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:
