The Risk Backfired
Its a sad truth for every member of the Starmen.net community, Earthbound did not do well in America. This may seem to be a minor issue as we already have the game available to us, so who cares if Nintendo makes money off of Earthbound?
Had Earthbound been the only game in its series this would have been a valid point, but with the recent release of Mother 1+2 on GBA, many of us are grieving the commercial failure of Earthbound here. Mother 1+2 wasn't released in America as a result of the old wounds caused by Earthbound, and thats a real shame.
Could things be worse though? Mother 3 is slated for release sometime in the future. As much as we miss Mother 1+2 over here, the games on it are still available to us, Mother 3 isn't. After all these years of waiting what are the chances that it will be taken stateside? only time can really tell.
What caused the initial problem here, why didn't Earthbound excel as it had in Japan as Mother 1? There are several possible reasons actually, lets take a look into the strange and wacky world of Earthbound history.
The game's series started with Mother, a game for NES, which had enough commercial success in Japan to spawn Mother 2 for SNES. Mother 2 was a giant in Japan, giving Nintendo overly optimistic hopes for Earthbound in America. Earthbound is the US' equivalent of Mother 2, and right off the bat Nintendo made some rather strange choices for Earthbound's advertising.
The prevalent RPGs for SNES were Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, both typically medieval and produced by Squaresoft, Earthbound being a modern RPG had its fair share of unique ideas for the American game market, so I question the purpose of the gimmicky ad campaign Nintendo decided to launch, the tag was "This game Stinks!" I attribute the use of this anti-marketing technique to a poorly thought out idea. Yes, Earthbound is a funny game, and yes, the scratch and sniff cards that come with it are very cool, but there is a flaw in their logic concerning initial impressions. In Japan they had established the series with mother and were able to get away with some strange marketing due to an already established familiarity with the game's odd humor. In America no one had ever heard of mother or Earthbound, it was a clever campaign, but when the first thing someone hears about a new game is that it "Stinks" there is probably going to be some hesitancy.
Earthbound was also shipped in a huge, player's guide sized box. This was a beautiful and genius marketing idea, but I noticed something when I bought Earthbound at a local Walmart when I was a kid, Earthbound wasn't with the other games, it was on a separate shelf away from the display case. Was the game stocked away from the SNES games everywhere in America? I can't be sure, but that was the case for me.
There was also some negative feedback within the gaming community concerning Earthbound's strange concepts and rather simplified graphics. Earthbound will always be a big scar for Nintendo that they'll hopefully learn to trust again. I feel Nintendo would have been more rewarded with an obvious "Modern RPG" ad campaign, and perhaps should have had stricter shelving conditions with their retailers to ensure the game would sell, but they took a risk and it seems to have backfired for them.
Its a sad truth for every member of the Starmen.net community, Earthbound did not do well in America. This may seem to be a minor issue as we already have the game available to us, so who cares if Nintendo makes money off of Earthbound?
Had Earthbound been the only game in its series this would have been a valid point, but with the recent release of Mother 1+2 on GBA, many of us are grieving the commercial failure of Earthbound here. Mother 1+2 wasn't released in America as a result of the old wounds caused by Earthbound, and thats a real shame.
Could things be worse though? Mother 3 is slated for release sometime in the future. As much as we miss Mother 1+2 over here, the games on it are still available to us, Mother 3 isn't. After all these years of waiting what are the chances that it will be taken stateside? only time can really tell.
What caused the initial problem here, why didn't Earthbound excel as it had in Japan as Mother 1? There are several possible reasons actually, lets take a look into the strange and wacky world of Earthbound history.
The game's series started with Mother, a game for NES, which had enough commercial success in Japan to spawn Mother 2 for SNES. Mother 2 was a giant in Japan, giving Nintendo overly optimistic hopes for Earthbound in America. Earthbound is the US' equivalent of Mother 2, and right off the bat Nintendo made some rather strange choices for Earthbound's advertising.
The prevalent RPGs for SNES were Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, both typically medieval and produced by Squaresoft, Earthbound being a modern RPG had its fair share of unique ideas for the American game market, so I question the purpose of the gimmicky ad campaign Nintendo decided to launch, the tag was "This game Stinks!" I attribute the use of this anti-marketing technique to a poorly thought out idea. Yes, Earthbound is a funny game, and yes, the scratch and sniff cards that come with it are very cool, but there is a flaw in their logic concerning initial impressions. In Japan they had established the series with mother and were able to get away with some strange marketing due to an already established familiarity with the game's odd humor. In America no one had ever heard of mother or Earthbound, it was a clever campaign, but when the first thing someone hears about a new game is that it "Stinks" there is probably going to be some hesitancy.
Earthbound was also shipped in a huge, player's guide sized box. This was a beautiful and genius marketing idea, but I noticed something when I bought Earthbound at a local Walmart when I was a kid, Earthbound wasn't with the other games, it was on a separate shelf away from the display case. Was the game stocked away from the SNES games everywhere in America? I can't be sure, but that was the case for me.
There was also some negative feedback within the gaming community concerning Earthbound's strange concepts and rather simplified graphics. Earthbound will always be a big scar for Nintendo that they'll hopefully learn to trust again. I feel Nintendo would have been more rewarded with an obvious "Modern RPG" ad campaign, and perhaps should have had stricter shelving conditions with their retailers to ensure the game would sell, but they took a risk and it seems to have backfired for them.
