Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@jump well I’m confused how every indie developer can manage to sell enough metroidvanias to be profitable but Nintendo can’t.

Metroid games make profit, they just make less than other games. But to be fair, it also makes more money than Rhythm Heaven has, so y'know...could be worse.

Whereas if an indie dev has a legit Metroidvania hit and sells even a million, they didn't have to spend as much so they make ALL the money. Nintendo isn't as bad as a lot of major companies, so they could also make a Metroid game profitable by selling a million to be fair(though I assume Prime 4 would have to sell more, even ignoring the wasted development on the first version of it).

@kkslider5552000 Actually Rhythm Heaven is another game that has sold more than Metroid Prime. Prime sold more than anything from Xenoblade and Pikmin but I can see both have their Switch entries outselling it soon though and Xenoblade is the type of series that will continue to grow and Pikmin is a pet project of one of Nintendo’s most influential people.

Tbh Metroid kinda lacks an identity and a defining take which is why Ninty thought they could get away with Federation Force. It needs an entry like Awakening to properly give the series direction and renewed interest. Like I'm not sure if the series future is a high profile 2D Metroidvania in which case it's competing with indies and should be more inline with being a C-tier franchise with a smaller budget or as an AAA in which case it needs to start selling like an AAA as the Prime sequels didn't, does it need a shift in tone to match it's Alien (the adult sci-fi horror movie) influence more closely to help find it's audience as it's not 'core enough for 'core gamers and the Ninty gamers aren't buying it enough, does it need to break new ground or emphasise quality or should Nintendo just scrap it so they can use it's budget to make a new 1080 and Advance Wars?

I think we are all forgetting that in Nintendos eyes, if a game doesn't make a profit but another game, let's say a certain life simulation game that made it's money back in a day, does, then that's fine.

For most western companies every game needs to turn a profit. You can't have one game do great and greenlight a sequel and another not hit targets but the profit from another bolsters it so it's okay try again.

Nintendo was wise not going for the graphical ceiling as it allows them to continue to make smaller games and even lower selling franchises without worrying about costs.

I mean remember BOTW? Miyamoto said that game needed to sell 2 million units to break even. A game that took Nintendo over half a decade, built new engines for, massive R&D, the most staff they've ever had on a single title...and all it needed to sell was 2 million units.

So if you think a Metroid game, even Prime 4 with restarting development, needs to be multi million units to be worth it, you're very wrong.

@Haruki_NLI Yep but for Metroid to be relevant as a top tier franchise it can't keep doing so-so numbers (literally Style Savvy and Brain Academy has bested Metroid peak's lol) and because it hasn't found it's groove yet (like is Prime it's top selling game a sub-series or not?) the same way Fire Emblem or Kirby has I wouldn't suspect it would warrant a sequel to be automatically green lit which seems to be the case given it's last decade of history.

Also the goal shouldn't be to just break even, that's the thinking of a small company and they would have actually made money just by sitting in the bank collecting interest.

I wouldn't be surprised if whatever Metroid game comes out on Switch ends up becoming the best selling game in the series. The Switch audience seems to be very open to trying new games, what with Fire Emblem, Luigi's Mansion and Paper Mario doing their best numbers ever on Switch, and fairly niche new IPs like Arms and Astral Chain selling well too.

That said, it might harm sales slightly if they call it Metroid Prime 4, especially if that developer was right about Prime Trilogy not coming to the Switch, because some people might feel they have to play the other three games first. It might be better if they just call it Metroid Prime: Subtitle and not have the storyline be too linked to the previous entries. Then again, Luigi's Mansion 3 got away with it so it might not make much difference, but that's a Mario spin-off so people probably wouldn't have expected the storyline to matter.

Indies such as Hollow Knight, Guacamelee, Axiom Verge, have a unique take on the genre - they offer something different, plus they benefit from the fact that they can sell their games on other platforms and so generate widespread hype more easily. Nintendo has to try to make a Metroid game that offers something different but yet still appeases existing Metroid fans, and then just market it to a single audience, a significant proportion of which invested in the platform to play Animal Crossing/Pokémon/Mario Kart, not metroidvanias.

There's a significant reason Metroid sells poorly: Timing. When was the last time a Metroid game was released on a system with:

A: a fanbase that likes shooters (bye Wii / DS titles)
B: as a shooter (bye Federation Force, Pinball)
C: While the software is still successful on a a system (Samus Returns, to a lesser extent Echoes)

Nintendo is significantly to blame for kneecapping all these releases in one way or another. Not to say that Metroid is big (it's not), but I do think it would be much bigger than it is if Nintendo handled it better.

@gcunit the multi platform part is a good point.

But I still think games like fast rmx could be made by Nintendo at similar costs but the problem is Nintendo doesn’t want to make any games which they can’t sell for full price.

@jump I’d just like to see the numbers samus returns can sell on switch if ported. If the numbers are bad I wouldn’t make any excuses and agree with you. How expensive can it be to port a 3ds game.

My preference would be for 3ds ports to cost the same as 3ds games did. But miitopia has shown that Nintendo has zero interest in that strategy.

Can they port pilot wings 3ds while at it.

That cynicism is too thick.

How does that explain games like Game Builder Garage or Jump the Rope from Nintendo?

@link3710 Tbh even if Samus Returns was released first year of the 3DS it probably would have done the same modest hit numbers of the past Metroid portable games rather than something impressive.

I ain't buying that for Echoes, there were games that released after MP2 that still outsold it and it came fairly quickly after Prime 1 so it should have built upon it's success. The Wii wasn't just waggle fans as action games like RE4 were successful on the Wii, Links Crossbow Training did silly numbers for example but it did about the same as Prime 2. So my take is that as a series it's does around 1-1.5m number and it's only ground-breaking games like Prime and the original Metroid that sold more than 2 million so it needs more ground-breaking than just more of the same to keep the small fanbase happy.

@Slowdive A few people in mainstream media don't usually do their research on stuff like that before putting it out in the open. They just see it as a free story to tell.

@Magician a handful of games which don’t have big names. I’m not saying they never charge less than full price but perhaps it’s rarer than it should be if games like Metroid don’t sell well at full price.

check out the overview trailer of Mario Golf:Super Rush.

Oh Jump. Honey. No. : (

First of all, Rhythm Heaven was a big deal. In Japan. Once. Half of those 3 million sales are in Japan alone. In America, despite being at the height of DS' popularity that had BEYONCE in the ads at the height of her popularity, the sales figures I remember seeing for NA was half a million. The same as Samus Returns. I'm gonna point out that a late 2017 3DS game and a 2009 DS game with a Beyonce marketing campaign are notably different things.

All the other games kinda BOMBED. Like I think they did ok in Japan, but the Wii game did not do well at all here, and Megamix was 3DS download only, which tells you how much faith they had in it. So at BEST you could say Metroid is in a similar yet different situation, except in terms of what audience cares about it.

Also its just dumb to say Metroid has no identity. That's just very obviously untrue. I mean, they should bring it back in a way that's exciting to people like Awakening, but Awakening did that partially by trying to appeal to modern anime and Japanese gaming fans so that's kinda the opposite of having your own identity?

Also saying that 2D Metroid will have issues competing with indies is also a bit absurd with Megaman 11 existing and being successful.

@kkslider5552000 Insert a condescending retort something like sweet cheeks baby but better ;p

Fact, Rhythm Heaven has still sold more than any Metroid game. As a series sure Metroid is bigger but that just shows how small Metroid’s peak truly is.

I never said 2D Metroid would have issues competing with indies, I said it would be competing with indies which is something you’d not expect from a top tier franchise the fans want/think it to be.

I find the biggest issue with Metroid is that it has no identity, the last 6 games have been very different from each other. Thing is with Metroid is it’s best selling entry is Prime and Prime itself has spun off for pinball and online co-op games etc but I’ve still got no idea if Prime is a sub series or mainline.

@Slowdive That’s rather interesting, but also probably won’t mean we will see any new entries in Wave Race or 1080 though with a drought of decent games in either genre, it would be a great time for Nintendo get something one of these franchises rebooted.

@jump prime is the 3d series while the 2d series has no sub title. Sonic has 2d sonic. It has 3d sonic. And guess what it has pinball. But no one claims it doesn’t have an identity. Sega is just really bad at making sonic games partially because they pump them out so often up until recently. Nintendo’s problem with Metroid is they released a random chibi version of its game which every fan knew was a turn off. And then they released a game at the end of a systems life. Both bad decisions.

@sixrings the last 6 Metroid games were; Samus Returns, Federation Force, Other M, Prime 3, Prime Hunters and Prime Pinball. There’s people with dissociative identity disorder with less personalities than that ;p