Nintendo of Ausfailia

There seems to be an awful lot of fail going around lately… a little too much for my liking. Though, this time instead certain folks in the Australian Government that are pissing me off, it’s Nintendo of Australia that’s in the spotlight tonight.

Nintendo of Australia is definitely happy with bringing out Wii Sports Resort down here as well as the Metroid Prime Trilogy later this year. They have much confidence in those and similar titles; however it doesn’t seem to extend to all first party Nintendo games. In fact, there seems to be a couple of games Nintendo of Australia thinks just is not for the Australian market at all.

Okay, so Excitebots: Trick Racing may not be the best or most interesting game ever made, but I still find it interesting that Nintendo of Australia has chosen to simply not sell the game in this country at all. The reasoning is that they just don’t think it’ll sell very well down here, which may be a fair point… however it then makes you wonder why another niche game like Trauma Center: Second Opinion and New Blood have been released down here… with Nintendo as their publisher. Hell, you can even get Club Nintendo stars if you purchase either of those games. Atlus must have shovelled quite a lot of money down Nintendo’s throat to get those two games into the country.

The second game which isn’t seeing much attention down here, though is being treated slightly better than Excitebots, is Punch-Out!! for Wii. Unlike Excitebots, this is a game that has received very favourable reviews and is also from a series long remembered and loved… which is probably why it actually is being released down here. The problem is that it’s only being released at a single retail chain, JB Hi-Fi. The reasoning for this game not having a full release is the same with Excitebots… just not enough interest, apparently.

Well okay, so the general theme from Nintendo of Australia seems to be, “no one really cares, so why bother selling it?” Interesting take… though you’d think that a company like Nintendo would realise that if you advertise these games there is a pretty good chance that you’ll create interest for your products… no?

Either way, I’m kind of nervous about missing out on Punch-Out!! since it does have a “limited release”… it makes me feel like, if I don’t get it on release day then I’ll never be able to find it anywhere and then I’ll miss out completely. I really should pre-order it or something but there’s no JB Hi-Fi anywhere near where I live. Damn.