Topic: ¿Why does Nintendo hate its own JRPGs like Golden Sun and Mother?

@roy130390 ok calm down. Nice avi btw

Back on topic. Another RPG that died that would be great to resurrect is the Star Tropics IP.

Didnt Mother's creator once say he has no plans for a Mother 4?

As for Golden Sun, they had a DS sequel after many folks begged for it. I don't recall it selling to well did it?

@Samus7Killer Nintendo has to make judgments based upon ROI and like I said originally we have no idea what will happen in the future. Also Nintendo would have to be wary of spreading themselves too thin. Why back two essentially dead franchises with new entries when they have an existing RPG series with Mario and Luigi and Xenoblade (point I'm making is not if you like it but that it is a JRPG that they are supporting the genre with their own second party entry)? In my book second party is essentially first party as it is a cheaper easier way to build a dev team for a game. So that also means they are backing the Xenoblade series for the more "hard core" (marketing terms are so silly) fans. Then from a planning perspective they have third parties picking up the slack. Level 5 alone has churned out so many RPGs in the 3ds era that Nintendo is likely trying to avoid redundancy.

Fans tend to look at things in a vacuum. They see how much that they enjoyed a specific franchise or world or story and forget that to share holders and to execs trying to plan on where to allot teams, after a point it becomes fantasy story number 22. If a third party is doing that type game or something similar already or Nintendo themselves have something in the pipeline that uses existing assets or a more popular IP draping (a bunch of the Mario spinoffs don't have to be Mario really , but they likely wouldn't sell half as well really because people flock to the familiar...same could be said for begging for old games to be ported or continued as well.)

Again you are using hyperbolic language and much of what you said is in line with what a lot of other "scum" say before they start demanding someone's head at NOA or NOJ so you'll pardon me for responding in general terms. Like I said previously I consider the insanity that people spew at hard working employees to be more of a slap in the face rather than a joke skit. Imagine for one second if you had that sort of backlash at your day to day job. What you deem to be "hate" or "letting it go to waste" is simply a business decision.

In a perfect world companies would have creative budgets to make every game they every wanted (as long as they FINISH making them) but that just isn't how business works. My comment about speech was in response your derision that because you made a statement here on a Nintendo fan forum that was the reason you were being disagreed with and that "Nintendo fans were blind" rather than your post makes little business or logical sense from a dev perspective. However my writing style is a mix of straightforward and sardonic tones (your reply to me didn't help and it seemed to be overly emotional as well) so while the majority of what I said was general and neutral I want to clarify that I wasn't attacking you, merely responding. Neutrally at first and then with incredulity in my second response.

Nintendo is in a horribly precarious situation because of the size of their IP catalog. People demand to play the same old games and then get mad when focus is shifted away from new things. Or worse people want games that from a sales perspective would be an actual waste of resources because of the low ROI.

Yeah Itoi said he is done with it. And GS LA did pretty poorly sales wise (The Lost Age sold 437,000 and 249,000 units in the United States and Japan, respectively.). It was a great series but more of a cult classic rather than anything that could be banked upon. Besides both games were supposedly originally conceived as one game. So with LA sales doing worse than GS I think that killed any chance of it getting a true sequel to the story line. From what I heard DD almost was sort of a "here please stop begging" sort of game.

Edit: Typos abound.

Third'd.

Fourth'd.

It's easy to look at things like this from a fan point of view and not from the view of a business and its building blocks (third parties, investors, etc.). At the end of the day, while customer service is a thing, Nintendo's ultimate goal is to make money. I could continue, but I feel that other users have already explained things quite well.

In my personal opinion, Nintendo is doing a better job with their IPs right now than they have been for some time. They are taking some risks with new IPs, some that seem to be paying off more than others (Splatoon, ARMS). While there are some dormant IPs that could receive a little more attention, they have been asking about Advance Wars and Metroid is far from dead.

I played Earthbound a few months ago for the first time and loved the game. I'm currently playing through Beginnings on the Wii U VC, and while it's certainly rough around the edges, it isn't an impossible game and has already had some enjoyable bits. I would love for Mother 3 to be localized, but it clearly isn't a #1 priority at present. I can patiently wait for it, though some of that is because my backlog is already quite full of RPGs. XD

As for Golden Sun, I have the first game on the VC but haven't really touched it yet. I've heard great things about the first two games. The third, from what I understand, had a mixed reception; you either like it or you hate it. That may be partially why another GS entry hasn't shown up in a little while.

@Tyranexx Give it three years without a Zelda game

@Haru17: I'm somewhat backlogged on those as well, so I could wait three years. XD I still need to get to Wind Waker HD (hopefully soonish), Tri Force Heroes (doubt I'll 100% it), Twilight Princess HD, I still need to play through OoT 3D's Master Quest, play Majora's Mask 3D, and wheezing gasp that juggernaut Breath of the Wild.

I'd say I'm set for a little while yet.

Edit: And I still need to get a hold of Four Swords Adventures at some point.

Don't forget this game also.

Fans have been asking for that one for ages.

These niche franchises like GS and Mother/Earthbound find themselves in a odd spot. It's not that Nintendo "hates" these franchises but game development is expensive, so how can they know if the fans will actually buy them? Let's look at sales for the Golden Sun games:

Golden Sun: 1.76 Mil(Worldwide)
GS: The lost Age 1.22(WW)
GS: Dark Dawn 0.79(WW)

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=Golden+sun&publisher...

Same thing plagues GS as does F-Zero; each installment sells worse. You can't blame Nintendo for putting some of these franchises on the back burner if sales aren't there.

What is your problem with Fire Emblem? Even if you dislike the series, do you know how many games failed to make it to the west? That we missed out on the second DS game?

Yeah, it looks like Fire Emblem is now one Nintendo's golden franchises with the number of upcoming games in the series, and how the series is represented in games like Smash. But its been a long road for Fire Emblem and there have been alot of problems along the way.

Fire Emblem has no bearing on how Earthbound and Golden Sun are treated. Fire Emblem struggled for years to make it to the west and in sales until Awakening broke the glass ceiling and proved to be a massive seller. Before that, Fire Emblem was in danger of being canceled with Awakening being the last game.

Fire Emblem's newfound popularity is because it finally found an audience outside of the niche that played the earlier games. For better or worse, Awakening, Fates, and Heroes have managed to attact players and pump money into Nintendo's coffers. Did you know that Fire Emblem Heroes is Nintendo's highest-grossing mobile game?

Fire Emblem is not getting any special treatment. Right now, it prints money for Nintendo. Maybe less than the big three and even other IPs like Kirby. But it prints money and has always been fairly popular in both the West and Japan.

Mother and Golden Sun are not being treated badly because Nintendo has some bias against them. Earthbound crashed and burned when it came to the west on the SNES, and Golden Sun was given another chance on the DS, and that game failed to sell decently.

If Nintendo hated JRPGS, why are they making a third Xenoblade and Mario RPGs? Why have they translated and published numerous Dragon Quest games? Nintendo does not hate RPGs, Mother and Golden Sun simply don't have the sales numbers for Nintendo to keep supporting them.

Look at F-Zero, it started to sell poorly, and Nintendo has not made a new game in over a decade. Metroid and Star Fox have spent the better part of the decade in the penalty box because they started slacking off in sales. Fire Emblem came close to joining those franchises, but it somehow managed to claw its way out of that fate.

Hate Fire Emblem for its gameplay, or other aspects that's your opinion. But Fire Emblem's popularity and success is well-deserved and it did not stomp on any other IP to get there.

Golden Sun didn't sell well on the DS because it was utter trash compared to the first two. It tried way too hard to emulate the first two games without any meaningful goals. The plot was muddy the entire way and made no sense even in the world. Questions from the first two games were never addressed. There were points of no return galore.

As a Golden Sun fan, I despised the DS game. Maybe they can redeem themselves with a fourth game, but that would be Camelot, not Nintendo's decision.

Also, I understand that a lot of Camelot's talent left, so that may be a factor too.

Golden Sun Dark Dawn didn't sold too well but story wasn't as good as the first GS. Saturos and Menardi were the best villains and also GS 1 had the best graphics i have ever seen on a GBA game. I bought the game on day one cause i liked the cover and got blown away. It was a little Final Fantasy with some minor pokemon influence that didn't really add up (Djinni were more confusing than useful) but still it was very good (on the easy side ofc).

Never played Mother 3....I don't want to play it on an emulator (the english translation).

This is still not as bad as the people mad at Nintendo that they probably won't make another Chibi Robo.

Like, no one bought it, 3 times, on 3 separate systems. And even THEN, they were given a chance to change genre. Chibi Robo was given 3 more chances than many games out there(some of which deserve it more and have a better chance of reaching a wide audience). Get over it.

But yeah, Mother 3 is one of my favorite games, but it was a 2006 text-heavy JRPG on GBA, Nintendo's always been iffy on Earthbound outside of Japan, and Virtual Console is in no place for a Mother 3 to come out over here. Golden Sun just bombed with the 3rd one.

@Tyranexx Breath of the Wild is probably the shortest Zelda game if you don't waste your time on Koroks and sidequests.

Is it fair to say Nintendo just isn't really focused on producing JRPGs? It is well aware of the market, and caters for it with second-party developers such as Intelligent Systems, Camelot and HAL or teaming up with third-party specialists such as Square. There are several Nintendo-exclusive JRPGs or titles involving Nintendo IP, but they're not strictly in-house productions like the Mario platformers and Zelda.

What I'm trying to say is, Nintendo doesn't hate its own JRPGs; it just prefers to find partners to produce those games, rather than producing them personally. As time goes by, Nintendo has simply found new partners for JRPGs, from Monolith to Square Enix to Ubisoft. It's been a slow start, but I think the Switch is going to be alright. Octopath, Xenoblade and Skyrim look like a pretty decent launchpad, and we still have Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem promised. Then there's Lost Sphear, FFXV, Dragon Quest XI...

This whole thread is a travesty and should be cast into the depths of the void.

@Snaplocket Clearly camelot and Nintendo don't agree with you or this franchise wouldn't have been a thread example. My point is ROI influences decisions to shutter franchises.

I do wish Nintendo would let 1-up do more than assit with development though. I feel like I'm the only person that liked magical starsign.

I was all set for a mature discussion on potential reasons why such series have remained dormant for so long; then I read the OP's original post and relised I'm more likely to get a mature conversation out of the mug on my desk.

So lets keep it simplistic:

• Nintendo want money
• Those series have history of not making lots of money.
• Nintendo not wanting to take risks or have other games likely to make more money.