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Nintendo has admitted that it will fall far short of selling the 1m units it had predicted for September’s Wii release Metroid: Other M.
The game has a respectable Metacritic average of 79 per cent and managed to finish in the September Top Ten in the US. However, despite managing a 12th place debut in its first week on the UKIE GfK Chart-Track All Formats Top 40 in early September, though it fell to 40th in its second week and vanished from the charts after that.
We believe that it could be, should be a million unit title,” Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku.
We’re not going to get there, not through the holiday. And we are doing a lot of thinking as to why. Because it’s a great game. The consumer reaction because of the quality has been strong. We’re doing a lot of thinking about why we didn’t get there.
I think the marketing was strong, advertising was very good, the social media we did was very positive.”
Indeed, in August MCV revealed details of Nintendo’s extensive UK marketing campaign to back the game. So what went wrong?
First off, I have nothing but the greatest respect for the development team – [co-creator] Mr. Sakamoto did a wonderful job,” Fils-Aime added. His partnership with us in promoting the game was stellar. Team Ninja is absolutely fabulous.
I’m not going to sit here and criticize a style of the game, but have I read feedback that said, broadly, that the portrayal of Samus felt different than how the player in the past had internalized the character? I’ve heard and read the same feedback. Do I think it’s warranted or not? I’m not quite sure yet… I don’t yet believe that that is the driving factor to the performance of the game.”
