Personal story time: As the days grew closer to the release of No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, I scrambled to find a good place to pre-order this game. Amazon has been the best store I ever shopped at but it didn’t have release date delivery: something I’ve come to love. Gamestop and Best Buy weren’t doing any launches for it and I wasn’t going to pick up a copy of MAG just to pick a different game. So I decided to hunker down and go to a local game shop (Game Play, located off Venice Blvd. in Los Angeles) and put down a preorder the day before. It seems silly to pre-order a day before but I like this shop. When I hit the stores, I didn’t see the game for pre-order, I saw No More Heroes 2 FOR SALE! Score! However, for one of the Wii’s biggest games, it seems like I could’ve gotten a week before and that’s what bothered me about picking it up early: Ubisoft sent it stores early and just didn’t care.
That’s a really harsh accusation to make at a company because Ubisoft is one of the only publishers to actually try to bring original content on the Wii. Granted it’s never with the same amount of ambition or funds as something on the PS3/X360 but they try. And I was stoked that they decided to publish the first No More Heroes game on the Wii. Despite their nerfing of the hilarious instruction manual from the original Japanese version, their involvement probably saved it from being just like other third-party games: a financial flop. It sold enough copies worldwide to guarantee a sequel.
Much has been said about the most third party sales on the Wii being very disappointing. Most of that is due to the titles that can sell on the Wii are really disappointing to mention (Carnival Games, anyone?). Most of that can be attributed to Nintendo’s marketing staff for not making Wii owners aware that the console does play more the Mario games and Wii Sports. The WiiWare has been like a cemetery for incredible games, games that seems to only get talked about on websites, blog, etc. but I digress.
2009 has had some incredible games (House of the Dead: Overkill, Madworld, Little King’s Story, Punch-Out!!, Muramasa: The Demon Blade) get very little financial love. With the exception of Punch-Out and Overkill, these games had some very lackluster ad campaigns. I don’t know what exactly are the details to making ads or people aware that these games exist, but I do know that there are people on these staffs who are supposed to figure that stuff out. People who get paid handsomely to figure out how to tell people that their games are coming out. Sure, there are print ads, splashes on websites, video ads, and the usual collection of screen shots to send out. Which is great for just online, however, most of that cost very little to produce. So, it makes sense that these games sell very little and drop off the face of the earth in months.
What does this have to with Ubisoft and No More Heroes 2? In December, there was a tv commercial for a dancing game featuring ‘U Can’t Touch This’-utterly annoying but it hooked other people in. There were new Wii owners I talked to who told me about picking up that game. No Crystal Bearers of Shattered Memories-Just Dance. It was one of the top selling games in December according to NPD. Which should’ve been a sign for other publishers: if you want a game to sell really well, how about fucking telling people about it?
And what ad campaign exists for one of the anticipated games on the Wii in 2010? None…unless a banner on GameFAQS counts as an ad. No interviews set up, no new videos until after the release day, no screen shots, no internet clips except the same ads seen from E3, Tokyo Game Show, and PAX. So, Ubisoft, what was the point of picking this game up if you were just going to ignore it and make gamers find it on their own? Just Dance proves that word of mouth alone and web campaigns are shit compared advertising on traditional media. Most of the Wii audience still pays attention to traditional media. With all the great reviews Desperate Struggle is getting, it shouldn’t be hard to whip together a TV ad and tell people about a great game.
These lackadaisical campaigns just feed an feeling that publishers just dump shovelware on the Wii and that’s all they want owners to buy, pushing away the few Wii owners who want game full of substantial content and great game design free of gimmicks. The NPD numbers will come out in as little as two weeks and don’t expect No More Heroes 2 to be near the top 10. Granted it came out in the last week of January. But then again, so did Mass Effect 2 and look at how well that game did.
Publishers-if you wanna make money, spend money.
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Oh, be reasonable — How can Ubisoft whine about lackluster third-party hardcore Wii game sales if they actually make an EFFORT to sell hardcore Wii games?
–R.J.
Good write-up. If you do not mind or if you (the author of this article) does it before me, I am going to register for Ubisoft’s forum and post this ad in order to shake some things up. One thing I remember from the old game was the magazine ad with Sylvia on the beach and Travis charging his beam katana. This just shows where Ubisoft’s priorities are.
I am sad that I didn’t get to write a review for this game myself- I loved it.
Weak on behalf of Ubisoft.
Its insane, I have yet to see even one commercial for this game, yet every night I see commercials for Mass Effect 2 or Dante’s inferno, or some other game on PS3 or 360.
Heck the only third party Wii commercial I’ve seen in a month was for Mario and Sonic, and since its still a Mario game I don’t know if I’d even call it really third party.
Here’s a clue to third party publishers, if you want your games to sell on Wii, try making a few commercials.