Before I went on sabbatical from this blog, and before Brawl came out, there's an argument I kept running across in blog posts and on forums. It was a sincere belief that Brawl would be a financial failure.
Here's the argument as I remember it: Since Nintendo sold the Wii based on its "blue ocean" strategy, most Wiis were in the hands of casual gamers. They want WiiFit and more Wii Sports, not a fighter. Everyone who'd enjoy Brawl probably didn't want a Wii since it lacked hardcore games.
This would be the time to point and laugh at how wrong that theory was. Nintendo just issued a press release declaring Brawl the fastest-selling Nintendo game to date.
After just one week on store shelves, Super Smash Bros.� Brawl for Wii has become the fastest-selling video game in Nintendo of America's history. Since its launch on March 9, the feature-packed fighting action game has sold more than 1.4 million units in the United States, including more than 874,000 on March 9 alone. It has sold at a rate of more than 120 units per minute between launch and March 16.
What I find really interesting about that flawed pre-launch theory about Brawl sales, though, is the assumption that Brawl is somehow a strictly hardcore game. If you go to the very public Iwata Asks interviews with Sakurai up on Nintendo's main website, the two men bluntly state that the original Super Smash Bros. was designed for an audience that we'd now call "casual".
Iwata: Of course, Im not trying to say that Smash Bros. isnt meant for beginners and, in fact, development of the original Smash Bros. began with the idea of making a game that people unfamiliar to gaming could come to enjoy it just as much as everyone else within the first ten minutes of play.
Sakurai: Right. That is the main concept behind the Smash Bros. series, and the feature is more well-defined in Smash Bros. Brawl.
Iwata: Also, I think that fundamentally, we shouldnt try and separate the casual gamers from the core gamers. After all, everyone starts off as a casual gamer. Some of these casual gamers will end up falling in love with gaming. Despite this fact though, I think that people too often treat them as entities that are inherently different.
So, why did people ever regard Smash Bros., and especially Brawl, as hardcore titles? I can only think it's because Brawl more or less resembles a traditional gaming genre (the 2D fighter) and has obvious depth that skilled gamers to exploit. What serves to level the playing field is Items, which hardcore gamers seem to find a frustration rather than a blessing.
Still, this is basically a game that everyone is playing, and whether you're farming Tabuu on Intense or just screwing around with your friends, chances are everyone's having an equally good time.
Later on in the same press release that touts Brawl's big sales, Nintendo starts throwing around the term "bridge game" to describe titles easy enough for casual gamers to pick up, Nintendo is currently trying to market Mario Kart Wii in the same way, calling it a "bridge game", something with equal appeal to hardcore vets and casual beginners.
Mario Kart Wii launches April 27 with the Wii Wheel", which lets players drive their speedy karts with the intuitive feel of a wireless steering wheel. It's another "bridge" game like Wii Sports" that lets video game novices and veterans play and have fun together.
I'm not sure Wii Sports has the depth to be anything more than casual, but a good Mario Kart title definitely does. Could you also call Brawl a bridge title? Or is the whole "bridge game" concept just Nintendo trying to find a way to market accessible gameplay that doesn't make certain segments of the hardcore base quite so pouty? A lot's going to ride on how close to duplicating Brawl's success Mario Kart Wii can come when it drops in April, I think.
