Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

For months and months, I have read the news reports, the endless forum postings and I have even gone back and watched the E3 2008 Nintendo press conference to get a sense of the anger and ire of hardcore Nintendo fans that are irritated by their favored brand forgetting them.  Who can forget the horror that you all felt when the closing of the E3 press conference last year ended up being WiiMusic.  Or the lack of an announcement regarding the cherished Zelda or Mario franchises.  It was a tough year to swallow, but around the corner things started to look up.

Platinum Games stepped onto the scene and showed off Madworld, a game that took the style and violence of Sin City, and melded it with the game show atmosphere of The Running Man.  It had gallons of red blood shooting everywhere on the screen, and more F-Bombs than Tom Clancy could even think about putting his name in front of.  Rockstar Games jumped on that hardcore Nintendo bandwagon and decided that the next platform that needed to get Grand Theft Auto was not the PSP, but the Nintendo DS.  I do not think anyone would argue with me when I say that GTA is a franchise that has been at the forefront of being hardcore and mainstream all at the same time.  To have that brand, and all it stands for, on the DS, was something to behold.  Finally, while a bit cheesy, The House of the Dead Overkill had a Grindhouse vibe and look, while dealing out buckets of blood and more profanities than a porn movie.  It also gave a lot of backstory on who Agent G was and how he became the man he was in the first House of the Dead.  Three hardcore titles for a console where the hardcore fans have been salivating for something that was not Mii-centric, or just plain boring – it should have been an easy sell.

Fast forward to the present time period and we have just received the NPD numbers for March, and we also have some for February, and the hardcore titles that should have been bought in droves are nowhere to be found in the sales charts.  Currently, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is being estimated at 89,000 units sold, while House of the Dead was only about 45,000 units sold.  Sega and Platinum Games did not release any numbers for Madworld, but it definitely sold less than 206,000, and the estimates have it at the low 100,000′s.  While Capcom has stated that House of the Dead: Overkill sold as expected, and that Rockstar is probably looking for a way to spin the numbers, these numbers show a faithful audience that did not even show up for a pre-game, let alone the actual game.

Where did the faithful, hardcore Nintendo fan go?  Why were these games not big sellers?  Pokemon Platinum sold 800,000+ copies on the DS, but GTA: Chinatown Wars sells 89K, which is just pathetic.  If you ask me, Nintendo fans deserve what they get at this point.  You clamor for games that fit the dedicated fans of the Nintendo brand, and yet, no one comes out to buy the games when they are released, or one copy is shared with a ton of family and friends at one person’s house.

I almost wonder if this shows that the bajillion Wii’s that were sold were not sold to hardcore, faithful Nintendo gamers, but to casual gamers that enjoy cheerleading sims and crappy balloon popping games.  The brand deserves everything that it gets at this point, because the fans did not turn out for the games that should be made for the console.  Same thing goes for the DS.  It sells like it is going out of style, but a hardcore title like GTA: Chinatown Wars loses out on that mega million selling platform.  It defies all logic.

I have to admit that I can understand why WiiMusic was shown as the final game in the Nintendo E3 2008 press conference now.  I think Reggie and company have a far better understanding of who the target audience is on the Nintendo platforms and who is really buying the games.  Looking at sales, you start to realize that the hardcore Nintendo fan is a small component of the actual owner base of the Wii and the DS.  Third parties also seem to realize this because they too, seem to get burned every time they release a game that should cater to those dyed in the wool Nintendo gamers.

Some may look at this as a hate letter towards Nintendo, and others will probably call it fanboy.  It isn’t either of those.  It is just a writer who is trying to understand why the Nintendo faithful have just abandoned the hardcore games that have been designed and tailored for their approval, but never get purchased.

At the end of this, I hope you Nintendo fans will get out there like our own Fourhman and Stephen, both of which went and bought these hardcore games.  Otherwise, be prepared for a shit ton of balloon pop and carnival game sequels.