JC Barnett, the pseudonym for a games developer working out of Japan, has a somewhat unexpected commentary on the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Brawl release in the Land of the Rising Sun on his Japanmanship blog. Essentially, Barnett believes the title will sell well enough, but ultimately underperform due to the Wii being a casual gamer’s machine - similar to what happened recently to No More Heroes in Japan, just on a larger scale.

As a spurious prediction I’d say we may see a promising start with the usual drop-off over the next few months and sales figures that would make anyone proud but that are still lower than expected, a bit like Super Mario Galaxy. If Sumabura [Super Smash Bros. Brawl] doesn’t sell that well it would be proof positive that the Wii isn’t a hard-core friendly platform. I suspect already that it isn’t, but a title like this could prove it once and for all.

Not being hard-core friendly is one thing, but Barnett asserts that he believes that hard-core titles won’t work on the Wii.

This also means the Wii is out of the “console war”. It has its own market distinctly different from its competitors, whom must fight amongst themselves for their own top spot. Both Microsoft and Sony are making wooing noises to the casual market but they’ll have a hard time stealing customers from the big N.

So any publisher looking to make money on the Wii must squarely look at casual and avoid hard-core at all costs.

Barnett’s opinion is interesting, and there could certainly be some weight to it - although one must wonder whether No More Heroes’ lack of success doesn’t also have to do with advertising method. Brawl certainly has more exposure, and sales should be stronger as a result. We’ll be able to reflect more on Barnett’s prediction in the next weeks.

Source: GameSetWatch

VGMWatch.com has been able to confirm that IGN Nintendo editor Matt Casamassina is married to Golin Harris Vice President Edie Kissko. Golin Harris serves as Nintendo’s PR firm. Sources connected with both Golin Harris and IGN.com were able to validate this information. While VGMWatch has no interest in personal affairs, undisclosed conflicts of interest plaguing the game industry’s integrity cannot be ignored. To that end, there are several journalistic red flags surrounding the facts of this case.

Unfortunately, we have yet to discover any public acknowledgment from either Nintendo, Golin Harris, or IGN Entertainment informing customers of this conflict of interest. Furthermore, IGN.com has continued to allow the Nintendo channel editor to manage Nintendo product coverage. Likewise, the Golin Harris VP in question is responsible for promoting Nintendo products. Clearly, millions of IGN readers’ trust has been violated by this irresponsible abandonment of principle.

Make no mistake, people cannot help with whom they fall in love. As such, the personal integrity of the two individuals involved with this case is completely irrelevant. Indeed, it is principle and principle alone which concerns VGMWatch. The buck stops with IGN and Nintendo to address any conflicts of interest they may have. Simply put, the line between product coverage and sales should be clear and uncompromised. The mere appearance of journalistic impropriety of this magnitude should be avoided.

When game media outlets and publishers taint product coverage it hurts the industry as a whole. Gamers should not tolerate this type of gross irresponsibility. It is also completely unfair to the game publications and publishers that do practice integrity and sound business principle. Frankly, we are tired of seeing reputable industry outlets dragged into the mud due to the careless actions of others. Let’s face it, a newspaper dining critic would not be allowed to review a restaurant his/her spouse managed. If the publication was aware of the potential for conflict of interest, the journalist would most likely not even be allowed to review any restaurants in town. This is basic journalistic integrity consumers expect. The game industry deserves nothing less.

Needless to say, we are disappointed with IGN.com. However, we do want to offer some advice to the network to remedy this situation. First, we strongly urge IGN to not make the network editor a scapegoat in an effort to save face. It is the network’s responsibility to deal with these issues, not the employee. Furthermore, IGN.com should issue a public statement to its readers regarding the conflict of interest. Also, the Nintendo editor should be assigned editorial coverage that does not conflict with his/her personal relationship. We strongly urge Golin Harris/Nintendo to take similar measures on its end.

We contacted IGN and Golin Harris representatives as well as the individuals directly involved. Currently, we have received comment from Golin Harris:“All GolinHarris employees who work on the Nintendo account sign and adhere to a strict confidentiality agreement.” VGMWatch will continue to investigate this story and any other conflicts of interest that come to our attention.

Updated Editor’s Personal Note: I was uncomfortable publishing this story. In fact, I have been sitting on this piece for many months debating whether to run it or not. However, with the game media beginning to take a closer look at cases of corruption, it is time to address this issue. Personally, I find it sickening that these companies’ mistakes happen to be connected with personal affairs. That’s why, rightly or wrongly, I refuse to mention the two individuals’ names. The original story I published did not contain the individual’s names. However, after recommendations from fellow journalists, I have reluctantly decided to disclose the names of the individuals involved. Unfortunately, there is an element of responsibility that falls on the individuals involved as well. Nevertheless, I respect them personally and realize that marriage is a wonderful institution. Rather, my frustration is completely directed towards IGN, Nintendo, and Golin Harris. While it was very difficult for me to publish this type of story, I could not in good conscience continue to shelve it. I also understand that some folks inside the industry have known of this marriage already. However, it would be disingenuous for our publication to not report on such a conflict of interest for the general gaming public. Hopefully, if we continue to engage in open dialog regarding problematic issues facing game journalism we can aid this industry in its maturation.

Update: For clarity, I want to reiterate the central point of the article. This story is about full disclosure on the part of IGN and Nintendo/Golin Harris. It is utterly disrespectful to their readership to not disclose this situation. The personal integrity of the two individuals is irrelevant. It is also unnecessary to assume that there have been any competitive advantages gained with this situation. Rather, IGN and Golin Harris need to disclose this type of information directly to their readers to avoid any appearance of conflicting interests. For example, if we were to find out tomorrow that Katie Couric and George W. Bush were lovers and neither CBS or the White House reported it, we would all be outraged. Just because Couric may have done X amount of negative pieces on Bush’s administration, it doesn’t give the problem of conflicting interests a free pass. I hope you can see the connection here.

Update 2: Golin Harris has issued this statement in regard to the story:
“All GolinHarris employees who work on the Nintendo account sign and adhere to a strict confidentiality agreement.”

You would think this an article about Jeff Gerstmann, but it’s not. Despite the hailstorm of controversy (firestorm has been a bit overused of late, after all) surrounding the debacle over at GameSpot, there are other happenings that the Watch would be remiss to overlook.

Last week the New York Times published a piece called “Some Essential Hardware (Even Away from the Street)”, an article aimed at executives who needed both functional gadgets and tech that could provide some relaxation. Slotted into relaxation considerations were the Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and while the Wii got its due factually speaking, there were tremendous blunders concerning the PS3 and 360 information – including price, processor type, and “best-sellers” that, ya know, haven’t been released yet.

Fortunately, the New York Times has since publicly admitted error and posted a correction. We think their addendum to the article best sums up its flaws:

An article in Business Day on Friday about favorite gadgets of executives referred incorrectly to the video game Gran Turismo 5. It has not yet been released, and thus is not a best-selling game. The article also referred imprecisely to the game Halo 3. It is the first game in the Halo series designed for the Xbox 360; the earlier games, though playable on the Xbox 360, were designed for the original Xbox. The chip in the Xbox 360 also was misidentified. It has a Xenon chip, not a Cell processor. And the article also misstated the price of the Sony PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 starts at $399, not $299.

Sure, perhaps the Halo mistake is forgivable, and maybe we can understand slipping up on “what’s under the hood” of the PS3 and 360. But also quoting the PS3 price as $299 and, more so, calling an unreleased game a “best-seller”? Perhaps the Gran Turismo 5 slip up wasn’t a slip up at all, and the Times forgot to mention the consultation of the office Magic 8 Ball for sales forecasting.

All jabs aside, errors do happen, and the important thing is that the Times did exactly what any reputable publication would do by posting a public admission of error. However, this piece is too sloppy for most any news outlet, let alone the New York Times. It wasn’t merely the fault of the writer, but also the copy editor(s) and anyone else associated pre-publication. Hopefully now they’ve got their article submission process ironed out again.

In case you haven’t heard the story of Jessica Zenner yet, an interview is up with the former Nintendo employee at Ripten.com, providing her side of the story.

It should be noted that despite the ambiguous title, Zenner is not a Nintendo blogger but rather a former employee at Nintendo who held a personal blog. The crux of the situation, as reported by Zenner, is that she was fired from Nintendo upon the company finding her blog, which made references, although not wholly, to the working climate at the corporation. Names were never dropped, and Zenner assures that there was no attempt to smear the company, nor was the blog focused on Nintendo.

We’ll leave it up to readers to decide, but if there was indeed no blog policy instated by Nintendo prior to Zenner’s case this could be viewed as a bit dubious and call into question one’s “right” to a personal blog. Then again, if there were even vague stipulations in Zenner’s contract matters may be quite different indeed.

As game journalists, often I think we gain an exaggerated sense of self-importance regarding our coverage of the industry we canvas. It’s become commonplace for many to smirk at the troubled reporting of the mainstream media as they attempt to cover a story within the gaming industry. We downplay the mainstream’s significance in this realm by considering their coverage nothing but a hackneyed attempt by a bunch of over-the-hill news anchors, blissfully reading words like “Xbox” and “Nintendo” off prompters. After all, what do they know, right?

In the past, mainstream coverage seemed different solely because it was deemed inadequate by comparison. With the advent and rise of Nintendo’s Wii and DS, however, the distinction between “hardcore” gaming outlets and the CNNs of the world has taken on a whole new flavor. The mainstream press are celebrating the virtues of the Wii, blaring their trumpets from on high at every opportunity… Dr. Phil is giving them away on his show, for instance. Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman is touting the usefulness of the DS’ More Brain Training in a special print and television campaign over in Europe. It’s essentially a “Be like Nicole and train your brain for minutes a day” deal, and hey, who doesn’t want to be like a filthy-rich, award-winning actress with pleasantly high cheek bones? (Did I really just mention “pleasantly high cheek bones”?) And none of this is to mention all the stories of mothers sharing delighted stories with the press over how their young x-amount of pounds overweight teenaged son/daughter is now staying “active” through Wii Sports.

With all this feel-goodness going on in mainstream land, what are the talking points among the traditional, gaming-only media outlets and associated entrenched industry pontificators? Obviously, there is still a lot of love for the Wii out there, but there’s an undercurrent of… something else.

(more…)

Imagine you’re a console manufacturer whose current console is stagnating and whose next one won’t come out for at least a year. Meanwhile, one of your major competitors is releasing a console in the next week that seems to be all anyone can talk about. You obviously need to do something to get the press attention back your way, but you don’t have any substantive news about the games or technology behind your new system that you’re ready to release. What do you do… what do you do?

If you’re Nintendo, you announce to a hungry press that your next system will have a parental control system.

Whoo. Now there’s a story with legs.

Apparently this news is big enough to warrant a short AP story with a totally useless headline (”Nintendo to issue new version of console”) and a misleading statement about the Nintendo content (”few games designed for [Nintendo’s] systems have a lot of violence or sexuality.”)

But even this story shows how Nintendo’s “look over here” strategy can backfire — the AP story mentions that Nintendo’s announcement “echoes Redmond-based Microsoft Corp.’s efforts to bolster parental controls with its Xbox 360, due out next Tuesday.”

In other words, you need to announce something more exciting than a feature copied from Microsoft if you really want to get the press’ attention.

It’ll be interesting to see what Nintendo and Sony have up their sleeves on November 22 to counter the inevitable wall of launch day coverage.

Update: I just noticed that Sony announced a similar parental control system for the PS3 weeks ago, and with much less fanfare. The AP story must have missed this, saying “the company has not yet detailed plans for its forthcoming PlayStation 3.”

“The Rumble Pak, called quite simply the ‘Rumble Pak’, vibrates when the Nintendo DS tells it to.” [emphasis added]
-IGN announces the existence of the Nintendo DS rumble pak, also know as the “rumble pak”

Yeah, I know the last one was only 5 months ago. This is the third year of the blog since August. So there.

Now that we’ve all had a week to fiugure out if Nintendo’s new Revolution controller will raise Nintendo back to market dominance or be the blow that drives Nintendo out of business (middle ground? P’shaw!), let’s take a look at how some outlets covered the unveiling.

Blanket Coverage Award: IGN

Holy heck! Besides the above linked hands-on impresisons, IGN had an article on possible uses for the controller, some initial developer comments and an editor’s roundtable discussion… all on Thursday night! Matt Casamassina is a madman!

Late For a Blog Award: Kotaku

The Revolution controller news didn’t break on Kotaku until late Friday morning, when practically every other big site already had something on it, including big blog competitor Joystiq. This is the same site that posted a huge Xbox 360 expose concurrent with the big MTV unveiling. In the world of blogs, the rule stands: get it first, but get it right (but, really, just get it first).

Runner up in this category goes to me, for posting these awards roughly a week late.

Self-Disclaimer Award: IGN

Specifically, this award goes to Levi Buchanan for saying in a roundtable, “I’ve been called a Nintendo fanboy for years. Hell, I’ll confess that I actually worked for them for a year writing for Nintendo Power.” This adds important context to comments like, “I am 100-percent behind Nintendo’s drive for innovation.” Is there any way to remove the implied stain of bias that comes from having Nintendo Power on your resume? I mean, besides hiding it?

Praising With Faint Damns Award: Talk Xbox

Despite calling the controller “mindblowing” and “interesting,” the post also says that “the design makes it a huge pain for 3rd party publishers to port games to the console. But, then again, the GameCube has been mostly 1st party games this generation, so this won’t be a large leap for Nintendo.” Ouch! Nintendo, are you just gonna sit there and take that?

Best Summary of Industry Response Award: Next Generation

Sure, this article wasn’t out until Monday, but Next Gen spent the weekend getting opinions from a whole lot of influential people in the industry. And Tommy Tallarico! Including the media response is important, because while the developers can bring the games, the media are the ones that can doom this thing or ensure its success before it even ships.

Future Stenographer Award: Wonderland

Alice managed to take down Iwata’s keynote speech practically verbatim as he gave it, and delivered the result to the world mere hours after the speech ended. Usually I can’t write and listen at the same time, which is why I rely on audio recordings and e-mails a lot. Alice obviously does not have this issue.

Describing Controllers to Old Folks Award: CNN/Money

Chris Morris wins for the parenthetical in the following:

While it will chiefly rely on those internal sensors to reflect movement on screen, the controller does have a D-pad, which can be easily reached with your thumb. (A D-pad, which is a standard feature on today’s controller, is a movement director that resembles a plus sign.)

Seeing as the D-pad was first introduced over 20 years ago, what is the statute of limitations on having to describe it to a general audience? Perhaps “a plus-sign-shpaed D-pad” would have sufficed?

Effective Efusive Praise Award: Kieron Gillen

“Whether they get it or not immediately divides the entire gaming universe into cowardly, tedious luddites who are perfectly happy to sit in their squat-like holes forever and Good People.”

Best Bitter Bellyaching Award: Curmudgeon Gamer

“As the saying goes: it’s not the size of the sword, but the skill of the swordsman. Remember that Nintendo is addicted to rereleasing its older games. For every new and original game they release, there will be 9 remakes of games they put out on the Super Nintendo or NES. Now all you fans can go out and buy A Link to the Past all over again! But with spatial controller gimmick! Yeah, you have fun with that.”

Cute Headline Award: EuroGamer

Remotely? What does he mean by… oh… it’s shaped like a remote! HA! I got it! HAH HAH HA! Haha! Hehehehehee. *Giggles*. Whooo! Good times.

Best Editorial Pictorial: Jeremy Parish

I had a U-Force. I spent $60 on that piece of crud. I should revoke Parish’s award just for reminding me of it. So bitter! GRRRRR!

Press Release Hyperbole Award: Nintendo (duh!)

“The response from all major publishers worldwide has been extremely positive. ” So I guess if you didn’t like it, you’re not a major publisher, eh?

That’s all I have time for now. Expect updates when I figure out what awards to give to some of these other articles I’ve got bookmarked.

While a lot of games allow you to name your characters, not many reviews make it a point to disclose the reviewer’s chosen virtual moniker to the readers. Nintendogs is turning into the exception that proves this rule, though, as many reviewers have been dropping their pups name into their critiques.

A few examples (in no particular order):

• Diamond - San Jose Mercury News
• Fernando - GameSpy
• Dogzilla - GameSpot (Wins my “Best Puppy Name” award)
• Honey - Rocky Mountain News (Named after his PSP, perhaps?)
• Huggy - Associated Press
• LouLou - Game Revolution
• Daisy - MoDojo
• Trixy - N-philes

Perhaps this is indicative of the special pride that reviewers feel for their digital pets. Perhaps this is indicative of the increased relevance and importance of names in Nintendogs, which must be spoken and recognized by the system. Perhaps this is indicative of nothing at all.

I’m sure I missed quite a few puppy name-drops in my list. Feel free to add your own find using the comments link below.

P.S.: I named my happy puppies Max, Gloria and Rover.