A debate that often rages in Nintendo-centric forums can be around the company's marketing of major releases; especially if a game struggles, part of the post-mortem looks at the big N's efforts to spread awareness. Nintendo has rapidly grown its influence on social media, in recent years, but how is its promotion of games stacking up compared to triple-A industry rivals, and is it maintaining a high enough quality in its major releases?
This can involve multiple factors, which analytics company Fancensus considers in its 'High Score Lineup' report. It assesses major releases from September 2015 until the end of the year and uses metrics such as the number of sources covering the game, length of 'PR campaign', average review scores and levels of social media engagement from its chosen sources. Combining those factors together there's a top 50 list of games designed to give a sense of their overall success, as a name and brand, away from the core metric of sales.
The focus of the data seems to be very much on North America and Europe, and we wouldn't treat this as definitive, but it's interesting - as a start for debate, anyway - to see where some of Nintendo's releases from the period scored.
So, below are the Nintendo releases and their placements in this list of 50.
49 - Fatal Frame / Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water
44 - Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. (EU only)
37 - Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash
36 - Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer
28 - Xenoblade Chronicles X
20 - The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes
11 - Super Mario Maker
As you can see no Nintendo titles made the top 10, which we've included below for reference.
10 - Rainbow Six: Siege
9 - Rise of the Tomb Raider
8 - FIFA 16
7 - Just Cause 3
6 - Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
5 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
4 - Halo 5: Guardians
3 - Star Wars Battlefront
2 - Call of Duty: Black Ops III
1 - Fallout 4
It may not be an entirely definitive approach or list, but in general the top 50 does seem like a reasonable depiction of how a number of big games were received, along with their general presence in media of various types. It's food for thought, in any case.
What do you think of this report (linked below) and these placings? Let us know.
[source issuu.com]
Comments 25
So Nintendo's games are underwhelming and the mainstream market has terrible taste? Wow, must be a day that ends in Y.
If we take this seriously then Nintendo is in a bad way. Out at sea drowning but we all think it's waving.
Of course if we say its a load of rubbish, being Nintendo fans, others would say, we would say that anyway.
If a Nintendo gamer from a few years ago were asked to pick one of those titles as representative of a fine Nintendo game, he couldn't.
Nice numerical representation of what we already knew - Nintendo doesn't advertise.
And something else we already knew - Wii U doesn't get multiplats.
We're all those games in September or later, I thought MGSV was earlier?
If XCX was on PS3 I bet it would have been top 10. That game was deserving of a much better effort by Nintendo. Guess it should be thankful it wasn't Devil's Third.
No Yoshi's Woolly World on that list huh??
@rjejr Nintendo does advertise their games, even more so than either Playstation or Xbox. The past year they even had more ads than the two combined: http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/11/gamemakers-spent-nearly-630m-on-tv-ads-in-2015/
The reason why they aren't high on the list, is because most of these games were highly anticipated multiplatform games, which have a far larger potential consumer base. It would be bad of Nintendo to spend even more marketing on games that are on platforms that are far to small. Most people who own Nintendo consoles probably already are aware of upcoming Nintendo games anyways.
@DrkBndr ... In North America. They don't bother in Europe, believe me.
Cant take a list seriously when it has COD and battlefront in the top 3 lol
Nintendo has a lot of work to do, in terms of getting their games in the public eye.
To be if Nintendo multi million dollar advertising budgets for Xenoblade, Happy Home Designer, or Mario tennis, would they have reached a bigger audience?
No., because they are niche games or some even filler. Even Triforce Heroes (a Zelda game), was never going to get good enough reviews to warrant spending massive ad dollars.
Mario Maker and Splatoon were the two visually marketable games, and that's what Nintendo made the effort with, along with amiibo.
@RandomBlue you do realise this is a list about advertising expenditure and impact right? Of course those games are up there.
And anyways, both those games are good games. You know you are allowed to enjoy games on platforms that aren't Nintendo.
These sorts of scores shouldn't be taken too seriously.. Often times people that come up with these metrics have some preconceived notion of what should be at the top and they end up tuning the parameters to fit their notions. That being said, the WiiU only has 12 million users. It's not surprising that their games aren't ranked that high.
@MrGawain Xenoblade X is most definitely marketable. Just not as easy to market to the WiiU fan base. Not as marketable as Fallout.. But it is definitely marketable. Anyway, it will probably pass a million sales within the next few months.
@zool so I take it you didn't like fatal frame, xenoblade, or Mario maker?
Where the hell is Splatoon? That game surelyrics made more impact than at least half this list!
@Bolt_Strike Who cares about a top list honestly? That chart is praising the hell out of battlefront, a game that is not worth for 110$.
@Bolt_Strike great way to put that, also really no splatoon, okay.
@aronatvw @Assassinated
Good job reading the article! It's for games that came out in September onwards, the holiday games.
I think they did pretty good. Halo 5 and Rise of The Tomb Raider are the only exclusives above Super Mario Maker
@Peach64 sorry, didn't know I was being tested.
@faint have not played them.
Super Mario Maker was by far one of the games the most advertised I saw (in France) in the last few months, along the last Metal Gear.
Why not include previous releases:
The Splatoon ads kept going on from release to christmas.
Also, a 3DS (not-really-a)game was shown every day on a lot of main TV channels during november and december. Is this bad advertising?
I can't understand how those games can be seen as poorly advertised, did I miss the meaning of this top ?
PS: I forgot MH4U (so much TV ads and Internet videos all year long, and some articles were still written between september and december).
I'd agree with that. Re Splatoon being trumped by Mario Tennis and Triforce Heroes in terms of social media dialogue, for my part at least that was due to a lot of discussion around the shock of these games having such a dominant place in 2015's Christmas line-up against higher quality titles on other platforms.
@rjejr
MGSV was Sept. 1st, so barely made it.
And that top ten looks suspiciously similar to the average US/UK top ten. Which would prove a lot of people buy games based on advertising and exposure, or those are the games more advertised because of their mass appeal. Probably a mix of both.
As someone who works in a GameStop - I think this is pretty accurate. All those Top 10 games have ad campaigns that are seared into my brain (I never want to hear "The Wanderer" ever again - ruined a song I used to adore). From standing in a store for hours daily I can say the only two Nintendo games in the Top 50 that I really remember having ads were Super Mario Maker and TFH. And they were not particularly incessant.
Seriously, if you ever want to know what is being pushed, go stand in a GameStop for an hour or two. Do the same thing a week later. Keep repeating this for about three months. Do it over the holidays for bonus points.
People be like "Where is Splatoon? Where is MH4U?" Lol those games were NOT advertised over the holiday season. Seriously. Try my experiment. I shouldn't be the only one who has to suffer.
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