No More Heroes
I found it rather depressing to read that the Wii version of “Okami” only managed sales of 165,900 units in the US last year. It’s not the best game ever made: the story gets ridiculously childish at times and contains a frustrating and compulsory digging quest that must have tempted many gamers to give up playing the game entirely.
But ,having said that, Okami is still one of the best adventure games that’s been released in the last couple of years on all platforms. It’s certainly far more entertaining than “Twilight Princess” and, with a huge main quest and hundreds of side quests, it’s fantastic value for money. Experienced and successful developers, Ready At Dawn, have also done an excellent job porting it to the Wii console so what’s the reason for the low sales figures?
Do “non casual “ gamers somehow resent having to play Wii games waving a remote at their TV instead of using the familiar “hold in both hands” controller that they have been used to for years? Does it bother them intensely that Wii games have no achievements or trophies? Are great graphics so important that they bypass the appreciation of enjoyable gameplay?
I certainly don’t pretend to know the answers but, after seeing those dismal sales figures, I find it very hard to feel sorry for gamers who complain that there are too many casual games flooding the market these days and that Nintendo are somehow betraying their loyal followers in their successful quests for new markets.
I don’t think Nintendo are exactly betraying their loyal fanbase – there is probably going to be a new Mario/Zelda game this year, and look at games like Galaxy and Super Smash Bros – classic Nintendo stuff that their fans love.
They’ve got a difficult job balancing their new market and keeping their fans happy.
I didnt mean to imply Nintendo were betraying their loyal followers, merely that the “followers” think that they are.
The problem with Okami is that hardly anyone knows about it!
I´ve got a PS2/Wii and never heard of Okami until i read about it on the net.
Saying that without no TV ads how are gamers supposed to know about Okami?
Its a great game(very compelling) and better than Twilight Princess(but not OOT).
Capcom should have marketed the game a lot more!
yup nintendo is coming out with zelda this year. In fact they have a better game than zedla right here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgRriCJARvU&feature=related
okami is the best game ever….
One thing to consider is that the game was on the PS2 about a year and a half before the version was released on the Wii. These kinds of games have a niche audience as it is compared to first person shooters, so there isn’t much to draw from there. Then, since pretty much everyone had a PS2, the people that wanted to play the game already had their chance when they bought it on the PS2.
I happen to be a part of this group. I already bought the game when it came out on the PS2. According to the reviews, there haven’t been many changes from the other version except for the motion controls so there was little reason for me to repurchase the game. Most likely, the case for the Wii version isn’t advertisement issues or perceptions of the Wii, it was mostly the fact that those that would have played the game in the first place already bought it. This was just a nice attempt to allow people to play the game that might have missed out on it the first time and couldn’t find copies of the PS2 version or something like that.
One thing to keep in mind is that it is better to support a good game instead of supporting something just because you don’t think it will sell well. I’m not saying the game is bad, but I tend to see a lot of this sort of thinking that probably helps contribute to some of the bad games we see today.