Continuing my quest to never get laid, I spent a Saturday cross-checking GameRankings review scores against VGChartz sales numbers.  As of January 15th, 213 games have sold one-million copies on the three seventh-generation consoles, reception ranging from dreadful to legendary.  Armed with this data, I ask: What can we learn about the seventh generation of video games with this data?

Bad games can be purchased for any console.  Many sell.  But never have so many sold irrespectively of “quality”.  And the majority of this business is taking place on the Nintendo Wii.

Yeah, reviewers have biases.  They enjoy Microsoft’s wallet.  They would have married Grand Theft Auto IV if they were allowed to.  But on a “compiling thousands of reviews for hundreds of games” basis, I’m willing to hear the opinion of those who enjoy the medium for a living.

(more…)

Hooray, more useless data!

A thesis will be on the way.  Data mining is serious business.

Update: The Gears of War category is not “PS3 and PC”.  Fixed to reflect that.

Just doing some data mining.  I’ll leave you to make something of the console-exclusive results until I finish making sense of the extended data.

Oh, and fuck the Nintendo Wii.

Sixty million reasons Wii Sports got a square.

Update: Added the names of all titles that sold more than four million copies.

Update 2: Replaced Forza Motorsport 2 with Gears of War, which was featured in a half-assed PC port.  Mah badz.

Update 3: JPEG compression wrecked the picture quality, replaced with PNG format.

Industry analysts have spoken: People who don’t care about video games don’t buy video games.

True to analysts’ predictions, the gaming industry was not able to lure consumers in increasing numbers to retail in October. As detailed in The NPD Group’s US retail sales report yesterday, industry sales were down a cringe-inducing 19 percent from October 2008 to $1.07 billion. Hardware took a particular thumping, dipping 23 percent to $381 million, while software slipped a greater-than-expected 18 percent to $573 million.

According to a pair of analysts, October sales indicate that casual gamers are largely at fault for the continued decline in industry sales. As noted by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research’s Jesse Divnich, casual gamers haven’t returned to buy more gaming goods this year. Further, he believes this group will continue to stay away until the arrival of new hardware from platform manufacturers, such as Microsoft’s Project Natal or a new DS from Nintendo.

If I’ve learned anything from cable news, people will assert that “Nobody saw this collapse coming.”

In January of 2008, one month after starting this blog, I wrote the following:

The last time the video game industry built a sizable base of casual gamers, they called the aftermath the Video Game Crash of 1983. The last time a video game console built a sizable base of casual gamers? It appears Nintendo is about to write that chapter.

I affirmed it in December of the same year:

Here’s the problem: The two demographics Nintendo holds the keys to are not laurels of long-term success, and I believe that if things go south, the company will stick to this model.  As discussed, there’s no indication that youngsters will stick with Nintendo as they become older.  The GameCube was an extension of the Nintendo 64 model and it paid the price.  This time, Nintendo convinced parents to join their kids, and it’s so easy anyone can get involved.  Casual gamers tend to do one of two things: Look for more complex gameplay experiences or stop playing altogether.  And right now, there isn’t a single person who knows which road the older generation is going to take.

…

[A] company is using a library of tech demos and fitness software to push two million gaming consoles in a single month.  This bubble will burst, it’s just a matter of who’s caught in the blast.

After years of selling gaming consoles marketed towards younger kids, Nintendo became the heir to an aging audience and a world of market volatility. Wii Sports couldn’t guarantee success in the future.  According to VGChartz’ hardware database, the Nintendo Wii sold 23.7 million units in 2008.  Thirty percent of those sales occurred in the last forty-five days of the year.  Should holiday sales remain consistent, the Nintendo Wii will sell approximately 16.0 million units in 2009.  Yes, down one-third for the calendar year.

I enjoy waking up in the morning and knowing that I am right.  Perhaps Nintendo will announce a Wii-Mote Detonator add-on to commemorate this potentially-historic implosion.

Credit to The_Earth for the news story.

Just wanted to throw this out there as a supplement for my response to Nintendo’s E3 presentation.  Wii Sports may be the pack-in game, but consider that many people are buying the system for that one game, and variations of.

Microsoft Paint: It’s Fan-tastic!

Edit: The stats were compiled using VGChartz‘ open database.  One of the best gaming reference tools on the internet, as far as I’m concerned.

The Battle.net forums (a.k.a. my only friends) were curious as to why I soured on Nintendo’s E3 showing.  Yes, the ridiculous peripheral that checks your heart rate would’ve been cool about three Trauma Centers ago, but that’s not what annoyed me. Their E3 press conference was headlined by two Mario games, a new Metroid game, and an additional installment of Golden Sun.  I have come to the conclusion that Nintendo marketing has two gears: Franchise necromancy, and “more than a gaming console, it’s a lifestyle”.  The latter is fairly new and hasn’t been tested by history.  However, the former has.  History already told us this approach nearly took Nintendo the grave.

I’ll keep typing this story until carpal tunnel forces me to scream it, at which point I’ll scream it until I lose my voice: In the late 90’s, Nintendo spawned competition from the ashes of a CD-Rom fiascofuck.  When Squaresoft defected, Sony vs. Nintendo turned into Zerg vs. Protoss: An army of few fighting the endless onslaught.  And you know what?  Give Nintendo credit.  They executed their side of the bargain flawlessly.  Ocarina of Time may be the best console game ever, Mario 64 set a high bar for 3-D gaming, Goldeneye was the prelude to America’s infatuation with the console shooter, and Mario Kart 64 became the party game…

…and Sony fucking destroyed them.

An incredible A-list offering couldn’t do it then, and it won’t do it now.

It wasn’t even close.  With a game library that was deep at almost every position, the Playstation would outsell the Nintendo 64 by a three-to-one margin.  For reasons unknown to observers, Nintendo persisted.  The GameCube was a true successor to the Nintendo 64.  But this round, Nintendo botched their first-party offering. Metroid Prime and Super Smash Brothers: Melee were undoubtedly classics, but even Mario had a rough outing.  Their committed fans, half a decade older, made the decision that Nintendo wasn’t growing up with them.  They jumped to the more “mature” experience offered by the Playstation 2, doing their best to find comfort in the most successful gaming console ever.

In 2005, because of these events and decisions taken by Nintendo, the company was gaming’s equivalent of the Democratic Party.  They were dead, they weren’t coming back, and nobody was giving them a chance.  Then, Nintendo’s opponents slipped.  Microsoft unveiled the X-Box Hindenburg, and Sony thought people would pay six-hundred dollars for a product that wasn’t capable of cold fusion.  Then Nintendo found its Barry O.  On the heels of a curious controller and a tech demo, Nintendo brought themselves fiscal hope, and change for the consumer.  By 2008, Nintendo’s strategy reclaimed them the throne.  To-date, the three best-selling (Edit: “Best” isn’t the right term for it) games on the Nintendo Wii have accounted for a jaw-dropping eighty-eight million copies sold.  Those three games are Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit.

Nintendo transcended their game system into a chic device for the casual consumer.  They did this because waving Mario and Zelda in front of you stopped working about fifteen years ago.  So now, why am I supposed to believe a press conference headlined by the Mario equivalent of LittleBigPlanet is a sign of good things to come?  Nintendo hasn’t proven to me that they’ve been capable of this approach in nearly a dozen years, and nothing indicates they can pull it off now.

The “greatest games” debate summons the hissy-fit in all of us. Enter a 2007 blog entry from CNet’s Don Reisinger. When Edge Magazine’s readers voted Ocarina of Time as the greatest game ever, he was “appalled”. Reisinger’s choice of words won’t resonate with the guy who works two jobs to keep a roof over his head, but I’ll hear him out on his choice.

Super Mario Bros. ushered in a new era for video games. The days of stick figures running around on the screen while they shot at another illegible object had finally given way to an Italian plumber named Mario and his twin brother Luigi. The Super Mario Bros. gameplay was truly second to none, and if you were to pick up the game today, you would still consider it the most rock-solid gameplay experience of your life. The story was, well, Mario-ish, but we didn’t play that game for the story; we played it for the experience. In one fell swoop, one video game (one!) raised up a crippled video game market, and set the stage for an entirely new experience playing video games.

Super Mario Brothers strikes me as a curious pick. It was a decent game that thrived on an innovative concept. As a result, it became a wildly-successful introduction to a famous franchise and became the world’s best-selling video game.  It gave Nintendo a commanding market share.  It spawned a disgusting amount of imitators.  Ultimately, it became the face of gaming for its generation.

Know why it strikes me curious? Because I just described Wii Sports, and nobody’s discussing that game’s place in the Pantheon.

Go ahead.  It’s okay to talk about them in the same conversation.

For fourteen months, this blog has been a sound-off on that evil Nintendo console. Am I worried for the future of the product when a game console wins its generation with a gimmick whose potential hasn’t been utilized? Absolutely. The history of video games suggested this was impossible. But my opinion won’t change the course of what has been a revolution.  If Nintendo hadn’t made the decision to ship their console with a fun tech demo, it’s possible this decade would be the return of an American console manufacturer to the throne that Atari vacated twenty-five years ago. Coming into the decade, Nintendo was the kid-friendly, out-of-touch game giant that got their ass kicked by Sony. Instead, Nintendo redefined family game night and Wii Sports became the most important game of the decade.

Minus the Time Magazine review that mentioned “it might be the greatest videogame ever made” (but not before mentioning “other [launch] games, such as Legend of Zelda…looked okay”), few have gone on the record to make the claim. Casual gamers aren’t going to get on the internet and make an impassioned defense of Wii Sports. Core gamers aren’t making the comparison because the Wii stands for everything they hate. If you don’t believe placing Mario and Wii Sports in the same sentence is borderline blasphemy, Don Resinger struck again last month.

I’m more than a little upset by the news of Wii Sports taking the top sales spot from Super Mario Bros. Suffice it to say that in my mind, regardless of sales, Wii Sports will never compare to any fine franchise and to compare it as such is an insult to those titles.

Yep. “[A] little upset”, “an insult”, “will never compare to any fine franchise”. Give Reisinger credit: He is fluent in fanboy.  Considering that the top-fifty-selling games of all-time are a “Who’s Who” of both casual gaming and the greatest games of all-time, it’ll be interesting to see when the top-seller gets its due.

More fun with The Ultimate History of Video Games:

Atari had deeply rooted problems that eventually infected the entire game industry. During its heyday, Atari became top-heavy with marketers and other executives. As several ex-Atari people later described the situation, the company had entirely abandoned its carefree youth and become a home for MBAs.

With the continuing growth of video games, some executives began to believe that they could sell anything as long as it came packaged as a video game.

Is it any surprise why I spend so much time railing on the Wii?  The only difference is that while Atari had no way of stopping third-party production, Nintendo merely doesn’t care.  Steve Race was V.P. of Atari’s international marketing division?  In the book, he recalls one of the underrated moments in Atari’s downfall:

We had 24- and 26-year-old MBAs running around making multimillion-dollar decisions.  I remember shortly after I first joined Atari, I guess I had been there for less [sic] then a month, and they had just signed up to do a video rendition of Rubik’s Cube.

There was a woman who was running the marketing for the North American side of the business, and she came up to me and asked me if international [the International division of Atari] would be interested in marketing it internationally.  And I said, “No.  Absolutely not.”

She was quite surprised that I could make a decision that quickly, and she said, “Well, why wouldn’t you be interested in it?”

I said, “Well, you’re going to have to help me understand why a 40$ electronic rendition of this product is better than the $3.98 [original] rendition that is more portable and that I can take anywhere I want. When you can convince me of that, I’ll be happy to consider this for International.”

Rubik’s Cube went on to be an incredibly bad disaster.

Go ahead and laugh.

Now cry.

I’ve repeated it numerous times: The history of gaming has been written by those with the best product.  I’ve believed the industry could protect itself from “mainstream marketing” because you need to offer a playable product to get away with it.  When I said this, I was unaware the war crime known as Carnival Games had sold 2.5 million units, and that Game Party (owner of a 22% review average) was a million-seller.  For the first time, it appears a console will win its generation without the best game library.  The Wii was supposed to be an outpost for geniuses with small budgets, and instead became host for parasites such as Data Design and Cat Daddy Games.  But Nintendo just moved two million Wiis in the month of November.  As long as the money bin continues to fill with real forms of currency, they don’t give a shit.

See what happens when you divide and conquer?  When Ross Perot steals George Bush’s votes?  Why are you laughing?

The very irony of Nintendo’s dominance over Sony’s burning carcass is that the latter conducted the same marketing strategy to defeat the Nintendo 64.  As Nintendo pushed their kid-friendly gaming into three dimensions, Sony chose to target a new market: Young adults with disposable income.  Nintendo bet the farm that their base would remain loyal to the product and got bitchslapped for it.  So 2005 came, and Nintendo pushed the Sony approach to the entire family.  As Sony and Microsoft clawed to win the wallets of teens and young adults, Nintendo got an uncontested battle to secure the hearts of everyone else.  Several well-marketed products later, and Nintendo won the generation.  No word but ‘brilliant’ can describe their approach.

Here’s the problem: The two demographics Nintendo holds the keys to are not laurels of long-term success, and I believe that if things go south, the company will stick to this model.  As discussed, there’s no indication that youngsters will stick with Nintendo as they become older.  The GameCube was an extension of the Nintendo 64 model and it paid the price.  This time, Nintendo convinced parents to join their kids, and it’s so easy anyone can get involved.  Casual gamers tend to do one of two things: Look for more complex gameplay experiences or stop playing altogether.  And right now, there isn’t a single person who knows which road the older generation is going to take.  If children move away from Nintendo as they grow up, and the parents get sick of video games, things are going to turn ugly very fast.

This guess could be as good as yours.  If you travelled back three years and asked me what I thought of Nintendo’s chances with family gaming, I’d still be laughing today.  They obviously proved me wrong.  There’s enough factors in play (soaring development costs, saturated market, potential global depression) that affirming absolute conviction to my outlook would be insane.  But a company is using a library of tech demos and fitness software to push two million gaming consoles in a single month.  This bubble will burst, it’s just a matter of who’s caught in the blast.

If you’re curious to see what’s selling in the mainstream, GameSpot’s rabid appetite for trendsetters is worth scoping.  After traversing the used game section and coming out alive, I was lucky to stumble upon the state of Nintendo’s sales approach:

Pictured: The urge to kill…rising.

Leave fake lightsaers to assume the gaping hole where the Wii’s entertainment value should be.  Nintendo isn’t responsible for the third-party add-ons plaguing sales racks, but their track record of Power Gloves and Rumble Paks encourage it.  Remember, this is the company so paranoid about piracy that they doomed the Nintendo 64 to the outdated cartridge format.  And guess what?  It will always be more difficult to download a fake tennis racket than Super Smash Brothers.

The reality is that retail outlets are phasing out PC games to make room for this crap.  Your alternative?  For the twenty bucks you could drop on something that adds nothing to the game, you could buy Starcraft.  I hear it was a good game and it has a sequel coming out soon.