Yeah, all Sora shows is Nintendo has some very very very good lawyers that were able to get Disney to play ball haha.
Exactly. Nintendo is still all about promoting and showcasing Nintendo games first, then showing off afermentioned lawyer negotiation skills second.
I think it depends on who is giving out the treatment. There are some people who will consider any Smash reveal that wasn't considered "impossible" before it happened to be understated and underwhelming, regardless of legacy and historical impact.
Things are, presently, looking good. Yes, it is possible Re-Boot Camp comes and goes, without securing a sustained future for the franchise, but I don't think it's worth stressing about the potential lack of new entries when one is already on the horizon. We're getting an Advance Wars game for us to enjoy; if people overlook it and it becomes a hidden gem, then that's their loss as they are losing the ability to play remasters of two excellent tactical RPGs.
Sure, those people exist that degrade 1st party characters of any kind or even lower-level 3rd party characters. I'm just saying Advance Wars has it's historical impact and it's critical acclaim attached to it that most people would respect it's inclusion. And should Re-Boot Camp do well sales-wise, it's inclusion would be even more justified by even the semi-casual Smash Bros audience.
I think it has a lot more to do than "just missing out". If people choose to skip out or are turned away by the art style or price tag, that's very bad for this franchise. If this series has any hope for the future, it needs to make an impact and failing to do so will result in a negative outcome for this franchise, not unlike what happened to Advance Wars post-Days of Ruin. With that in mind, the situation is rather egregious and also kinda stressful to think about. Nintendo not marketing this game to the degree it needs to be marketed is worrisome. Despite this, I do think the remakes will sell decently enough but quite honestly, "decent" isn't going to be enough if we're going to get higher-budget sequels and entries in this franchise that aren't excluded from one region in the world.
I didn't expect NIntendo to promote their retro IPs via DLCs at this point. I mainly criticize that their base game should had introduced at least one retro IP, either Lip or Issac, so it's sad Andy didn't really stand a chance to begin with.
I'm not too familiar with AW, but I do think this is a game genre Smash lacks at this point and it'd be interesting to see how the fighter and stage take references from such game. And considering Gameboy Advance original IPs really lack spotlights in Smash, it'd be nice if AW is promoted to represent the whole Gameboy era.
Now I wonder what is the chance for Andy in Smash 6 base game?
Well, I should mention that Advance Wars didn't start with the GBA. That's common misconception about this franchise I wish people understood more. This series dates back to 1988 with Famicom Wars on the NES so it's even older than Fire Emblem. That's why I held on to hope back in the base roster days that this franchise could secure the retro spot for Ultimate and that sadly did not come to pass. Perhaps the next Smash game with the series revived and hopefully, better commercial success.
For reference, Age of Calamity wasn't revealed until two months before its release. Warioware(somewhat similar to AW in that its a revival of a franchise) wasn't revealed until less than 3 months before its release. As we've seen Nintendo is heavily focusing on Metroid Dread right now. After that, theres really just SMT, Pokemon, and AW left to push for the year and AW even has its own month for that. I think its odd to assume that Nintendo isn't going to put in the effort to push its big game in December, I just think the time hasn't quite arrived.
I dont think this game needs to be a success in Japan and Nintendo clearly doesn't think so either. They're dipping their toes back in the AW waters and want to see how the game will do in the market that proved best in the past. Therefore I think it makes sense that the parameter for success for this title will be how it does in the west. I mean they clearly green-lit the title knowing that it wasn't going to be a hit in Japan and that honestly gives me comfort knowing that they had the security to go ahead with the project while knowing it would have limited appeal.
Sure sure, there's Metroid Dread and all but it's not encouraging when the last time we heard either Nintendo or WayForward talk about Advance Wars was back in June. It's October now and we're like 8 weeks from this game releasing. Reminder tweets about this game in the months after E3 as well as character overview tweets would have been very welcome (also keeping the game in the public's eye).
IMO, it's crucial that this game does well in Japan. It's the same reason why this series went on hiatus for 14 years after Days of Ruin. Just relying on NA/EU sales isn't going to cut it. If you're not successful in one part of the world, you get low-billing and are eventually made to be an afterthought. It's the reason why franchises that do well in Japan but not so much in the West are given higher billing. Without at least a measure of success over there, this franchise will begin a slow decline to being dormant for another 15 years or so.
And like, why even bother remaking a game with the idea that this is supposed to test the waters for future releases and omit it from your domestic market? That's so absurd that Nintendo is making their decision to omit this game from Japan based on the commercial performance of Dual Strike 16 years ago. So much has changed then and it's a different market from what it was before. Hell, it's almost like if Nintendo decided to keep FE Japan-only after FE12 because of how FE11 performed. They would have missed out on the Western boom this franchise had with Awakening because of their pre-conceived notions of how well a franchise could sell in one part of the world. Nintendo has to at least be willing to give Advance Wars a chance to succeed in the East and have a similar effect for that market. Instead, they opted to not even try and that's very disheartening. Of course, things could change yeah and i'm really hoping for that announcement in the next week or two (foolishly perhaps).
It also goes without saying that characters need to be popular in Japan to get in to Smash or at least some level of popularity over there while having a robust Western support. Without that, Advance Wars is DOA for the next game (AKA right back to Assist Trophy purgatory).
It depends on how small we mean when we say "smaller third parties."
Like, there is still a huge leap from Sonic/Pac-Man to basically any other third-party character in Smash (except I guess Steve with the kiddos these days). Your average person on the street probably doesn't know Kazuya, Sephiroth, etc., even Ryu or Mega Man. Even a big group of gamers who play mostly on Nintendo consoles don't know the majority of the third parties in Smash.
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As for Advance Wars, I agree it is getting far too little marketing to this point, but I can't say I expected it to get that much. It's a remake made by a smaller external company, so the marketing and sales expectations will be set accordingly. Maybe that sounds bad, but it might actually be pretty good if the bar for Nintendo to consider the game a success is low.
I think that's another problem. I really wish Nintendo was willing to put more money in this project and give it to a studio like Capcom instead. No disrespect to WayForward but I feel like they would have handled this a lot better with a bigger budget game as well. Like, imagine this remake but in the artstyle of Ace Attorney, It would have been the perfect match and would have greatly increased it's appeal for the Japanese market while still appeal to the Western market. That was the right way to go, IMO.
