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What if Skyward Sword had been delayed to early 2012?

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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Honestly, I can't see how it would have benefited because from the final product, it is pretty clear that the main grievances were not things they thought needed fixing. The game was incredibly constrained and linear because that's the finished product they wanted to make. It stemmed from a thoroughly misguided principle design philosophy.
Oh, yeah, I totally agree with you on that, odds are the issues we all point out are things they never even thought were issues.
 

Iridescence

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4 million sales is pretty good but there's no reason that a major title from a significant franchise on a system with a 100 million player install base couldn't reach 10 million.
 

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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4 million sales is pretty good but there's no reason that a major title from a significant franchise on a system with a 100 million player install base couldn't reach 10 million.
It takes time to reach that many sales, even for the Zelda series. Twilight Princess was the only game that almost reached 10 million sales pretty quick.
 

Curmudgeon

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i don't think they're going to sell many more copies of SS at this point. also, i've never seen any indication that TP sold more than about 8.75 million between GC and Wii... and i speculate that its position as arguably the strongest launch title on wii helped those numbers.

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?nam...sher=&platform=&genre=&minSales=0&results=200
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Twilight_Princess#Sales

Four to five million is probably about as well as SS would have managed regardless of release date.
 
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Iridescence

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True. It's easy to sell 10-30 million copies on the Wii, but only if you're a party game.

By 2011, the Wii was collecting dust. Maybe Skyward Sword would have done better to have been released in 2010 (say they cut out some of the fluff), before the wave of influential games in 2011.
 

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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True. It's easy to sell 10-30 million copies on the Wii, but only if you're a party game.

By 2011, the Wii was collecting dust. Maybe Skyward Sword would have done better to have been released in 2010 (say they cut out some of the fluff), before the wave of influential games in 2011.
This is what most people claim would have been a good move. It was orginally supposed to be released in late 2010 but was delayed a full year. People speculate that within that year the game was changed so much that the end product we got was completely different from what it orginally was supposed to be. My only issue with the idea of it being released in 2010 is the possibility that the montion controls wouldn't have been half decent. The reason the game got delayed in the first place was because they were having issues with getting the motion controls right.
 

Curmudgeon

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True. It's easy to sell 10-30 million copies on the Wii, but only if you're a party game.

so true. breaking 5 million and not being a pack-in game or a party title was really tough. the only other wii game to break 5m in sales apart from what was listed below was Lego StarWars. Also, notice that only one two game in the top 20 were released after 2010 (i missed the powerhouse that was just dance 4). you're probably not far off in suggesting better peformace if the game had been released a year earlier. ah well. c'est la vie.
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Iridescence

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Probably 2/3 of the people who bought the Wii were buying it as a casual entertainment product (like a Karaoke machine or a pool table) rather than a dedicated gaming device.

So, in a way, it was an illusion. I was wrong in saying that 100 million people would honestly consider buying a Nintendo action-adventure game.
 

Zorth

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I don't think so. 2 months is not enough to change what I found disappointing with the game, a few core mechanics and important writing would need to be changed. And for SS to even be worthy of a GOY it would need a lot more than 2 months, to just make it on par with Skyrim, LA Noire, or Portal 2, you would need the Wii U as it is teleported back to 2011 + major changes to the game.

Small annoyances you listed wouldn't change chances for being picked as the best game of the year, and like G-King said I'm not even sure if those things would ever be noticed before being out in the public for a few weeks.
 

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