3, 2013
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I think people are overreacting a bit. Now, I signed the petition for Operation Moonfall because I would LOVE a Majora's Mask remake either on 3DS or Wii U. Sure, Reggie said they don't take fan petitions that seriously. It sounds harsh, but it makes sense from a business standpoint. Even if Majora's Mask for example has gotten a lot more popular, they probably look at the original sales and realize it's a bigger risk. It could go either way, I know I would buy it day one, but how many other people are crazy about Majora's Mask? Ocarina of Time 3D was a no-brainer because of how popular the original was.

Let's face it folks, would you want to listen to the internet at large when making serious business decisions? I know I wouldn't. 100,000 signers not equaling 100,000 sales is a total simplification of a big issue, but it has some truth to it. It's easy to say "Take my money" when signing a petition, actually giving them your money takes a little more effort that many people may not follow through with.
 

katsabas

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Nintendo, here's your corner. Jump into it after taking your pill. You don't listen to your customers and the last Metroid you made was 7 years ago.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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Aug 30, 2011
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To be fair, some petitions are stupid. But often they are an indicator of a strong position. It's easier to not bother with a petition than to bother with it. 100 000 people agreeing isn't to be sneezed at.
 

Azkar Almsivi

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Sep 3, 2012
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Criticizing the basic concept of supply and demand...

If Nintendo wasted money trying to push a game almost nobody would buy in the grand scheme of things then I would be worried about them. All this thread does is put the 'entitlement is only a buzzword' stance back a year.
 
Sep 13, 2009
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Trishbot said:
Petitions like Operation Rainfall only benefited the company and got the game on the map, exposing great games to thousands of potential (and realized) buyers.

Reggie should have rephrased that message. Yes, there are other factors involved...

... but Xenoblade sold more than it did in Europe or Japan, despite Wii owners getting the game years later and basically towards the very end of the Wii's lifecycle when nearly everyone had abandoned it.

... Xenoblade being released earlier, and selling well, could have kept Wii momentum going and shown that great games can still sell on the humble system, rather than Nintendo themselves displaying a shocking lack of faith in such a great game.

... Xenoblade sold more than Europe and Japan, despite being only available directly from Nintendo or Gamestop. No Amazon, no Wal-mart, no Best Buy... and yet it SOLD OUT. Every last single new copy of the game is gone, with demand outstripping supply, and jacking up prices of used copies to nearly $100 due to Nintendo's unwillingness to do a second printing, indicating both their gross underestimation of the game's appeal, as well as their indifference at capitalizing on its success.

... Nintendo of America claim that the issue was the cost of "localizing" the game and the time and money it would need to do so... and yet all they did was use the localization of the European version, who actually spent the money and effort to translate and dub the game into English. All Nintendo of America did was change the region setting and print a few copies. They put in the absolute, most bare-bones effort into bringing the game to our shores, and they only did so after YEARS of waiting.

... The game still sold out despite die-hard JRPG fans importing the game from Europe, with even major websites like Destructoid and Kotaku giving players steps on how to mod your Wii just so you could play the game.

Xenoblade is easily one of the best JRPGs of all time, and easily one of the best Wii games in its library, and the fact Nintendo acted like it wasn't their responsibility and that an American audience didn't exist, when it eventually became a success (and might have been MORE of one had it had a wide release and a second printing so more people could buy it), just shows how... clueless... Nintendo is about their actual audience.

In fact, the Xenoblade successor on Wii U is the ONLY game that interests me for the system. Sorry Mario. Sorry Pikmin. Sorry Smash Bros. The follow-up to the game Nintendo almost couldn't be bothered to release in America is the game that would make me buy a system I'm not particularly interested in otherwise.

Seriously, Nintendo... you're a game company. You have ONE job. Release great games. If a great game fails, that's all on you, not the audience of the game that you failed to attract. Starving JRPG players proved that by making all three of those JRPGs you ignored successes once you actually put in the smallest modicum of effort to make them available.
I agree with absolutely everything here. The amount of effort to release the game in North America would have been trivial, and would have probably even paid for itself if only a couple thousand people had bought it, let alone the 100 thousand that signed the petition. How much money could it have really cost besides shipping? Really, their resistance to that confuses the hell out of me. They were only losing money and customer satisfaction if they didn't release it.

Also agreeing with you on the Wii U's X game. It's the only reason I'm even entertaining the idea of a Wii U, and as such I'm really hoping that it finds some way to another console release.

That ex-sony executive was completely on the ball when he said that Nintendo is pretty much done as a hardware manufacturer. The only reason that anyone would even consider buying their console is for their exclusives. In fact, buying their console is acting as a deterrence to buying their games. I feel like everyone would end up happier and richer if Nintendo just released their games for all consoles and left the hardware market entirely. Except for the 3DS, that's still doing decently
 

SaberXIII

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Desert Punk said:
Well, now I can just laugh at N fanboys when they say that Nintendo actually cares about the fans. Nope, its all about the cold hard yen for them
Actually, that's still debatable. I've seen a lot of petitions go around, but what you're assuming is that fans know what they're talking about. We all think we know what'd be a good move for a company, be it in how it does things or what it releases where, but in reality we don't really have the faintest clue. If Nintendo took notice of a bunch of petitions it would probably be a really stupid move.
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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A lot of people signing a petition doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. If Nintendo simply gave fans whatever they asked for we wouldn't have gotten Windwaker. In fact the "endless flow of Mario and Zelda games" that Nintendo detractors love to go on about, is basically the result of giving fans just what they ask for. I'm not saying it's good practice to ignore petitions, but they should definitely be taken with a grain of salt, which is more or less what it sounds like he's saying here.
 

Karadalis

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Atmos Duality said:
BigTuk said:
So in other words. 'We don't listen to what our consumers and potential consumers have to say. Suddenly every decision from the Wii onwards makes perfect sense....
Funny thing about that: the Wii made them a spectacular sum of money.
And in the end cost them the Wii U cause everyone who bought the Wii got seriously burned by the lack of "real" games, what with all the crap shovelware games that drowned the entire Wii lineup beneath it.

The days where zelda, metroid and mario alone sold a nintendo product are long gone. To bad nintendo doesnt realize it.
 

The Apple BOOM

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Nov 16, 2012
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The Almighty Aardvark said:
Also agreeing with you on the Wii U's X game. It's the only reason I'm even entertaining the idea of a Wii U, and as such I'm really hoping that it finds some way to another console release.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_Soft

Nintendo owns them. Currently, seeing X on any other platform has as much of a chance of happening as Bayonetta 2.
 

Foolery

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Jun 5, 2013
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Nintendo needs to wise up. Their traditional core franchises don't have as much relevance as they used to. If they were smart, they would have waited. Imagine if the Wii U had launched with X and Super Mario 3D World. And while we're at it, let's call the system the Wii 2 to avoid consumer confusion. Instead, we've had a full year with next to no notable releases other than Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Wind Waker HD. Good games, but nothing really new or much of a system seller. There's also plenty of interesting IPs that Nintendo could bring back. Mach Rider, Custom Robo, Mother, Wario, Metroid, F-Zero, Golden Sun. Give people a reason to buy the Wii U, beyond Mario and Zelda. And for fuck's sake stop region locking games. If Capcom or whomever refuses to localize a title, on a Playstation system, at least I have the option of importing it.

So, should Nintendo seriously listen to every little thing consumers have to say? No.
But they should take note of trends, and pay attention to when certain things are voiced on a large scale.
 

soulfire130

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Jun 15, 2010
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I got to agree with Nintendo on this. You can't always give your audience everthing it wants. Nintendo isn't disregarding what it audience says, its taking it into consideration and weighing it against different factors. It makes sense to me.
 

Roxas1359

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Aug 8, 2009
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While I agree that listening to all fan-petition is not wise business wise at all, however completely disregarding them is a complete and utterly stupid move. Also, the fact that it really wouldn't be hard to localize games, especially since it was localized in Europe before the US so all that had to be changed was the games being reprinted for US discs, because Nintendo obviously isn't gonna be getting rid of region locking soon.
 

ccggenius12

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MinionJoe said:
Submitting to a petition with 100,000 signatures may not result in 100,000 sales, but ignoring a petition with 100,000 signatures definitely results in 0 sales.
AND 0 expenses.
"Hey guys, lets pile on the publicly traded company for having to consider profits when making decisions, instead of blindly doing what the internet says."
I'm not saying people's opinions are worthless, I'm just saying that they'd carry a lot more weight if they had a monetary promise attached to them. I too am a fan of the idea wherein the ventures that are a bit on the risky side feature a kickstarter-esque pre-buying phase. A company like Nintendo knows how much something needs to earn for it to be worth doing, and putting the onus on the consumers to prove there's a real demand would be a very progressive move.
It worked for Mighty No. 9. (This coming from No. 70703)
 

BNguyen

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Dark Knifer said:
Nintendo seems to be getting worse with PR as of late. Not as bad as ubisoft and all that but people seem to hold them to a higher standard over those sort of things as they never tried to actively piss people off before but now they do seem to saying fuck off to fans like most game publishers have been doing.

Not cool nintendo, just realese your damn games.
MinionJoe said:
Submitting to a petition with 100,000 signatures may not result in 100,000 sales, but ignoring a petition with 100,000 signatures definitely results in 0 sales.
and 100,000 sales do not make up for the millions that they would lose in developing a product, advertising it and finally paying back the developers, artists, graphic designers, etc. needed to make a profit.
a game sold only to what amounts to a meager handful of people in an economic sense would tank the company that worked to make it

I hate it when people can't seem to think things like this through.
Maybe if a petition had several million people sign it, then things would look better and Nintendo would work towards making those fans happy, but until then, I say, Nintendo, work in the way that will keep you going
 

BNguyen

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Desert Punk said:
SaberXIII said:
Desert Punk said:
Well, now I can just laugh at N fanboys when they say that Nintendo actually cares about the fans. Nope, its all about the cold hard yen for them
Actually, that's still debatable. I've seen a lot of petitions go around, but what you're assuming is that fans know what they're talking about. We all think we know what'd be a good move for a company, be it in how it does things or what it releases where, but in reality we don't really have the faintest clue. If Nintendo took notice of a bunch of petitions it would probably be a really stupid move.
You mean the fans might know what they want to spend their money on? A shocking concept there...

It is true that we might not know what the best move for a company is, but for things like operation rainfall, where they already had the english language version in the european market, and only had to change the region code and print disks, it is pretty damn stupid not to do so when even a smaller portion of the petition would cover the costs and make a profit it is stupid to ignore the fans.

Another thing that entertains me, whenever there is a petition companies are quick to point out that not everyone of those would be a customer, but when piracy or used games pop up those are obviously 1:1 lost sales.
even if a game was made for the region that requests it, what makes you think that piracy will stop? People pirate goods because it costs them next to nothing when compared to the idea of buying the actual product. I'm not saying that releasing the game or whatever would be a bad idea, but seriously, a company needs to look out for its best interests instead of a handful of fans on an internet petition where only a few thousand have signed it.