Yeah, it's another criticism article like the first one I made [link] . The reason I'm making another one is because I noticed something about great games that bombed in sales terms because of mainly one thing, the publisher of these games never bothers to advertise them. Yeah I'm aware that the last criticism article I made also had to do with advertising, but this one is different; because for one, I'm basically criticising Capcom's Christian Svennson, and two, the games in question are actually rated E-T; Okami and Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbaros' Treasure.

Now this is certainly baffling to me, because unlike the rated M games I mentioned in the last topic where it is hard to advertise them on the Wii because of the fact most of the demographic who plays the Wii are casual gamers, and that some of them might sue the company for selling such a horrific game on a "family friendly" system. But with games like Zack & Wiki and Okami; there really shouldn't be any limitations on advertising them because the game is so kid-friendly, not to mention innovative, and even if there are bits of swearing and violence; that's basically nothing compared to M games.

Now what it's got to do with Christian Svennson? Well to put it bluntly, he is VP of Strategic Planning and Business Development for Capcom. Now I'm not sure what it means, but I think he's the one who calls the shots on how Okami should be handled in the market, including on whether to widely advertise it or not. Now I could be wrong on this, but that really shouldn't matter, as it still leads back to Capcom holding advertising rights as usually publishers hold them. It really confounds me as to why they never made big advertisements for these games on TV screens, especially since they did so with Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV, and many more games that are basically part of huge franchises Capcom owns. So why is that when it comes to very unique games that could have great potential for a franchise; that they don't bother to make ads for it outside the internet. Sure it is convient for gamers like us who use game sites alot, but I'm willing to bet that if they handled the advertising better, like making the game well known across the world, I'm sure it would have been a success.

Now I'm aware that there could have been other reasons on why these games we're such flops, like for the fact they might have been labelled for the hardcore audience even though to me they're very much as good for the casual; it's not really rocket scientist to see that is really a big gamble to label games for the hardcore, especially on systems that have much more casual audiences then hardcore. Plus, there's also the fact that a reason why Okami along with Zack & Wiki we're lackluster in sales was because of the fact of bad timing in releasing the game. Beyond Good & Evil and Psychonauts we're such games that seem to back up this theory. Beyond Good & Evil may have sold badly because of poor marketing, but a major reason is that the release of the game was really bad time, around the time when the game was released; it's publisher Ubisoft already had three other games released around the same period; Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, XIII, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. And with big games releasing around the same period, it really dapenned the sales on half of these games, while the other half we're very successful and managed to develop into franchises.

Psychonauts on the other hand suffered due to it's publisher Majesco making blunderous moves, even though the game was critically acclaimed. Close to no marketing, and with such a high price tag for the game; the game only managed to have sold less then 100'000 copies during it's original run. It was so bad for Majesco that after this and the blunder with Advent: Rising, the CEO resigned and the company downsized dramatically from publishing consoles to only publishing handhelds. Psychonauts sales became so infamous that alot of videogame sites, magazines, and critics of videogaming have dubbed this game the "Poster Child for the recent failures in innovative games. It is kind of suiting, seeing as how it is very true that innovative games like Okami and Zack and Wiki have really been such failures at sales.

Knowing this makes me wonder if publishers really should handle the responsibility of advertising games, or at least something should be done to make sure that these publishers will tell the world of these innovative games. It's really sad to see how so many publishers tend to ignore on games like Okami, and focus they're advertising money like Street Fighter and Resident Evil; cause to me it's a sign that maybe alot of the video game world only tends to focus on money and getting lots of it, and I sure state my opinion of it with NoA. Well, that's all I gotta say on this topic, but I think I've covered all the angles on this criticism, well hopefully anyway.