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I am not so sure that Monkey Ball was a flop everywhere, it seems to have done well in NA. That said, it's failure in Japan has more to do with the lack of consistency from the franchise than anything else, if anything at all. Which leans to the fact that what the Marketing team was doing wasn't working nor got the word out.
It would be a waste to miss out on the Switch install base but then again, they wasted 8 years of the console’s lifespan so far - might as well start from scratch with the Switch 2 only.
Apparently this port had a very short cycle (platform testing started just last spring around when the last Monkey Ball wrapped) so hopefully they could get 0 out early next year. This would set them up well to move to Kiwami 2 on Switch 2 later in 2025 and maybe go on from there.
It doesn’t even sound like reluctance but just a complete no show ala Ace Combat. The Switch just wasn’t on their radar nor were they really expecting it to be on their radar until someone randomly thought to port it.
It's an exclusive Switch game released in its final year of life, an environment where even Nintendo's 1st party software sales are in significant decline, after previously training their customers that Monkey Ball could be found elsewhere (2 generations of Xbox/PS hardware, and PC) in both 2017 and 2021. Absolutely awful decision making. It doesn't help that the reputation of the brand is all over the place with its core audience, as there are unpatched Indie-Studio's-First-Unity-Game issues with the previous releases too (who doesn't love fixed 50Hz camera updates and the resulting judder? Who doesn't love basic control issues in a series that is a poster child for fine analog movement?).
Not really because of the "environment", they just don't release games that would sell a lot of copies.
It's so hilarious that he seems genuinely surprised about the success of his "mature" game on Switch, when plenty of such games have already proven to sell good or even best on Switch.
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Of course it's because of the environment. Switch 1 is at end of life and any releases on the platform have an upper limit on mindshare and therefore sales as a result. This isn't controversial, it's the natural part of the cycle on fixed hardware.
"There must be some good reason they did this" isn't convincing when the party involved is Sega/RGG, lol.I don't know if Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble sold well in NA and Europe, but we already got two multiplatform games before this new game, I guess that SEGA saw the sales on each platform...
There is a reason if they thought that it was better to release this game as a Switch exclusive.
Yes, and this is part of the problem - the series started as prestigious GC titles that could stand alongside Nintendo's own party games, and are now very noticeably lower budget Unity projects that are passably good but often have fundamental issues, which simply isn't enough to compete against the current quality of Nintendo's party game output. The series needs a reset as it has burned itself out due to questionable decisions for most of its life now.
RGG are gonna be competing with a lot more exciting content during Switch 2 launch - as in exclusives and big OG Switch game that get updates.
I would love to know what Nagoshi is thinking about this port happening in general and its performance. We will never know, but im just wondering.
I think they're limited on that front, imo it's really just 0, 3-5 and maybe UE4 Ishin because the Dragon Engine scales so poorly.
I wouldnt call having + 4 games left to port "limited" on that front. Its not like they are gonna release the ports every other week. Even a port every 6 months would have them busy until 2026 and these games could/would still on Switch 2.
Oh sure, they should be hitting on both fronts where possible. 3-5 are really one "release" at this point though and Genki did those remasters anyway so they should be pretty easy to allocate resources, though maybe they want to look into moving ahead with Kiwami 3 instead and just do a 4-5 dual pack when the time comes?
So, how do you explain the sales for Super Mario Party Jamboree? We're talking about software isn't it? You original message was "an environment where even Nintendo's 1st party software sales are in significant decline".
yeah that makes sense. I think they can easily port it to both platforms.
Jamboree is a single data point and is 2 weeks old, there's very little you can infer besides the game having a prime pre-Christmas spot this year and the overall excellent health of the series this generation. Everything else is underselling compared to what it would have achieved earlier in the generation because mindshare for Switch is reducing over time. And the very reason there are no EPD/AAA releases is because we're at the end of the generation and these teams have transitioned to the new hardware. If those teams were still producing Switch 1 content they would also inevitably undersell relative to their prior entries (just like TotK) because overall mindshare and product novelty is reduced from the period when e.g. BotW/Mario Odyssey/Origami King etc released.
Some of that could merely come down to perception of the game itself, since even though I loved it overall, it's not the new top-down Zelda adventure I was looking forward to. The item-creation gimmick got frustrating at times and I just wanted to rely on using the sword like it all other Zelda games. Eventually, despite all the love and effort poured in, I left the entire experience (especially after the disappointing final boss battle) just wanting a LttP or Oracles remake experience using the same engine.
It wouldn't explain the stronher JP performance relative to the other markets tho.
What does explain this is: games like Splatoon 3 and Pikmin 4 have done more to preserve Switch's momentum in Japan in the later years of its life than their performance in the rest of the world (I'd argue this is because their Japanese business knows how to market these titles way better than e.g. NOA). So the trailing off of product mindshare is much slower in Japan, especially when combined with the awful Japan strategy of their chief competitor.
I think its performance is related to CN.
