Itâs funny when anyone on the Internet flips out, but no one does it better than the video gamer. When the issue involves someone not getting what they want, when they want it, at the price they want itâand you yourself donât want itâitâs entertaining as hell watching someone break into a Rumplestiltskenian fit on the way to a total meltdown and an Internet petition or two. Itâs like going to a dunking booth and seeing actual hate in the clownâs eyes. Boy, that guy is unhinged.
Fans of Bayonetta took a soaking last week when they learned that the game was getting a sequelâexclusively on the Wii U. This type of thing is not unprecedented, as the Final Fantasy cohort was quick to remind. But on further review, they have a pointâif inelegantly expressed. And itâs been a hell of a week for that, too, but I digress. Maybe Bayonetta didnât sell enough to get Sega interested in publishing a sequel. These things happen.
https://lastchance.cc/bayonetta-2-is-a-wii-u-exclusive-5942937%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
And the reward for their loyalty is to be told the game they want effectively costs them $360 or $410. I try to think about how Iâd have felt if, say, Red Dead Redemption was an exclusive on a console I didnât own, or didnât yet exist, and Iâd probably burst a blood vessel.
Itâs because the constituency is being used in a pretty cynical way, even if Nintendo stepping as publisher is likely the only way this sequel gets done. But Nintendo isnât doing this out of altruism for the series, they want to sell consoles, and give their machine a chance with a type of gamer who needs a good deal of coaxing to buy a second consoleâespecially one that comes so late in its hardware generation.
Itâs not hard to think Nintendo was banking on an implied vouch from Bayonetta fans, and instead it became a backlash against Bayonettaâs developer, Platinum Games. And I keep coming back to the fact that if you enjoyed the original and want the sequel, itâs going to run you six times whatâs usually paid for a video game, turn key.
None of this excuses the extreme hatred and circus-floor dung hurled at Platinum, or the Twitter tantrums, or laughable revenge fantasies such as this one. This guy doesnât call for a straight-up boycottâwhich I think a lot of disaffected fans would go for. He said that the only copies of Bayonetta that should be bought are used copies, because that will rob Nintendo of sales. How those copies are supposed to get into the secondhand market in the first place, Iâm not sure, and it still ignores the real and valid gripe here: the need to buy a console, even a used one.
https://lastchance.cc/these-fans-arent-happy-about-bayonetta-2-5943207%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Thereâs also something to be said for the health of Square and the Final Fantasy series at the time. That game was going to be published, it was a question of which side offered Square the most potential. But then again, this situation unfolded before the Internet had become the kind of megaphone it is today for the gaming community. Everybody remembers how berserk some went when it was announced at E3 2008 that Final Fantasy XIII was going to the Xbox 360, and that wasnât even a console-exclusive situation.
So, though I think Nintendo bought a client list more than it did a video game series, thereâs no implied right either to a sequel or to a sequel on the platform for which the original was made. This is part of the bargain when youâre dealing with the carnival of closed systems in modern gaming. You steps up and you pays your money. Just be careful around the clowns.
Hey folks, Something Negative is a rant. Love it or hate it, we all need to blow off steam on Fridays. Let yours out in the comments.
