How Pikmin 4 Broke Big
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- Опубліковано 12 тра 2024
- How did Pikmin become a huge success in Japan? We explore how Pikmin finally made it big.
Note: This video was uploaded before the latest sales numbers. As I've been having some internet troubles recently, I haven't been able to update the video.
Also - the thumbnail... Pikmin Take Japan or Pikmin Takes Japan? The creatures or the game? What do you think?
![Storage Tips [Grab Bag]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3tpttuaYiPI/mqdefault.jpg)
seeing the pikmin memes be on the NYC billboards live was the craziest thing ever as a pikmin fan
Those actually made me buy Pikmin 4. i have 500 hours on the games now
@@platinum-or3y i have 600 hours on pikmin 3 deluxe personally, these games are infinitely replayable with challenge runs, definitely one of the biggest reasons i love the franchise so much
Nintendo really needs to hire fans to advertise 🤣
@@platinum-or3yyou got the game because of the memes?😭that’s hilarious I’m glad that the memes actually brought in new fans
Nintendo: Makes new franchise. Doesnt sell well. Builds a growing, loyal fanbase for years to come.
XBox: Buys new game studios to entice investors. Lays off employees/Closes said studios to boost investors confidence by "optimizing" XBox as a company.
Woah there wooooaaaahhh old chap.
Let's not pretend Nintendo is much better than Xbox with their copyright shenanigans Nd other greedy practices. They do make some banger titles though.
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@@bubbly_ghost That's not what OP was talking about. And do you really think other big companies are "better" with copyright and stuff? lol
Honestly, with how successful Pikmin 4 was in Japan im willing to bet they're looking into making an anime for it. They've already shown that they're serious about expanding beyond video games, and its something that would basically be a sure fire hit domestically.
Pikmin is my favorite video game series of ALL TIME! If it got an anime, (and, you know, was dubbed to English), I would absolutely watch it!
There's great comedic potential in this. The short movies they did some time ago were awesome.
An anime would be great. I would not want to see it adapted into a movie, there just would not be enough time to convey all of the different tones Pikmin contains - Adoration, Serenity, Loneliness, Horror, Sadness after accidentally killing half of your Pikmin with a bomb rock because you were spamming the throw button and didn't have enough time to call all of your Pikmin back, etc.
They haven't really made a proper anime for any of their games though. Splatoon was and is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, yet all it got was a series of simple comedy manga. They'll probably be busy with Mario and Zelda for a while longer, sadly.
Being in Japan while Pikmin 4s promotion was at its peak it was very common to see Pikmin 4 ads. Like half the convinence stores had a big banner about it, and every convenience store and something about it inside.
I'm a simple man. I see Pikmin covered by Nintendo Forecast, I click
Pikmin 4 is still being advertised quite heavily on Tokyo train screens! There is a comedic guessing game with a close up of an item inviting the audience to guess what the Pikmin are carrying. Mario and Zelda are still having ads, but not as heavily.
Yes. Living in Japan I can concur that Nintendo marketed this game a lot in Japan last year.
I was in Japan just about a month before Pikmin 4 released, and it felt like you couldn't walk down any street without seeing advertisements for Pikmin 4, it truly was omnipresent- mostly because of Family Marts! It was delightful to see, I was really happy to see it getting so nmuch support. There were large posters and banners decorating the front of seemingly every family mart, which are absurdly common there, at least around Tokyo and surrounding areas. Shame I didn't try one of those fruit sandos though, lol
I truly believe Pikmin 4 was a breakthrough in making the series accessible, I've tried to get into Pikmin many times before, but I always would stop because the stress of losing pikmin would eventually push me away, but Pikmin 4 truly sucked me in and became my favorite game for a lil while!
I’m glad you were able to get into the series with 4! It’s also kind of wild to me just how prevalent it was in Japan. Seeing actual Pikmin merch felt like a fever dream after the franchise failed to garner much attention for so long. I really hope to see DLC for 4 or even a 5th entry for the switch 2!
Don’t forget about Nintendo Pictures. I expect Nintendo to start creating their own TV and movie content eventually, with their Pikmin shorts from a decade ago as a preview.
The shorts a decade ago shows that Pikmin as a concept translate to non-interactive media, absolutely.
Reading up on what Nintendo Pictures has actually done recently is very interesting, they help out with the animation of other studios' animes but for Nintendo they seem to just be doing more design work for the games themselves, not any sort of Nintendo animations.
There was also some notable push caused by very unrelated factors on social media as well.
For one, there was the BAR-MIN-HEIMER Twitter post that basically every active Twitter user saw, even those who had no idea what Pikmin even was, because the Barbie and Oppenheimer movies as well as Pikmin 4 were conveniently all being released on the same day, which labelled Pikmin 4's release day online as the official event of Barminheimer.
The other big social media contributor aside from Times Square was... a platform-wide Reddit protest? So basically, Reddit announced they were going to end support with a ton of useful tools that helped with moderation and such, and as a result came a very poorly organised protest. Tons of subreddits on the site locked their subreddits out of protest, except 90% of them were stupid enough to put a 2-day expiry date on their protests, and very publicly announced that they'd stop protesting in a few days, which you can imagine kind of takes the whole point out of a protest. Anyway, almost every notable Nintendo-related subreddit was locked, all except r/Pikmin who weren't bothered to join in considering how poorly everyone else was doing it (what no dandori does to a mf) meaning that due to how Reddit works with trying to push topics related to things you like into your feed, with every other Nintendo sub being on lockdown for a few days it meant everyone with even a slight interest in anything Nintendo-related was now having their feed flooded only with Pikmin posts, which were mostly really damn top tier brainrot posts, causing the members of the sub to skyrocket in just a few days, as anyone who wasn't pissed with the amount of Pikmin they're seeing was now most likely intrigued. And then a couple days later Nintendo conveniently announced they were putting the entire rest of the Pikmin series on Switch, so overall things worked out pretty nicely for Pikmin.
How do I know all this random junk? Well it's how I became a PIkmin fan of course!
PikWin baby!
Nice analysis! One thing you didn’t mention is that they really blasted advertisements on all the main train lines in major cities. To the point that during the game’s launch, no matter how short the train ride, you could see one. They are less frequent now, but every once in a while, I’ll see an ad. Pikmin is definitely a household name over here.
At one of the Pikmin Bloom Tours (live event, like Pokemon Go Fest), I saw a small girl unrelated to the event point to someone wearing a Pikmin sun visor. She must have been 2 or 3, barely old enough to make any conversation at all, but even she said loudly to her mom “it’s Pikmin!” And somehow, even though the song is 20 years old at this point, all the kids seem to know the lyrics to “Tane no Uta” even in the small countryside town I’m living in now. I’ve heard them singing it. I know it’s in Smash Bros, but it seems like they might know it for some other reason. All I know is, Pikmin is huge here. The push for merch at Nintendo Stores, collabs like the Family Mart sandwiches and Ichibankujis, and popup stores like the Pikmin Terrace in Hiroshima; all are evidence to me that they’re giving it an absolute push to finally get Pikmin to be the success it always should have been. Now that it’s finally released on a successful system, it seems like that’s the case! If they had a similar push globally, I’m sure it would have picked up more steam. But I’m sure they need to show it can be successful on a smaller scale first. I have high hopes for Pikmin 5 and I’m sure we won’t be waiting another decade for it… hopefully!!
I played my first pikmin a few months ago and I loved it so much I now play pikmin bloom daily. My area has a dozen or so active players so it’s pretty fun!
I need more specifics on regions outside of japan, why they didn't catch on as much as they did previously... I was waiting for that the whole video.
As covered in other comments, the advertising in Japan is just that much more prominent. I don't think I saw any advertising here aside from the occasional UA-cam ad. Heck, my local Walmart even had a blackboard up where employees had sketched a little picture of Pikmin to advertise the game, which is pretty much the only other bit of advertising I saw. The game also didn't catch on with streamers or have huge brand recognition the same way games like BotW, TotK, Mario Kart 8 DX, SMO, and Animal Crossing NH did.
Its weird How similar Pikmin and Metroid are.
Pikmin being Very popular in Japan but ok overseas while Metroid IS the opositte
Pikmin and Metroid play NOTHING like each other.
Also funny because I feel like the Pikmin fanbase and Metroid fanbase share a lot of mutual fans. (Paper Mario too for some reason.)
@@user-be3qc7re9onobody said they play like each other. I like botj very much
I lived in Japan from Sept-December and I saw pikmin everyday. And every train car had "Pikmin: Guess the object?" challenges advertisements that would change weekly. The game was to guess what a zoomed in object was in 3 pictures. I believe the US nintendo channel uploaded 1 of them in English but I saw at least 20 while I was there.
Wow! What timing. This channel is part of my morning routine, just woke up and this video was uploaded 47 seconds ago! Woke up in Japan too BTW haha
Great video. Your channel is so fantastic. I love Pikmin and I’m delighted to see 4 do so well!
How did the Pikmin 3 Deluxe sell in Japan in the beginning? I think the massive ad campaign in Japan was a big factor for the success of 4.
I like that Nintendo stays true to Japanese culture and not pander only to "international audience" (whatever that means). I think the game awards aren't important anymore. Just a little feather in the crown.
Guys what if we made a pikmin video game hear me out
The thing that made me sit on it was their being a timer and seeing pikmin die, especially when it feels like it can’t be helped at times. It made not want to play them because they just seemed stressful. Just beat 3 and bought the 1 and 2 bundle. I’ll get four once I beat them.
Pikmin are awesome! So glad to see great sales numbers, our family are big fans.
Thank god for the Pikmin franchise.
...You know, with you mentioning movies, I wouldn't hate an Aardman Pikmin 30 minute short or feature length film, considering we know there is a working relationship between Aardman and Nintendo (Shaun the Sheep is one of the MM1 Mii costumes, and Aardman did some 3d Shaun the Sheep shorts for the 3ds's video app)
Pikmin has potential for so much more it’s actually insane imagine a Pikmin game with a big world it doesn’t even have to be open world or with a cinematic story 😂
Correction*
“How Pikmin Broke Bad”
Pikmin W
While i prefer games like TotK to Pikmin.... Pikmin 4 is so gorgeous it almost hurts. ❤
isnt this like bad news for pikmin cultists😂
Basically saying "yeah its only popular in japan"
Nah, this is great actually. I mean, at least it's popular SOMEWHERE now. There's a reason it's been a decade between each release, before it was basically carried entirely as a developer pet project, but if can provably sell, that likely means more Pikmin for the rest of us that adore these games.
@@VTEySAG But nintendo is a global company, so it does need to have a global market - being popular in japan can lead to things like "eh, guess we will just do merchandise for this market outsourcing to some third party seller" or "we are gonna only release it in japan"
Like wasnt metroid dead for so many years because it only sold in US (which is a bigger market than japan)
@@ItIsWhatItIs-dz3cu You're not wrong, but this is still a step up. Pikmin has been arguably more dead than Metroid until now, and Pikmin 4 did sell outside of Japan, just not as much, so I very much doubt they wouldn't translate it. And even if they didn't, fans would, so at the end of the day it still means more Pikmin. Which still won't be a lot, mind you, but more is still good.
@@VTEySAG Yeah, touche, guess its true that its better than not being popular anywhere.
Guess the only negative thing is that Pikmin fans can easily overplay their hand, tbh I got sick of hearing about pikmin whinners a bit, especially once they started doing forced memes and all, but eh,.maybe thats my fault for wasting too much time on the net🤷♂️😂
This dude is such a brainlet holy shit