Coffee Beans
About 2 weeks ago, Matt from DigitallyDownloaded.net and I were exchanging some emails, and he inquired about the game-play hours for Fortune Street. It had been almost a year since I had last covered the game, and you can read the first Nintendo Channel data report on it, HERE. It has now been more than a year since I covered the game, so let's take another look!
Fortune Street released in the U.S. for the Wii on December 5, 2011, with a MSRP of $49.99. The game was developed by Square Enix, and published by Nintendo for its U.S. release. It received an ESRB rating of "EVERYONE" with "Comic Mischief" listed as content for parents and gamers to be aware of.
A description for the game on the Nintendo Channel says, "Players race around the board trying to accumulate wealth and hit a target value while buying, selling and trading property with friends and family to see who can be the first to cash out. What appears at first to be a simple property-buying board game offers multiple levels of money-maximizing opportunity."
The game has been out almost a year-and-a-half now, but how much has it actually been played? If you own a Wii or even now a Wii U, and skipped over Fortune Street when it released, how many hours might you expect from the game if you decide to buy it now? Brew yourself some coffee, and let's take a look at the official U.S. Wii Nintendo Channel data to see how many hours Wii owners have reported playing the game, and what the average hours "Per person" are reported so far!
The Brew
Fortune Street now has approximately 22,186 U.S. Wii owners who have just over 450,000 Total Hours of game-play reported, with about 539 days reported. This is an increase of over 10,000 more U.S. Wii owners with game-play data reported for the game, and just over 300,000 more Total Hours of game-play reported, compared to when we looked at it last May.
U.S. Wii owners have averaged a total playing time of 20 Hours 25 Minutes "Per person", which averages out to be about 2 Hours 36 Minutes played per time reported; at least according to the data from the Nintendo Channel. This means each session U.S. Wii owners are playing Fortune Street, they are putting over 2 1/2 hours into the game.
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| Are those supposed to be wheels of fortune in the top portion? |
What about the critic and customer review averages for the game, have they changed much in the last year? Fortune Street's "professional" critic review score average has increased slightly, now sitting at a 70.07% critic review score average, based on 28 reviews on GameRankings.com.
Its customer review score average has increased pretty significantly since last year though, and is now sitting at an 80.43%, based on 138 reviews on Amazon.com. The customer review score average has increased by nearly 15 percentage points and more than doubled the number of customer reviews in its average, compared to the last year.
Caffeinated Thoughts
If you have never seen any footage from the game, the trailer below might give you a decent idea of what to expect if you are familiar with board game video games:
Like last year, I still haven't played Fortune Street, and with how much Bean 1 enjoys games with the word "Mario" in their titles, I don't know if I would grab Fortune Street first, or one of the Mario Party games instead. I know they offer different game-play experiences, but from some of the customer reviews it seems that the Mario Party games are more suited for younger children, than Fortune Street is due to its learning curve.
I do find it interesting that Fortune Street has a higher reported average "Per person" than the Monopoly Wii games though, as those games should definitely have more name recognition here in the U.S. market, but perhaps the online multiplayer aspect in Fortune Street has really benefited the game.
Questions
Have any of you been playing Fortune Street consistently over the last year, and if so, do you know how your hours played compare to the average reported? If you play the game pretty consistently, how is the online community now? Is it easy to find an online game against other players, or is it better if you know people to play the game with?
Also, if you own a Wii U and Fortune Street for the Wii, do you think the game could benefit any in game-play because of the GamePad, if Square Enix was to port it over to the Wii U?
You can buy Fortune Street, and other board game Wii and Wii U (sort of) games from Amazon.com below:
Matt over at Digitally Downloaded loved this game - but I never did get around to trying it, despite him recommending it to me on several occasions.
ReplyDeleteYou better not have skimmed past that first paragraph...but perhaps I should have clarified the "loved" portion in that paragraph a bit more, with words like "obsessed" or "probably playing it now"? :)
ReplyDeleteI have seen him and a few others commenting on Twitter from time-to-time about playing the game, but I don't think it has been recently.
As for playing it, it's kind of funny (or, sad) because I downloaded the iOS app for it last year, and still have not attempted to play it. I guess that goes with not really owning an iOS device, but having someone in the house who does?
Thanks for the comment and feedback!
Yay! Thanks for posting this Coffee :-) Good to see the game has had a healthy growth in numbers over the past year despite being so niche.
ReplyDelete2.5 hours sounds about right, really - that's about how long a typical game would take to complete, on average I would say. I've had games go for 5-6 hours, but on the smaller maps they can be over in 1 - 1.5 hours. 20 hours on average in total seems a little small - suggests that most people who own the game have not completed it, or even unlocked the awesome bonus maps. To put into perspective - I only finished unlocking everything in-between playing multiplayer games at the 100-hour mark.
As for the iOS game, it's faster to play and doesn't quite have the same personality, but the same formula is there and it's one of my favourite games on the go.
I will say though the Itagaki Street (the Japanese name) Chocobo game - Dice De Chocobo - on the PSone is still my favourite game in this long franchise.
I bought it brand new for $17, which was a good find. I'd play it about once a month for one game, so about an hour and a half I guess. I never successfully got an online game going, unfortunately! The local multiplayer is good though,and the game can be more involved and complicated depending on what mode you pick. My brother played it a couple of times and loves it, so he's had my copy for a few months. All in all, I prefer Wii Party, but I've never played a Mario Party game, so it's hard to say.
ReplyDelete"I've had games go for 5-6 hours..."
ReplyDeleteSounds almost like a digital version of RISK games from real life. I remember playing some RISK games with my brother and cousins, and one lasted over several days...
Have you attempted any online game in this recently, or would you say it's probably best picked up only for the single-player component now?
Thanks for the comment and feedback!
I never played Wii Party, or any of the Mario Party games...so I don't how how they really compare to each other either.
ReplyDeleteKnowing the local multiplayer is good, makes me think this might be a good game for Wii U owners perhaps looking for a "Monopoly" game, but one that offers something a bit different.
Thanks for the comment and feedback!
Haha, yeah, I've had those epic Risk experiences too. :D
ReplyDeleteI haven't played online for a while, but the nature of this game (long games) means that it was never the best game for random matchups. If you've got some friends with Friend Codes then it was always a good experience online.
But for me the value of this game has always been in local multiplayer. One of my favourite local multiplayer games ever.
Yeah, it doesn't really compare to the Nintendo board games. Nintendo didn't develop this game, for a start - Marvellous AQL did, and although it features Nintendo characters, this is one game in a long franchise of Japan-only games that Square Enix owns.
ReplyDeleteThe only link between this and Mario Party or Wii Party is the presence of Mario characters under license.
As for the comparison to Monopoly, that's fair, although this game also has a reasonably complex 'stock market' which is where the real money is made in the game, and I would say that is the focus, rather than the buying of properties.
In fact I have won this game before without buying a single property, haha.
"But for me the value of this game has always been in local multiplayer."
ReplyDeleteThat's good to know, and a good selling point for me anyway. Question about the local multiplayer, can the games be "paused" in any fashion, like...saved in the middle of a game, and started again later? Or, should you prepare to sit and play like a real board game?
It's been a couple of months since I've last played local multiplayer, but I am 99% certain that you can pause the game and pick it back up again another day.
ReplyDeletecoffee and games may be the wonderful combination.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely not skimming - hopefully you get some takers for your games giveaway but they're all titles I have currently. :)
ReplyDeleteI remember Matt bringing this title up repeatedly once he started to play it. it always sounded good, but with none of my kids ever hitting me up about it, I just let that one go on by seeing as I had plenty of other titles to beat up on. :)
The first winner has been contacted, and there will be more small giveaways like it in the future, but with different entry methods.
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