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Denver, 10:44 PM
Thu Dec 17
66 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/30/09
Not the by-the-numbers made on the cheap gimmicky 'games' with no market parity on the NPD charts?
Wow, call me stunned.
11/30/09
11/30/09
You make quality products and they will sell, even if they don't make MW2 money...they'll endear themselves in the long run..
:CoughBeyondGoodandEvilCough:
But keep shoveling out shit like Imagine Babiez Partiez and even if they sell, your image will keep on taking hits. Because even though you make the money off them...they DON'T last long. Some other new thing comes and you're stuck with a surplus of shit.
Learn to balance again Ubisoft.
11/30/09
Ever since I was child playing Rayman 2, I vowed to always love these french bastards, and throughout the years they've yet to disappoint me with great gems like the PoP trilogy amongst others.
Best of luck to them, they deserve every sell in my opinion.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Either publishers make poor copies of Nintendo games like wii sports or wii fit, or they make hardcore games that the casual audience don't want and the hardcore audience won't buy because they can get better on other platforms.
It's interesting how Nintendo can have such a large player base, but third parties are still almost at the point at which they would consider giving up on the system.
In the end, the casual crowd are fickle, the hardcore will always support good games.
11/30/09
Porting hardcore games to the Wii is a waste of time/money like you said because hardcore players will buy those games for 360/ps3/PC instead because the experience is almost always better on a more powerful machine.
Instead, if 3rd party devs want to have any success targeting the "hardcore" Wii owner, they need to take a hard look at the formulas behind games like Zelda, Metroid, Okami, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, and then try to emulate those experiences with Wii-only titles.
You're right that the Wii market is fickle for 3rd party devs though. Not because it's a strictly casual market, but because of the inevitable problem:
If you design a game for the Wii that hardcore players will definitely buy, but then take it multi-platform, players will buy it for 360/ps3/pc instead because the experience is better on a more powerful machine.
If you DON'T take it multi-platform, you're missing out on potential sales.
11/30/09
And yet A Boy & His Blob goes unsold at retail outlets.
While I will certainly put some of the onus on Majesco for not doing a solid enough job in grabbing consumers' attention, I imagine that there are also many folks who either wait for a price drop or are buying other games first.
The end result is that, more often than not, a game goes ignored and forgotten.
11/30/09
Personally I don't have much interest in a boy and his blob, but I liked the art style of it.
I was surprised when you said "at retail outlets" because I was certain it was a wiiware game. I thought it would fit that platform perfectly but I guess not.
11/30/09
This year I got some of the motionplus sports games, and I liked them, but with the sony motion controller coming out, I can't see myself buying those games on wii next year, so it cuts even more out of my potential wii purchases, to practically just the nintendo first party games.
I think like you say, if you go multiplatform, the wii gets the gimped version, and although the wii has the highest install base by quite a lot, hardly anyone is banking on it and making great exclusives.
Not only that, but it also hinges on control and whether the so called superior controls are worth the hit in graphics and online.
My bro bought call of duty reflex for wii as well as the PS3 MW2 as a way to get more use out of the wii, but he couldn't get used to the pointer controls and strongly disliked the experience, so now he won't play anything hardcore on the wii at all.
In general I prefer to have a controller in my hand, I play mario kart, smash bros and almost everything that gives me the option, with the classic controller, and I much prefer that in most cases. The only time I liked a driving game with motion was excite truck.
12/02/09
Three words: "Zack and Wiki"
I weep everytime I see it sitting unsold on the used shelf in Gamestop.
12/02/09
1. The visual style belies the level of challenge found further in the game. It may be "too cute" for enthusiasts, and "too hard" for the kids.
2. Point-and-click games are not a popular genre anymore. The currently most high-profile developer of them -- Telltale Games -- has had to adapt to market conditions and release games episodically rather than at $50.
Is it a fantastic game, though? Absolutely. I wish more folks would have given it a shot.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Sorry.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Just admit it!
11/30/09
Compare that to other Nintendo IPs.
11/30/09
Madworld simply replaced button commands with waggling. It got repetitive fast, despite its initially fun premise.
The argument I'm making is that developer's can't just make a Wii game for the hardcore and expect it to sell. The game has to actually be good. That's why Muramasa outsold Dead Space Extraction.
11/30/09
11/30/09
*Every game meaning, of course, "Modern Warfare 2".
11/30/09
Atlus put out Devil Survivor for the DS. It sold 40,000 copies in the US. You'd cry failure. Would you like to know what Atlus marked as its sales numbers for it to be a success? 25,000.
Games do not always need to sell gajillions of copies to do fantastically well.
11/30/09
11/30/09
I'm sorry, I mean "failure". Because duh, those sales are actually terrible because they weren't sales on a real console!
11/30/09
The Wii is a gimmick. Always was, always will be- and it made Nintendo a lot of money. But ONLY Nintendo has made money, while everyone else who has developed for the Wii have been burned.
That means they'll drop it like its hot, focus on expanding core IP and building up popular franchise titles. EA is doing the same thing, as is Activision.
Oh, and Avatar is going to fail in theaters, as will the game. I'm calling it right now.
11/30/09
I'd be shocked if that flick doesn't succeed by producers' standards. Expect the game to outperform expectations for the same reasons.
11/30/09
I'm not too sure. I've seen Avatar trailers aired in public met with
"Space hippies"
And
"WTF is this about?"Doesn't help that the film is a giant black hole of investor money. If it did okay for regular film standards it would be a collosal failure with its budget.
11/30/09
"I mean, it's not like the Wiimote has useful, non-gimmick applications, right? "
"Uh... Tiger Woods PGA 10, Wii Tennis, 1st-Person Shooters, Okami, etc."
"Whoops."
11/30/09
As far as 3rd parties being "burned time and again", I would simply point out that RE: Umbrella Chronicles, Boom Blox, The Conduit, Red Steel, No More Heroes, COD: WAW and maybe De Blob (I can't quite remember) were all evidently successful enough to have sequels made for 'em. Why would you make a sequel if the original was a money pit?
As for being a "gimmick", I would simply disagree. I thought Wii Sports, Boom Blox, Zack and Wiki, MP3, The Conduit, and even Mario Galaxy proved what could be done with motion and pointer controls, and that's WITHOUT M+. Surely you wouldn't dismiss the deep applications from that little device that have already been exlploited in Tiger Woods 10, Resort, and (hopefully) the upcoming Red Steel 2. All it really comes down to is whether developers will take the necessary time and effort (just as they've done with the other consoles) to exploit the Wii's potential. For the most part, they haven't.
11/30/09
If they allocated the manpower to have Red Steel 2 finished by this holiday season, they wouldn't be in this situation.
I really like Ubisoft. I've enjoyed quite a few of their games. But if they want to create greater software for the Wii, they need to stop putting so much effort into garbage games like "Imagine... Prostitot" and "Petz: Dogs 57".
I think they need to make a new Splinter Cell for the Wii, and use Motion Contols for things like, picking locks, breaking necks, etc. Make it a much more espionage intensive game. The Motion Controls would be awesome for that.
11/30/09
GREAT point.
11/30/09
That's made even more hilarious when not too long ago Ubisoft execs decided to focus less on the DS because of declining sales on the platform. The company oversaturated an already overly competitive landscape and paid for it in a loss of revenue.
You get what you pay for, Ubisoft.
11/30/09
No one cares about Imagine Petz or whatever that junk is.
11/30/09
Here is the problem:
wii
RE: UC: 1.3m
Madworld: 340k
Twilight Princess: 5.37m
Muramasa: 160k
RE4: 1.64m
PS3
RE5: 2.58m
Valkyria Chronicles: 610k
Uncharted1: 2.57m
Ps2:
Odins Sphere: 320k
RE4: 3.05m
You can only move massive units on the wii when your name is Nintendo.
Madworld and Valkyria chronicles may be the best recent comparison. Both of niche games with minimal marketing and a strong visual style. Both by Sega. Madworld sold 1/4 as many units as Valkyria chronicles.
For a more like to like comparison both the wii version of RE4 and the Ps2 version came out after the GC version. Both came out on systems with huge install bases but the PS2 version sold twice as much.
Odins Sphere and Muramasa similarly are both niche titles from vanillaware coming out on machines with massive install bases. Os sold twice as much despite muramasa having much wider advertising.
There simply something about the wii install base that leads to most titles that aren't Nintendo doing worse there than a equivalent marketing effort on the PS3 or 360.
11/30/09
...what? 340K versus 610K? That's more than 1/2, and these are YOUR numbers.
RE4 is not a fair comparison. As a) The Wii plays Gamecube games, so the gamecube sales probably also got added to. and b) The RE4 port was released how long after the PS2 version? I was under the impression that most people had already played the game by the time that late port was released.
Pretty sure Muramasa is also complained about far more than Odin Sphere. Odin Sphere's chief breakdown was incredible lag. Muramasa's breakdown is the complaint of incredibly monotonous gameplay and a very, VERY dull translation.
I think the fact that RE4 still moved over a million units on the Wii this long after it had already been out shows that you can move large numbers of units when you're not Nintendo.
You just need to be part of an already established series.
All your numbers are really proving to me is that "Niche games don't really sell large numbers" and "The PS2 was fucking AWESOME"
Yes, third party products have problems selling on the Wii. This is due in part to the third parties not putting that much effort into the product, and the gaming community as a whole proclaiming "If it's good, we'll bitch about it and demand that it's put on one of the other two consoles. If it's not, we'll continue bitching about how the Wii has games that don't sell." Either way the third parties don't win.
Remember, you're not "hardcore" if you own a Wii. *sighs*
11/30/09
Uhh... Valkyria Chronicles had an anime and a price cut at approximately the same time. (Not sure if the price cut affected areas outside Japan.) It was only then that the sales for that game rebounded.
I don't know about your standards, but I don't think a 26 episode anime is considered "minimal marketing". It also had 2 manga stories; an adaptation and a spin-off.
MadWorld hasn't had a Japanese release yet either, although I don't think it's going to make much of an impact. I don't think this is a popular genre in Japan (or anywhere, really).
You're right that Valkyria Chronicles did better than MadWorld. But the difference isn't that extreme when you look at the whole picture.
You mention install bases for Odin Sphere and Muramasa. PS2 has approximately double that of the Wii. Odin Sphere has sold approximately double that of Muramasa. Wouldn't that mean they performed about the same? Odin Sphere had the benefit of being a Greatest Hit too, not to mention it has had more time to sell.
11/30/09
11/30/09
I would be willing to bet that a large part of the gamers that bought VC are familiar with things like anime. Even in the US. I don't know if you had noticed, but VC is an anime/manga styled SRPG, and it takes a certain kind of person to enjoy those things. Said person would likely enjoy watching anime during their spare time, and would enjoy games of the JRPG variety.
For example, I didn't really give a shit about VC until I saw a bit of the anime. It was on my radar, but that's because I like SRPGs. It didn't actually become a "hey, I might want to check this out" type of game until I saw a few episodes. Still haven't played it mind you, since the only other game I would want for PS3 is Demon's Souls. (2 games doesn't justify a purchase; I have more games on the PS2 that I bought and haven't opened yet.)
If we're only looking at America, the difference between MadWorld and VC sales are even closer. It's only about a little less than 90,000 difference.
11/30/09
You know I think the writing is on the wall for Wii's third party support. It has a huge userbase, but its a huge userbase who stick with the Wii Sports that came with it, or venture to Wii Fit or Sports Resort.
It's just a hostile environment for Third Parties.
AC2 is pretty awesome though I have to say. I'm pacing myself out on it, got Uni work to do, but from what I've been playing it's awesome. The rebuilding of the mansion kinda side tracked me though, so pretty early on I had it full rebuilt and that town is at 100% completion.
11/30/09
Glad to see their Wii "games" underperformed.
Hey you wanna a new Wii game?
Imagine: Better Gamez
11/30/09
11/30/09
While it may be sad to see so many people lose their jobs at EA every year, their business model is in no way wrong. It works and it has done for some time now. EA is a good place for people new to the industry to get jobs and while laying off a thousand or so employees every year may sound bad, it's a way to keep the books balanced and a way to allow EA to be a bit more risky and free in terms of the games they release and publish.
11/30/09
11/30/09
Also, by crazy purchases, I'm assuming you're referring to their purchase of the developer of facebook games and I'd say that was far from crazy. In fact, it was a very smart decision as that's a huge market to exploit and hasn't really been tapped to any great degree by other big names in the industry. That market is only set to grow over the coming years and EA stands to make a lot of money from it.
Also, where do you get the idea that they won't be taking any more risks? They already have new IPs coming out in the form of Dantes Inferno and The Saboteur and I'm sure I've left out others as well.
Their constant restructuring allows them to get rid of any dead weight (i.e. people they no longer necessarily need to employ, not that I'm saying anyone they lay off is bad at their job) at the end of the year. This helps them to open up recruitment channels again the following year and get new blood into the company and keep a fresh staff where everyone is doing something of importance.
EA under John Riccitiello has made some hiccups but under Riccitiello, the corporation has managed to do a U-turn on the publics perception on them and their past public perception was so bad because of their old business model that it did eventually affect their profits and stock price and similiar is going to happen to Activision before long. In otherwords, I don't think you can call EA badly managed under Riccitiello.
11/30/09
[www.gamasutra.com]
Also here are some news about Ricitello as CEO:
[www.marketrap.com]
And their strategy to buy Play Fish for 300 million is crazy. They bought a company that has 125 people and have only accomplish minor success with games while letting go of a team that worked on C&C franchise and brought a lot of money to EA does sound crazy to me. They are reactionary to the industry just like they were back when the Wii was first introduce.
Good luck to you sir and thanks for the debate I really enjoyed it.
11/30/09
[kotaku.com]
[kotaku.com]
[kotaku.com]
As I said, this is a routine thing for EA since Riceteillo took his position as CEO and while the number of employees being layed off may be high as a result of their bad year, the actual process of laying off employees at the end of the year is nothing new to them.
Playfish is one of the biggest names in this new market that EA has chosen to enter so their choice to pay so much isn't completely crazy as this move could well see them at the top of the new market and a step ahead of any competition that arises.
I'm not saying that EA is the perfect business or has a great business model but end of year layoffs have seemed to work to some degree for them over the past few years and while I lament the death of Pandemic Studios, among others, I still feel that EA is heading in the right direction even if the road there is bumpy.
11/30/09
11/30/09
when other devs try, people buy.
true story.
11/30/09
11/30/09
but how many people in the world of gaming media have made "on rails" a bad word that no real gamer would be caught dead playing??
you don't think that affects sales?
11/30/09
11/30/09