 Hey, everyone, you might recognize me and Eric here from the Nintendo Prime podcast I just want to let you know before you get into this segment that this merchandise you see on our shirts and on our cups and on anything else You oversee with Nintendo Prime brandy on it. You can get in the description below You can also get the full audio podcast not segmented in the description below And if you would like early access to our podcast, please go over to patreon.com Slash Nintendo Prime for $5 a month you gain early access to the full audio podcast and well mr. Eric What do you get for $20 a month? Oh, you get to join us on a podcast. That is right So if you would like to ever be on the Nintendo Prime podcast get your voice in front of thousands of other Nintendo fans out there You know what to do hit up that $20 tier on patreon. Anyways folks on to the episode So this next topic though, oh boy I Think this is the first time ever our topic is literally Xenoblake Chronicles 2 Crazy yeah that this game and this might have something to do with the topic itself that this game is a widely hyped or a widely Anticipated game by people who like JRPGs Is it is a franchise that only even came to the United States because of a fan movement and Operation rainfall because Nintendo wasn't gonna do it Apparently represent them From what I remember an interview is Reggie Fissame told Nintendo of Japan That Xenoblade would sell in the United States and they just brushed them off for like a year Yeah, it was insane and the game was literally already games coming so how we port these games we already have Plus a high fan demand it might be the one time in history that fan demand Petition wise and blah blah actually made a difference. Yeah, but Xenoblake Chronicles 2 The big the big overarching question is obviously is it getting enough marketing? And we'll get into some subtopics. I'm like, you know, we'll be market a different blah blah blah This topic actually I have to give a huge credit This I saw a thread about this on reset era dot com By a user named shunt and they they made a bunch of good points. So we're gonna go ahead here and Read off Their initial post that made me want to talk about this And Eric's back Eric, why don't you go ahead and start off reading the first few paragraphs for me? Can if I can yeah, right? You can grab another canola soda something Water Got a bottle of Pepto Bismol. Yeah, right. No, I don't know what it's just I got like a tickle in my throat I don't know what it is. Yeah, that happens. I can't I can't like I I'm trying really hard not to cough here right now Yeah, so Let's see if you can get power through And you get to be quiet for the right Okay, so we'll start with the quote here Can we talk about how much in utter disappointment the presentation of this game has been this is supposed to be Nintendo's hefty December game not expected to outsell odyssey or anything crazy But it's definitely being pushed as a significant entry into the switches lineup by Nintendo So why it does the masses not give a single damn about it? this and Nintendo seems hell bent on Repeatedly explaining the game's combat over and over as if it were some character action game and not a JRPG we've seen games come and Milan spent 45 minutes focusing on the combat and little else Even running through a town and purposely skipping interesting shops and NPCs In summary I feel like xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a complete flop in the public side It might outsell xenoblade Chronicles X But if it does it will only be because it launched holiday of a popular systems first year Nintendo slash monolith have completely misread their marketing for this game stumbling every time it's come For the game to be put in the spotlight. Okay, I'll take over again Maybe in the cold or something. Yeah, I think so Sorry, it's that time of the year. Good effort. Good really cool. We just had like three inches of snow the other day And then it all melted out welcome to Wisconsin I Saw to finish off with this guy said so how would you save this games marketing the drip feed from monolith twitter is cute But amounts to nothing Especially now the entire here's a rare blade stick has gotten tiresome and predictable I'm almost certain that if the Nintendo were to announce a xenoblade direct at this point No one would bother to watch it. I guess if I were Nintendo I do what they did with Splatoon to hype up arms promise a reveal for a fan favorite game in a direct Like Splatoon 2 but have a majority of it be about xenoblade to You know like they did with they basically did this with arms Did they promise like this big Splatoon 2 thing and then most of it was about arms And arms ended up selling like 1.3 something million and it's probably still selling obviously not a top seller But I don't know if it would fix the problem at this point However, this close to release and also the game is tracking abysmally Com G net the site that tracks Japanese pre-orders and also also also also speaking of Mario and Zelda again I find it hilarious as xenoblade is failing when Mario and Zelda had put out some of the best gaming trailers in video game history This very year to see what should be monoliths first true big blockbuster Releasing on the first holiday of a system that is selling like hotcakes Flounder about like a fish out of water is pretty damn disappointing I don't know whether to blame Nintendo or not if monoliths were the ones who threw together the e3 trailer and Were the ones behind the Snorfest that was the September direct They may only have themselves to blame although even then it should be up to Nintendo to hype the game up it's just really depressing and I'm gonna start this conversation a little bit by saying the last time I remember seeing the game was the September direct Obviously, you know, they've had showings at other events, but those weren't us based events So a lot of this in the US probably had no idea what was going on Yeah, I didn't even know that's September direct I Remember being pumped when xenoblade Chronicles 2 pop jokes. I've been waiting to hear more And I was really like like the first two I think two minutes two and a half minutes were awesome It was like a trailer. It was really epic. Everything was being built up You got to the voice and you're like, okay, this is cool. And then the voice just kept going Kept going and going and it went from what should I just spend a two to three minute max to like this 10 15 minute thing That went super in depth into the calm and it wasn't even an interested voice It was like an old tired, you know beast and the thing is that probably works within the game, right? It probably does but you're not listening to that voice talk for 15 minutes straight in the game I guarantee it. Yeah Yeah, so like it works in the small chunks. You're gonna be dealing because that voice sounds like it's like your main traveling fake guy And that's fine and that works within the context of the game and the voice I think is I piece I don't like what I'm actually think the voice for what it's supposed to represent is fine The voice is a narrator for a 15 minute demo of the game No, yeah a good voice for a character in the game versus a good voice to narrate the game or two completely different things, right? and I Remember there was a point we had this conversation way back then if they had just cut off the trailer at this Yeah, that's a good look at the game There was there was a spot where before that started into that It almost seemed like two separate trailers that they just try to smash into one Yeah, and there was a definite split where that where that beast came in and then all of a sudden started going into gameplay that I tuned out after like the first Little bit because there was so much going on that I was like I'm not even remember this Yeah, yeah, that's what I kept saying before there's too much There's an information overload here and now obviously if you're a Xenoblade fan and if like I haven't played the first two games much So I didn't know a lot of these but in our mechanics like maybe it didn't overwhelm you But it should have because if you are a Xenoblade fan, you don't need to be told this stuff Mm-hmm, so it might have been came off as boring And if you're new to Xenoblade, you don't want to hear all this stuff These are mechanics you learn while playing the game. This would be a can usually not all at once either Yeah, this would have been akin to Nintendo showed you every possible thing you could do with the physics engine In a 15 minute trailer, which might sound awesome in hindsight But then you realize there's nothing to discover in the game physics-wise because you've seen it all And I'm not saying that to happen like Xenoblade is a very deep game. So there's probably tons of stuff We don't know but right and when you're representing a game That's that large and that ambitious as it seems like they're trying to make the game go to be You can't overload the information and people in RPGs, especially they do care a lot about story Mm-hmm, and you've told us very little about the story which some people are gonna love They're absolutely love that very little about the story All this focus on gameplay very little about the story But you have to tell some people about the story who are fans of the Xenoblade series They want to try to connect the dots and get hyped about what's happening in this game Even a breath of the wild even in Mario Odyssey. We knew a little bit about the story hadn't in the launch I don't nothing about the story is in a late process to at all. I know it takes place on giants instead of like one solid land mass I know these giants apparently have voices and I know that there's a crap a lot of combat in some villages Mm-hmm Yeah, so the first Xenoblade Chronicles took place on Two Giants, but like really really really giant Giants. They were these got ancient gods Yeah, and it looks like they're doing that but you know ten times as many and each one is ten times as small So more manageable Sure like the dungeons in breath of the wild now, they're 120 little shrines. Yeah, yeah It's Here's a thing. I think the marketing has been bad Like I know this person brings up. Oh, they're releasing those little things on Twitter, which is cute Nintendo does that with all their games now breath of the wild Super Mario Odyssey Subtune arms. They all were getting screenshots and stuff on Twitter. I think that's smart I think that's something that they should be doing for every game they have But that's not the main marketing. Those are people that are already buying your game our page. I'm sure Keeping the hype alive. Yeah people that I you want to attract you want to try new consumers Especially for a series like Xenoblade, which I Almost wonder if this game doesn't sell well if it is like, oh, we might not make it anymore Because the series has never been like a huge seller Mm-hmm You know, it was the best seller out of all the JRPG's they brought to switch in the US and on the Wii Yeah, I think that three of them Pandora's towers, you know blade and I Always forget that they're the last story the last story things. I like the last story the best order three But you know, but it's all the best So it's you know, but it's stuck and that's what the Nintendo stuck with and it was with a company a studio They own now so fine It didn't bother me that they kept you know by going in fact I was kind of happy because outside of Final Fantasy. There really hasn't been a lot of major triple a JRPG's anymore, you know, right out of all the genres that people talk about dying Oh 3d platforming games have gone away. They haven't really gone away, but G but JRPG's Especially on a Nintendo platform. They don't exist At all Like at least we could say on we we got Call of Duty and stuff like no Crystal chronicles 3ds is the closest thing. We've had 3ds 3ds did have some some nice ones But like home console wise Feels like it's been a while and I know someone's gonna mention some obscure game that I don't know about Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Yeah, something like that. Which is fine crossover game You know kind of like a Hyrule Warriors or a Fire Emblem Warriors in a sense Where how much credit do I give to a beat a JRPG versus how much credit do I get it's pretty solidly a JRPG It is but it's also like we only have it because it's crossover, right? Yeah, that is the reason why we have it, but I appreciate it because I was basically persona. Yeah, which is cool It is awesome. It it is one of the best games released on Wii U that literally no one played Yeah, it's sales were so bad for how great that game was All the reviews of that game like it's like a mid 80s review game But nobody bought it. No, it doesn't help that the Wii U is just not a very good platform in terms of sales But you know plenty of games sold multiple millions of copies on Wii U and that game felt like okay It's niche so it's not gonna sell multiple millions. It should have sold a million, but it didn't come close. Mm-hmm That's one game. I actually hope they break they poured over to switch I was just gonna say it's gonna be a deluxe version of that Yeah, I did that any game that didn't get a fair shot on Wii U I think should come over. You know something I did like I think bad I did it too bad at a two I think had a very fair shot on Wii U. I think it's gonna sell amazing if they buy that over on switch Because Nintendo controls all the rights for that game. So all they got to say is hey, let's do it Then just get someone to port it But zero by Chronicles 2 I'm probably gonna get the game It'll be my first zero by game that I've owned now. I have played X. I have played the first one There were other people's copies So I didn't you know for JRPG's I used to play tons of JRPG's like all the JRPG's I used to play them all hundreds and hundreds of hours sunk into all these different games Final Fantasy obviously being the one franchise that I sunk probably the most hours into until it went over to Sony And that's just because I was a Nintendo boy growing up. So I didn't own PlayStation platforms usually till later in their life when I just bought a used one for really really cheap And by then I probably wasn't gonna get into the final fantasy games because I bought it for you know Maybe it was for other games that I wanted to play that Nintendo no longer got like a maddened or something you know quick quick experiences Rather than once I'm missing hundreds of hours in because heck I have all these games on Nintendo I'm still thinking hundreds of hours in so With Xenoblade Chronicles 2 One reason I'm given a shot is obviously I know I love JRPG's and I guess over the course of my life as an adult It's been hard for me to find an excuse to justify sinking hundreds of hours into a game But after the while they always had an excuse because I worked itself in form when it came out Right, so I needed an in-depth knowledge of the game to properly cover it and talk about it and create content around it whereas I've never had a reason was the in-bite to so that was like I know some of you guys I say oh well You should just play it because you need a work related reason. You're right But reality is my father three and I I have played a greater Variety of games on switch already this year than I have probably played any other year in the past ten years because Now I get to cover all this stuff Mm-hmm, and even if I'm not making reviews or previews I get to show off these games while I'm talking about news and it's made me appreciate gaming even more if I'm being honest because It has been hard and switches up to the perfect platform for someone like me who's really really busy Being able to take it with me playing at home. It's just awesome. It's everything. I know I needed out of the console So I had it right. Thank you Nintendo like people talked about the hybrid idea in the past. I was like Do I really want them to sacrifice power to make like like a Vita? Apparently. Yes. Yes, I did. Yeah yeah but ZLA Chronicles 2 was always or the ZMA Chronicles series. I've been like I I can't justify what it's going to take to play this game And the thing is I was still thinking a bunch of hours into like World of Warcraft, but I started that when I was a kid Mm-hmm. So I have I have you know this at this point 13 year investment into that game And I don't even have my subscription active. I don't even think it's active right now But when I do activate it, you know, it feels like home because I I have a history I don't have a history is you know, but right so You know even the even the old-school Xeno series stuff out there, I didn't play those growing up So I just don't have a history with it and play those So when I don't have the history I know for me to get invested I'm going to have to when I buy the first the first game I buy I'm gonna have to put probably at least 200 hours And I'm probably gonna love every moment of it and then I'm gonna be kicking myself in the butt for all the experiences I missed because of it But now I work at Nintendo Prime and I fully believe in bringing every genre of game to the platform and I feel like we just got to the same JRPGs have kind of gone away On Nintendo platforms, especially but even in general like there's just not as many of them And I really want to see a resurgence of them on Nintendo's platform But how can I do that if I don't try out the key game? Trying to drive JRPGs back for Nintendo And it could be a thing that if I love it and my coverage of it And if other big youtubers start covering it it might encourage a company like, you know Square Enix to bring over Final Fantasy, right? You know the unquestioned king of JRPGs, so in other games, obviously Atlas to bring over persona proper For so much for so much proper would be nice And there's I said, there's other JRPGs out there. So Nintendo doesn't get them get like full versions. So There's that there's my hope that I enjoy the game so much that it makes me want to talk about it for years and years and years and years But here's the problem Here's the problem for someone like me And probably other people out there as well that maybe they used to like JRPGs Or they wonder what JRPGs are like and they want to try something out But they're not sure what game to do on switch and there's only gonna be one option right now They're marketing for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Has come like with it a hair of making me not want to get the game Mm-hmm, and it's not because I think the game looks terrible It's because as a person who's not a fan of the series who doesn't know much about it it They're scaring me with the complexity And they're not giving me the substance Well, and they're showing us really cool stuff But making it boring in the way that they're showing us Yes, it's kind of spoiling the fun of it. Yeah, like a lot of this stuff I think isn't you I don't even think it's an overly complex like I've gone back and rewatched the footage I'm like, I don't think it's overly complex. I think it's that when you play the game You're introduced to these mechanics in an intuitive way. Yep. That makes it stick. That's what good games do Right. I mean obviously some people argue good game now like Dark Souls throwing in you can do everything right away You just suck for a while That's fine. That's just a different way of playing But that's not what Xenoblade and from what I've heard it does like it introduces you slowly to these mechanics Like like most games you Mario Odyssey introduces you slowly to mechanics You could do everything right away with a cappy, but you don't need to mm-hmm So the game will slowly introduce you to these new things you can do And that's what they're gonna do is the only Chronicles 2 but in their previews, they're not slowly introducing anything They're throwing like here's our entire combat system What do you guys think isn't this awesome? You saw 45 minutes of it. Have a good day. Yeah, right Here's this this dragging boring ancient voice talking to you for 12 minutes about how awesome this combat system is have a good day Yeah, it's like No No, no, no, no, no, I want story Yeah, I want to put my ears and just look at it And this actually is why the primary reason that's I don't think the combat looks boring how they're presenting it looks boring But when you actually watch like I see some of the game explains videos they had they played a demo of it or whatever When you watch just their pure gameplay ones, that's great. Mm-hmm. Oh my god This looks all this is way better than the marketing they've done That the game looks fantastic. Why don't they just show this? Yeah Right like they're not skipping NPCs. They're talking to people like they're doing things that people actually do in our in RPGs You know, they're not just saying oh, it's all about comment No, people care about the role-playing they care about the story heavily care about the story the side quest the world building the characters Like when people think about Final Fantasy 7, who do they think about the characters? Mm-hmm. I think about the story the moments. They don't think oh man think about that amazing combat That's not what sticks with that right now. It's the moments with the combat good sure But that's not the combat should be good That's not what sticks with you and I feel like that's what they're missing the boat with the marketing is that they're not showing They're not to show all the moments are to stick with you, but they're not even given us teases of moments It will stick with you and Teases of things that people play RPGs for our combat is a very very very important part of an RPG of a JRPG especially with how they approach combat but That's not why people buy the game people don't buy the game for the combat The combat supports everything else that people buy the game for in my opinion You guys out there might disagree with me, but that's the way I've always viewed RPGs RPGs are about the world the story the characters and then everything else is built around that That's why I loved the first dragon age origins the dragon of George's too. I know it's a Western RPG But Those first two games Were heavily story heavily character and then the combat everything was built around it And I'm sure they started with the base idea of the combat first I mean, I don't you know game development etc But they really they realized they needed a good characters and get story to build around it I mean they're gonna inquisition kind of that we're just gonna build like this kind of Assassin's Creed like system and We're just gonna not really give you memorable characters or memorable moments And that's where I felt inquisition really fell not the micro transactions at the DLC the characters in the story wasn't memorable I literally I remember some of the some of the gameplay moments a little bit But it's not like oh it makes me want to go back and experience that No, they miss those moments, and I'm afraid that's you know by Chronicles 2 just doesn't have those moments because they're not They haven't presented me any reason I think those moments exist Yeah, and That's what I feel the marketing has well in and um, you know, you said that you know the Fighting doesn't necessarily sell the game, but it can definitely Get people would not buy your game sure because if it cuz I mean a perfect example is is some of those old Pirates the Caribbean games the combat system and it was just absolutely Terrible so if that gets out Sure combat systems terrible People are not gonna buy it and there's a thing because of how they presented their combat system It didn't present well right now as I said when you if you go to the side You actually watch people just play the game instead of having it presented to you. It looks great But I know that because I went out of my way for additional coverage right into what she shouldn't have had to know And the trailers and the messaging from the company should be very clear right and it's so you know Combat may not be your your primary reason of buy it shouldn't be the primary reason of buying it It can definitely be a primary reason of not buying it. Well, I'll give you another example buying Kato's by the way that franchise needs to come back That was one of the final Kind of sort of JRPGs that I sunk into mm-hmm card combat system Yeah, I'm sure some of you guys have seen other other RPGs that have card There's not I don't think there's as many of them today, but there's still a few that linger around the card combat You know you build decks and blah blah blah I Thought the deck the deck thing the combat was an interesting idea But that's not why I bought the game That's part of the reason I kept playing the game because I enjoyed the combat very very much But it was the characters the story in the world that like every preview for it. Yeah, you saw a little bit of the comment Okay, that looks different. Mm-hmm It's term based, but it's based on card abilities and I'm like, okay I can get behind that. Oh and the characters are great and the story looks good And like it was presented in a way that was appealing And I feel like that's what they're missing here and so We're you know a little over a month away You know three weeks or so away from launch of this game at the time this podcast goes up and the running out of time to push this game and Part of me thinks they're gonna be silent because they have all these third-party games coming out They don't want to overshadow. Mm-hmm In fact, you could argue the timing of the release of Odyssey was so it wouldn't overshadow those games Because I think about oh doom and Skyrim and all these games. Eleanor are coming out But no one really cares until the week after when Odyssey hits So I didn't intend to clear the path for the third-party games which again begs the question who's obviously whose fault is it for the bad marketing and What what is there? Is there anything they can do? From this point forward to bring new people to Xenoblade Chronicles to is there any way they could salvage this? Because right now my interest is I'm forcing myself to be interested. Mm-hmm personally Yeah, and I'm interested based on based on my experience with the other interest I mean if I did you see I mean you're obviously you have more experience with Xenoblade than either of us here Yeah, so so you know you got someone who's just dipped his toes in And it's been afraid to dive all the way in because of the time sink and then you have You who's played a ton Is there anything you think they could do to interest people that aren't you I They definitely need to stop focusing on Just mechanics mechanics like you said if it is about the story We need to start getting what's more like a movie trailer about the game and less like oh Look at how you have these arts and if you equip them to these slots and then we need a story trailer Yeah, we need a story trailer We need a trailer that just shows off the beauty of the game How fun it might be to traverse these different giants, you know, they showed a beauty like I Haven't reported on any of this but like the screenshots they keep releasing on Twitter It's some of them the gorgeous and I'm like, where's this? Yeah, right? Yeah, that's great Let's have a real like commercial on TV with that like where is you what I want to see Multiple villages grab one of those villages and explore it for me, please and show it Yeah, so I know what to expect in this game from the villages Mm-hmm all I see now is you running from point A to point B and ignoring everything going on Does that mean there's nothing to do? Yeah, right? That means NPCs are just like dead characters like they were in Twilight Princess Mm-hmm or the a bunch of background fodder that don't matter. Mm-hmm That's not the way RPGs usually work right there might be some characters that obviously don't matter They're just there to populate the world, but usually you still interact with all of them But can you do that in this game? I don't know Have you guys seen any actual commercials for the game? No internet TV? I want to say there was one on YouTube, but it wasn't recent So it might not have been Right. Yeah, maybe like you said, maybe they're waiting for the odyssey thing Okay, let's give it a week maybe two weeks and then two or three weeks before the game comes out We're gonna hit, you know commercials hard, maybe But I don't know seems kind of sketchy Mario and Zelda are gonna have the biggest marketing budgets. Yeah But we're tuned to had a huge marketing budget a market at arms. I think very very well And you know arms, I think is pretty much on par for what people would expect as you know, big games You know really everything that Nintendo's released this year they even marketed sniffer clips really really well It's like when you're able maybe the game they got the least amount of marketing that I love the most is golf story Because that's not their game though, like it's a great game, but like it. Yeah, there was almost no marketing It was like, yeah, we announced it way way early in the year And then we didn't really say anything until the week it was coming out, but that's not Nintendo's game Yeah, that's not it's not it's an exclusive, but but yeah, Nintendo doesn't control the marketing behind I don't even know that it is exclusive. I thought there was a PC port coming there might be now I don't know might be console exclusive then beats me It was touted as an exclusive and launch, but Be a timed exclusive People throw around now like the tooth their horn Well, cuz it cuz Nintendo specifically called it a nindi game. So But they made several mistakes about many nindies and I'm very aware can't always believe the horde that they want you to believe it's this but yeah, they just didn't do the research, but Man, I mean a story trailer needs to happen One thing that would show that Nintendo is dedicated to this game. I don't think they're going to do it, but a zeno blade bundle Cuz one that's gonna at least make people who really like the zeno blade series Want to get a themed switch. Oh, yeah, I mean if you look at the the Skyrim Oh, oh, that looks amazing the skin. Yeah, yeah, the skin you get with pre-orders. Yeah There's that and also I know they've only done like the theme joy cons from Nintendo's games But like monster hunter double cross in Japan had a themed dock Yeah, oh, yeah, it's like why why is a third-party company doing that? Nintendo's not it's such a brilliant idea. Why why Nintendo? Well, no And I know we've talked about look like Odyssey they could have did a red dock with eyes. I mean it Set up some so well. Yeah. Yeah, that's something. I mean, you know, we're on the joy con red resin I mean the joy colors are fine. Yeah, I didn't make them really so separately though I don't think they need to have those bundled in with like imagine you're trying to collect all the joy con colors You have to keep buying three hundred dollar systems over and over again to get all the colors. Oh, yeah And again, that's not saying they're not gonna eventually release somewhere. You can't customize joy Of course, but the idea is you do not need to customize you want the og But whatever, I mean, you know, I could complain about that, but then you also have like the zillions of versions of the 3ds But see those are full Custom skin System is getting a cool bundle, but it's not a bundle of like switch product stuff It's just like hey comes in the metal case first switch game to come with a metal case Cool soundtrack Limited edition things. Yeah, looks and that's fine. I You know Limited quantities. Yeah, I mean Odyssey didn't even get anything like that. So But the thing is it's like none of that's a marketing play No, that's more of a fan service play. Yep, and fans are pretty absolutely should be fan servicing because they want everyone Who's ever played as you know a game to buy this game? Mm-hmm. So that's fine to fan service they absolutely should but Maybe that and maybe that's the problem with the marketing is that they just don't care to expand the reach of the game Because maybe not I think they tried that with X their goal with X is to get Western gamers in And didn't work but Did it not work as the game was bad or did not work as the Wii U was bad I'm thinking it's a ladder. Yeah. Hey, I could be a combination of both I don't think X was bad by the way But like just a combination of maybe the marketing for it wasn't I was the marketing better for X and then this way Then the first is even blade probably there was like no marketing for the first in exactly was all fan Word of mouth. Yeah word of mouth, which word of all marketing is great. Oh, yeah Mm-hmm a lot of developers will tell you like the best marketing they can get his fans wanting To market their game for free because that means they felt like they did something right. Oh for sure And I thought that's what happened with games like a steam road thing to Start a valley Golf story lives are a lot of when I was playing Mighty gunvolt Burst, you know, everybody heard of the game. Yeah, but once they saw an action like oh, this is like legit a Mega Man 8-bit style game That tiny metal coming during the stream to go buy it. Yeah, cool Well, so that the tiny metal game coming up. It's like, oh, yeah, that's a yeah May by the Sony music company people some people know that and some people know that it's Like advanced wars, but like it let till they see it. They're probably gonna pass on it. Yeah Because that's just the way it is with indie games and what sucks is I feel like that's what's happening with xenoblade Yeah, so nobody's not an indie game. It's a triple a game made by a major Nintendo studio Not getting treated like it's a triple a game made by it's getting the airtime What they're doing with that airtime is the problem Like like in this comment. I didn't even know I had a 45 minute showing at gamescom. That's a huge deal Yeah, what if they showed 45 minutes of odyssey people can't stop talking about it Great, I know Mario's more popular. I get it But if a game shows really really well during that 45 minutes people are gonna talk about people gonna take notice Right be a Kotaku article. Whoa look at xenoblade chronicles, too. I mean look at what? There was a new game announced at the that PlayStation event in Paris Oh, I can't I can't remember. It's like it in feudal Japan or China or something Really really interesting looking game. It's made by it's made by a studio. That's actually really good They make really good insomniac. No, it's not insomniac. It's it's a two-name studio like it's got two two names to it Yeah, I can't believe drawing like I mean I can because I'm a Nintendo channel But I actually watched this after the fact because I again, I'm curious in what's going on the rest of the industry And I saw that trailer and I'm like, okay You have my attention Sony Like mm-hmm This is the kind of perking up. I did when Splatoon was first showed off like, okay, you got me. I Need to see more I want I'm highly interested and want to want to probably get this game Like it's probably the first time Sony has showed off a game that I'm like, okay That's gonna make me buy them that PlayStation 4 finally. I mean, there's all these other games. I want to play That's the game being shown off brand new IP. It's not an existing IP that I'm way behind on right looks like wow and you know, but it's three games in and I feel like They haven't had that wow moment yet They've just had that. Hey, this was a niche game released in Japan People wanted on we because we don't have JRPG's And then okay, it's sold well enough to bring it back on we you but then we you didn't sell well So then the hype around it never really existed So you probably blame to go both ways there and now we have switched with tons and tons of hype We have Nintendo giving it a prime release date grant. It's not the Black Friday release date, which I think would probably do a little better Especially if they had a bundle system if they had a bundle system on Black Friday switch is selling out on Black Friday So that means they would sell out of even the Xenoblade bundles even if people don't want Xenoblade because they just want to switch Right And that's another thing like if they had a switch bundle like if my marketing strategy be like no take that back You're releasing like Thursday or or you're releasing on Thanksgiving or the day after Thanksgiving on Black Friday in the US with a But with a bundle that's gonna force people to try out this game Mm-hmm and That's gonna help you get the word of mouth around this holiday on it Yeah, you know they're gonna turn around sell it. Well, they usually give a digital code You could try resell it online But a lot of people are just gonna it's a game that comes with the system Or you can even do what they did with certain 3ds games when they bundled they had them pre-installed So you can actually pre-install or no, you can't get rid of it. You just have it forever You know, you just have to sign up on account as soon as you sign up on account. Bam. There's the game Mm-hmm the first game you see on the menu So there's ways they could they could kind of force you to not be able to sell it You're right And if you have it and it's your only game on switch at the time right or you know one of three games You have you're gonna try it right very true. And if you love it, you're gonna be like wait a second I was talking about this game. Yeah, right. That's one way And sitting because they did it's what to bundle they did a Mario Odyssey bundle Why not have a brand-new bundle and I'm like Friday feels a good right time for it especially for a game that like you could sell that bundle at at the base price like they did with Odyssey bundle and Call it won't know that it they charge 380. Sorry, but they could sell this one with just the game included and Just sell it at the base price because you already don't think it's gonna sell super well Just to build that word of mouth and you can even limit the amount of these you have right like say you don't want to lose a ton of money So you only have you know ten thousand of these units out there in the wild That's fine. That's so ten thousand people that potentially are gonna spread the word of mouth that would have never tried the game, right? You hope because I mean you especially if it's nothing special about it, right? Like it was just a base, you know, but like you see in the frame here, you know The base model of switch with the black joy cons and just has a little sticker on it Like literally it could just be an aftermarket sticker. They slap on it. This is includes Mm-hmm, it's you know, like you know, so it's not something that the collectors are gonna go out and grab, right? Like if it's a special edition with custom joy cons, all right, that's fan pandering They're gonna go buy it. This will force new people to try so that's one thing I do and then story trailer and Beyond that They need to find a way because now we're in the busy There were the hard thing is we're in the busiest part of the year getting attention So we can say it needs commercials and it's commercials and it's commercial But now it's competing commercialized with everything including Odyssey now and I don't know what they can do because I JRPGs are hard to show in commercials. Hmm. They are yeah But what they need to do is they need to find a catchphrase Something to stick in their mind sticking people's minds like, you know, I know this sounds corny, but epic worlds You know hundreds of hours of story. Yeah, great Build your old character Bob. Oh, you know, this is really lame stuff But that's what sticks in a general consumer. Oh, yeah, try something out. Wait, I build my own character could fully customizable Immersive towns. Yeah, you know with hundreds of hundreds of side questers Like something that just stands out that makes me like wow that blows my mind And then you show off. I know this seems cheap But this is how movies sell you show off some of the best moments of the game In so in those little clips some of the best looking, you know, you're right You're absolutely beauty shots show enough fantasy stuff. Yeah, like you're like there's mobile games that do this That obviously don't look at it. They're all CGI. Yeah But you could do something like that, you have to do a CGI trailer whatever Yeah, so something something that just makes people like oh my god I got like is there some epic fight in there? You know, maybe it's only one fight, right? Maybe maybe there's just one fight that when you develop the game and you play tested it like man That fight stood out. I'm gonna remember it forever and you just show off like a quick five second Like if you just swing in a sword at that bad boy, yeah Like that's the kind of stuff to build type And we've talked about that we've had Betty's about like how would you how would you announce the switch remember that? But that's because that stuff's just hype it's pure hype and that's what they need to do right now They have a very limited window left to build height for this game Yeah, they've showed off all they need to show off for people who like Xenoblade now It's time to show off for the people who don't mm-hmm. Yep And the thing is that requires a marketing budget that requires Nintendo pony Me and like look, but yeah, we got you airtime at gamescom, but we were gonna be there anyways So probably it cost us anything especially if we streamed it right like Nintendo Treehouse stream Okay, let it cause Nintendo party with anything They need to get airtime and commercials they basically was just one great commercial now multiple just one great one That sticks get it out there In the middle of of certain either like Rick and Morty episode. Yeah Yeah You know just like something something that hits with that crowd that you want the game to go to You know the cartoon networks obviously a great place to hit on it I can you imagine if they threw it as a commercial after during a self-park episode. Oh, yeah, right? Mmm in the middle of the night. I mean, I was gonna say some NBA games I don't know if people watch NBA would be as interested right Disney Channel It's not like the Super Bowl where you get people watching the Super Bowl who don't like football But the NBA is not at that level especially not in the regular season So but but there's like Disney Channel like you said like there's so many places they need to hit that commercial So like I would almost argue two commercials just so the one isn't overplayed Well, because you can get sick commercials fairly quickly Yeah, but we have such a small amount of time. Well, yeah So we don't have a lot of time and there's gonna be so many games fighting for that airtime true It's not like the commercial you're showing all the time might only be like two or three plugs of that commercial a day Yeah, and they might even paid a bill You know, I don't know what a million but you know a hundred thousand dollars per chunk You know to get that commercial out there and they're gonna do I suppose it is only like what a week. Yeah, and like YouTube obviously a great place What's been awesome is for the very first time in my life on YouTube in the entirety of the eight years that Zelda informer channel existed now Nintendo Prime We're getting Nintendo ads on our channel. I have seen Mario ads pop up three or four And I'm just like wait a second YouTube is obviously a platform you need to hit and you need to hit the relevant places Yeah, we're an extremely relevant place to hit with the Super Mario Odyssey ad you know, we're all Nintendo friends I can't see not every single person on my channel was interested in Odyssey. Mm-hmm Right, you know, and it's not just me like look at the bigger channels You could hit if Nintendo could target ads of certain channels or make partnerships like if there's a channel Say there's a channel out there that traditionally covers a lot of Final Fantasy stuff Partner with them. Mm-hmm get commercials on their channel Get them to play to get them the game early and tell them you have unlimited streaming rights to this game And I know that sounds crazy But if you can say look you get five days early no way in heck You're gonna be able to sync $500 and see everything in those five days. Just get your million plus subscribers hyped Little bit, how can we not get this game? I gotta be gonna switch today if I don't have one. Yeah There's just so many ways they could market but again some of involves risk like the giving a press copy to someone who's a big JRPG channel Obviously is risky, but it doesn't cost them anything really, right? It's the cost of the game for free marketing Right, or whatever else, you know, maybe to convince him to do it. They might have to get paid as well I don't know right But or maybe Nintendo won't even pay him, but they'll say hey look we're not gonna claim your videos We're gonna whitelist you for this game. Yeah, that would be it They do like oh, so I'm the only one in the world that's gonna be able to do this and I'm whitelisted Yeah, you're saying for this game for the for that game or for that time period Thanks, and I'm not forever, but well for these five days All the videos you make all the live streams you do it in these five days. We won't touch Or we'll manually go in and make sure that like it doesn't you know, they'll put in the effort There's just Nintendo's not gonna do any of this Right that's what sucks This is what they need to do. They need to be like look We're setting the side basically like two million dollars in marketing for this game And this is what we're doing to push it. Mm-hmm, but they're not going to do and I I Think monolith is probably to blame for how the game's been presented So I think ultimately they got to decide how they wanted their game shown Mm-hmm But in terms of just pure marketing of commercials and not like Nintendo gets a huge say I mean It's Nintendo's company. They're the ones invested in the money like I know everyone's oh, there's second party Nintendo fully owns monoliths up There is no other owner of that company It is all intensive purposes as much of a Nintendo studio is Nintendo EAD at this point It's an acquired studio really cool. It's an acquired studio. So they didn't found it, but it's their studio So it's their money. There's no separation of all monolith invested in no It's all Nintendo just like with retro retro studios is a wholly owned Nintendo studio. There's no such thing as a separation of money There isn't just like Nintendo America. They own Nintendo America. Obviously. Well, yes, but I'm sure They have their different finances and stuff The weird thing all the finances are reported in the same thing on their financial reports and the weird thing is Not actually completely analogous to the Pokemon company. Yeah, that was really interesting Yeah, I don't know enough about someone out there's gonna know the history of the Pokemon on what happened How Nintendo got certain exclusivity with it and certain copyrights and trademarks, but don't wholly own everything Yeah, that's what I don't own the development studio like at all yeah, and It's just a really interesting the pocket. It's obviously worked out really well for everyone involved right Nintendo has probably No regrets per se outside of the fact they probably wish they wholly owned everything so like they can get all the revenue from Pokemon go But whatever that's not they regret what happened In fact, if that if that did happen games like Pokemon go might have never existed in the first place, right? you know games like The polka decks or whatever when they release that or certain other games they put on phones That are good revenue generators, you know, Magikarp jump even Yeah done those Pokemon duel, which I actually don't like I think it's actually a really great concept poorly executed Like yeah, no, I like I Like what it does. It just feels so clunky when you're just using the game the act of playing the game is great That's true. It's just using it feels like it's just this awesome game held back by Like now I'm not even terrible. You I just clunky you I Disconnecting all the time. Oh, yeah, I don't know true. So I think They can make Xenobite Chronicles 2 at least so maybe it's not going to be like, you know This kind of marketing plans I could sell millions of copies, but if you can get 500,000 more in sales because of it You know, you hold the on it you make basically all the profits of it after a retailer cut The why would you not? Right do that you got a fear of two million dollars of investments would be worth a $500,000 worth of sales when you make a majority of the profits You know say you make 35 bucks per sale or 40 bucks or whatever the breakdown is But you know That's not the way they view it Obviously Xenobite does not have the track record to be in a top seller, but here's the thing. Here's the weird thing Metroid does not have the track record to be in a top seller But they give a marketing budget to that every time So it could be at least get the Metroid treatment on this, please Oh, so you want them to leave it abandoned in many years? Honestly the Amanda wasn't that bad Just joking. Yeah. Oh, they basically just skipped one generation hardware and they skipped a generation that Probably everything should have skipped Just 64 I mean, yeah, you can talk about the n64. They were still making it on handhelds then Right, but like they skipped the Wii U people got mad about it. It's like well other end was just did not do well At some point you have to take a break when you're not like Really on Nintendo decided we're actually not gonna put a whole lot of our games on Wii U It's not doing well. Yeah, I I Feel bad. I like I feel bad for Xenobite too because I think What what if it ends up being the best Xenobite Chronicles game, but nobody knows it exists? It's a possibility. Yeah, he said That's what I'm worried about like I feel like we've outlined a really solid plan to make it work There's not gonna do it. We know they're not gonna do it though There's a higher chance Nintendo runs ads of doom and helps pay for that and there is this yeah And Nintendo doesn't even get a majority of them. They just get a royalty fee from that. So I Understand like I'm not saying that's a bad move. They should try to get pushed to get more third-party support maybe offered some advertising fees for it, but Like this is your game your first-party triple-a you're only first-party triple-a JRPG you have in-house It should get a pretty decent push at least as good as you pushed arms bare minimum but And again, I want to say I feel bad for monolith software Maybe not getting that marketing budget, but at the same time They're the ones that showed the game the way that they did. Yeah So maybe after that Nintendo's like we know this is going to flop and especially in the West you Demo help like the after-path traveler demo a Demo would help I think it I think demo definitely helped after that traveler a ton mm-hmm Now obviously we don't know we don't have sales yet. It's not out But it definitely started peaking a lot of people. Oh, yeah This is really good. I'm like it is really good. Go try it And they could do that was even my chronicles to Nintendo doesn't have a history of releasing demos Consistent yeah now obviously when I ask them to be consistent we're saying we don't know this game You know if you give a free demo and don't do it after the game comes out do it before They let people explore, you know Even if it's even if it's the full game, which I don't think they would do you can put a time limit Mm-hmm. They're not going to because someone's gonna hack it. Mm-hmm. You know, I mean like even if it's just like the first Giant or whatever Mm-hmm, right or even just a tutorial area or whatever like whatever release that and just put a time limit Or whatever you need to do if you want a whole thing like a 3ds thing you open a jrpg So you should let people play a significant chunk. I Mean odds about travelers does You play the entire beginning of the game For two care equals out of the eight. Yeah, like that a significant chunk like that that gives you, you know Now I'll say say four to six hours of gameplay That's gonna help sell your game. You can say oh, it's gonna help not sell it people aren't gonna buy it anyways Yeah, all it's gonna do is make people want more especially if you could transfer where you end there to the game you buy So you don't have to replay that six hours again. Mm-hmm. That's always that's gonna be a huge turn on as well There are some games that do do that with us You also got to go and not go the way of at least in our opinion of the Pokemon demos Where they were just just absolutely Seriously wonder Eric if we're just outliers because everybody said the demo was awesome No, I don't know I then again all those people like Pokemon. Yeah, maybe we just hate It's just but there's one other approach they've had to demos which was a quite interesting take Super smash bros for 3ds They only sent out to my Nintendo members and only if you had this email option checked Oh, I remember somebody gave me a code and then I wanted to play with my friend So I actually had to buy a code from somebody else. I was so bad in a free demo. I Understood the idea was word-of-mouth and driving like I get I understood what they were doing. It was just executed So poorly. Well, but it generated a lot of buzz. It did wanted it. I wish so bad. Yeah, no, they did I It was a problem. I have was that what what I think they could have did to do it better And if they do it now anyone who's a member of my Nintendo just gets the game plus three extra codes for now for the demo Yeah, that's not what they did. They did like this wave thing and like maybe you'll be selected Yeah, I was so weird like if they were just did everyone so then people who have registered their Ken and then people Which would be most people that care, but then you'll always have your friends. Oh, we never registered Nintendo account We never made my Nintendo. Well, here's a code. Yeah, try it out Like my daughter, she's never gonna register at least not till she's older when she gets a switch So like here I'm gonna play play this really super complicated game killing monsters You'll probably beat it faster than I am because that's just the way children are these days You're right. Oh, no, she'll she'll get like I have fresh take you beat this for me. No, I haven't even gotten to that guy yet Anyways