lowrider007
Licorice-flavoured booze?
SuperSonic1305 said:
:lol
EschatonDX said:
Agreed, one of the best I've seen in a while.
Burai said:
Dude I'm from the UK also and LBP was far from the only chart game selling @ that price during December.
LittleBigAgendas: Why didn't the mass market overlook LBP?
- Thread starter CowGirl
- Start date
:lol
Agreed, one of the best I've seen in a while.
Dude I'm from the UK also and LBP was far from the only chart game selling @ that price during December.
bcn-ron said:
Whoa, that's pretty surprising. My understanding was you could argue pretty much any position... so long as you backed up what you were saying with some kind of evidence. I would have thought using Sony's own well publicized statements of their expectations for LBP (Biggest title of the year, system seller, etc) to contextualize her opinion would have been enough.
Private Hoffman
Banned
Gaborn said:
LittleBigPlanet may very well be Sony's biggest title this year. It's certainly their biggest title this holiday season.
The way the thread was worded was very troll(ish).
Private Hoffman said:
I'm not sure that we have the data to suggest it was Sony's biggest title of the year. We know they shipped 1.3 million to retailers, that's pretty impressive but we don't yet have enough information to know how many units that actually translates to in consumer's hands. It also doesn't address the point that Sony viewed LBP as system selling software. It's the mod's decision and I'm not arguing it, it just seems a little odd, usually junioring seems to be saved for blatantly trolling threads, not controversial topics that are relatively articulate explanations of a particular position.
TTP: Sure.
Also, Eric Fong believed it would be a hardware seller. Do you see any evidence of that claim being particularly accurate? That was what the OP mentioned.
Private Hoffman
Banned
The only thing we have is Yoshida's statement:
"LittleBigPlanet is going to be the biggest title for Sony in all markets this year"
I suppose if you include GT5
as an actual, full 'title', then he may be wrong. Otherwise though, LittleBigPlanet is their biggest title this year, and certainly their biggest holiday title.
I think it was 1.3 million unique players, not 1.3 million shipped to retailers.
Where did Sony suggest it was a 'system seller', and how do you quantify 'system seller'? It's a stupid thing to argue over, because even if 1 person buys a PS3 for LBP, it's a system seller. Where is the cutoff? There is none.
"LittleBigPlanet is going to be the biggest title for Sony in all markets this year"
I suppose if you include GT5
as an actual, full 'title', then he may be wrong. Otherwise though, LittleBigPlanet is their biggest title this year, and certainly their biggest holiday title.Gaborn said:
I think it was 1.3 million unique players, not 1.3 million shipped to retailers.
Where did Sony suggest it was a 'system seller', and how do you quantify 'system seller'? It's a stupid thing to argue over, because even if 1 person buys a PS3 for LBP, it's a system seller. Where is the cutoff? There is none.
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
hmmmm.... outside of the MGS pack, I doubt this. If they are though, that's pretty amazing.WinFonda said:
Private Hoffman said:The only thing we have is Yoshida's statement:
"LittleBigPlanet is going to be the biggest title for Sony in all markets this year"
I suppose if you include GT5
Here, as mentioned above
Private Hoffman
Banned
Gaborn said:
Read my post above.
You cannot define "system seller" in any way possible. If 1 person buys a PS3 for LBP, it's a system seller. It's a silly thing to argue over. It may not be as much of a system seller as, say, Gears, but where do we draw the cutoff for what constitutes a system seller and what does not?
I'm fairly confident Sony is pleased with the results of LittleBigPlanet so far, and the legs that it has had.
Private Hoffman said:
Actually... I define system seller the way I'd think most people would: Sells a disproportionate amount of hardware the month it is released. Hardware sells to trendlines, with bumps for the holiday months of November and December which are a bit more difficult to quantify, except maybe using YOY comparisons (in the US at least the fact that November is down YOY doesn't argue well for LBP being a system seller though).
I agree with you Sony may be pleased with LBP's performance, that doesn't mean they met with the expectations or the hype they generated leading into the game's release though.
Raist - That's not hardware sales though.
Private Hoffman
Banned
Gaborn said:
So, because the Xbox 360 sold about 8% more this November compared to last (with a major price drop), is it safe to assume then (using your logic) that Gears 2 failed to be a system seller because it didn't sell a significantly "disproportionate amount" of systems this November compared to last?
There's a lot of flawed reasoning with that comment, and I think it's stupid to bicker about one comment that, in the grand scheme of things, ends up being a comment from an associate producer, and not one that really can be quantified in any good measure. Using it as a barometer for Sony Corp's entire expectations of LBP is downright silly.
Raist said:Was referring to the first part of your post
ok, fair enough. ~1 million for the "biggest" title of the year isn't BAD certainly, it's probably not the failure the OP was implying, but I don't think Sony had that in mind when they were hyping it and expecting it to do well. So, the truth probably lies somewhere in between like with most things.
Private Hoffman - Yeah, I don't think MS or Sony can be REALLY thrilled by their sales this holiday season. Gears 2 certainly wasn't a system seller by that definition. Then again, I'm not sure that sequels on the same console are necessarily generally considered system sellers, they're selling to an already established userbase more than a new one.
Private Hoffman said:
My attempt at a definition:
1. A console sells around X every month
2. A game G is released
3. The console now sells X + Y during G's release month. Where Y is an amount substantial enough to make an impact on the console's sales
4. ???
5. Profit
Game G is deemed a system seller.
mr_bishiuk
Banned
1.3m sales to retailers World Wide? Doesn't seem that great to me tbh, this was the game that Gaf told me was going to sell millions of consoles but it barely broke a million sales itself in the busiest months of the year.
I would like to know what the shipped figures were for the other holiday games though before drawing a proper conclusion
I would like to know what the shipped figures were for the other holiday games though before drawing a proper conclusion
Son of Godzilla
Banned
Private Hoffman said:
The game was the focal point of every PS3 presser for the past what, two years? They had fucking ads for it out 6 months before the game was released. If "system seller" twists the panties too much, then use the term "flagship". Because it most certainly was that.
Private Hoffman
Banned
mr_bishiuk said:
Hmm...from another thread similar to this one, only with a different subject matter...
mr_bishiuk said:
I guess Sony just needed to lower their expectations even though we don't know if they actually met theirs?
mr_bishiuk said:
Judging sales on internet hype is.....very foolish.
How many 'Wii Fit' hype threads are there on here?
How long is the official "Wii Fit" thread?
How much has it sold?
Okay...why would you ever use internet forum hype as a gauge of what a particular concept should sell?
LittleBigPlanet is a hit amongst a hardcore crowd on the internet, but that doesn't necessarily mean that message translates to actual sales, or if it will ever translate into sales down the road. LBP is a concept that is hard to sell on people, so I'm not sure why it was expected to be a 5+ million seller right out of the gate.
I don't understand where you can get that 1.3 million unique plays of LittleBigPlanet is "not so great", but somehow whether or not Banjo has done well depends entirely on Microsoft's rather low expectations?
Private Hoffman said:
Let's set numbers aside for a second. Do you think Sony was intending for LBP to be a hit among the hardcore crowd? I mean, of course to some extent, but wasn't Sony's entire theme and message that LBP had the potential to draw in newer, more casual less traditional gamers?
In fact, John Kohler said:
Wow, so 1.3 million sales worldwide is now "mass market"?
I'm not trying to say the game bombed, don't get me wrong here, but doesn't the term "mass market" usually only apply to those products that break out into the, well, mass market?
When I think "mass market" I'm thinking stuff like Wii Fit, GTA, Madden, Fifa.
So let's not fool ourselves, LBP may be a great game, LBP is almost certainly already hugely profitable, and for all we know LBP smashed internal Sony expectations, but is it really "mass market" at 1.3 million sold?
I'm not trying to say the game bombed, don't get me wrong here, but doesn't the term "mass market" usually only apply to those products that break out into the, well, mass market?
When I think "mass market" I'm thinking stuff like Wii Fit, GTA, Madden, Fifa.
So let's not fool ourselves, LBP may be a great game, LBP is almost certainly already hugely profitable, and for all we know LBP smashed internal Sony expectations, but is it really "mass market" at 1.3 million sold?
Private Hoffman
Banned
Gaborn said:
I still feel it has this potential, and there's anecdotal evidence that it has reached out to the Blu-Ray dad that buys LBP to play with his kids (obviously, there will be anecdotal evidence for nearly every game, and again this argument can't be quantified to any great extent), but I think the main problem that prevents LBP from reaching out currently as much as it could is the system that it's on is still very, very much a 'hardcore' audience, primarily due to how much it costs (which is still $400).
makingmusic476
Member
Guys, the 1.3 million figure is the number of (unique) PSN users that have PLAYED LBP, not the number of shipped or sold units.
Repost since so many people seem to have ignored it:
Even more interesting is that this isn't shipped numbers or even sold numbers. This is the number of PSN accounts that have played the game online.
Variety:
I think they pointed that out specifically because sites like GameSpot have translated that figure as meaning 1.3 million copies sold.
VentureBeat.com:
IGN:
Unless every LBP owner has a PSN account, we can assume that the game has actually sold well above 1.3 million overall.
Repost since so many people seem to have ignored it:
Even more interesting is that this isn't shipped numbers or even sold numbers. This is the number of PSN accounts that have played the game online.
Variety:
I think they pointed that out specifically because sites like GameSpot have translated that figure as meaning 1.3 million copies sold.
VentureBeat.com:
IGN:
Unless every LBP owner has a PSN account, we can assume that the game has actually sold well above 1.3 million overall.
I only have my own anecdotal evidence but what the hell, I know 3 people who aren't really gamers at all, they all heard about LBP from somewhere other than me and they all love the concept at the style, they all played it on my PS3 and loved it. But none of them can justify spending £300 to get it.
So that leads me to think that the platform has let down LBP, not the other way round, things like Buzz and Singstar worked great for Sony because the PS2 was cheap, the barrier to entry for the brand new audiences was pretty low. With LBP they are attracting a whole new crowd of non-gaming creative people but very few can actually get past the price.
So the game is left to stand on the (not insignificant) hardcore crowd, which means it will still sell fantastically well, but it wont perform the magic Sony were hoping for (not yet anyway).
So that leads me to think that the platform has let down LBP, not the other way round, things like Buzz and Singstar worked great for Sony because the PS2 was cheap, the barrier to entry for the brand new audiences was pretty low. With LBP they are attracting a whole new crowd of non-gaming creative people but very few can actually get past the price.
So the game is left to stand on the (not insignificant) hardcore crowd, which means it will still sell fantastically well, but it wont perform the magic Sony were hoping for (not yet anyway).
makingmusic476
Member
Considering that Chart Track has 309k units sold in the UK alone, that wouldn't be surprising Edit: These numbers might be incorrect.deepbrown said:
Hell, 1.3 million people playing that game online out of 1.8 million sales would mean that 72% of LBP owners have PSN accounts, which would make sense. I'm sure that percent is a bit lower for ps3 users in general.
Private Hoffman said:
Sure that probably plays a role, without question the PS3 is hampered in every way by the cost of the system, but again, this isn't about potential, or even anecdotal evidence. LBP was never intended as a pure hardcore title (it's done competently with the hardcore which is a plus for Sony of course but it was never intended to survive on JUST the hardcore with few exceptions).
You know as well as anyone that a lot can be seen regarding a title's future performance in how it performs in it's first month, and really first few months. It was an encouraging sign for Sony when it was #10 in October, then it dropped off in November. What's it going to do in December? I have NO idea I must say but I don't have any strong reason to believe it's going to chart this month. It's also done decent but not paradigm shifting numbers in Japan. Again, we're not talking about what it IS, a hardcore title that appeals to the hardcore, we're talking about what Sony wanted it to be... a title that appeals to everyone and that everyone MUST own... a system seller in other words. This gen's FFVII if you will.
makingmusic476
Member
But they are still what...17+ million ps3s on the market? I'm sure quite a few of those 17 million feel like you and your friends, and would be buying LBP.Ghost said:
ViperVisor
Member
Gaborn is making a case I am on board with.
With most of us U.S. based discussing the other markets is hard and it is best if we mostly stay in the area we can have less speculation due to it being our backyard.
Gears 2 of course is not gonna sell systems just like Majora's Mask wouldn't. You have to fill a void or be a transforming game in a genre to sell systems to a degree where you can notice above normal fluctuation.
And I said "LBP did fine" in the Oct NPD. It sold to a segment of the base here and if this new number is right it has done that from sea to sea. That wasn't a question. It had a huge buildup in the hardcore press and it didn't fail them. You can say that is a self fulling thing for various reasons but arguing the games quality is not the subject.
And as it for being a disappointment for Sony that is most certainly true but they are having to ask for maybe too much due to being in a tough place with the PS3. Using these threads to give props to Media Molecule for success on selling whatever copies or say the game has made money for Sony is doing connect-the-dots on a picture we can already see and should be discussing that.
With most of us U.S. based discussing the other markets is hard and it is best if we mostly stay in the area we can have less speculation due to it being our backyard.
Gears 2 of course is not gonna sell systems just like Majora's Mask wouldn't. You have to fill a void or be a transforming game in a genre to sell systems to a degree where you can notice above normal fluctuation.
And I said "LBP did fine" in the Oct NPD. It sold to a segment of the base here and if this new number is right it has done that from sea to sea. That wasn't a question. It had a huge buildup in the hardcore press and it didn't fail them. You can say that is a self fulling thing for various reasons but arguing the games quality is not the subject.
And as it for being a disappointment for Sony that is most certainly true but they are having to ask for maybe too much due to being in a tough place with the PS3. Using these threads to give props to Media Molecule for success on selling whatever copies or say the game has made money for Sony is doing connect-the-dots on a picture we can already see and should be discussing that.
Private Hoffman
Banned
Gaborn said:
There's too much of an obsession with 'charting'. There were a lot of big titles released at, or around, LBP's release date and later.
If LBP doesn't chart, we don't simply throw our hands up and say "bomb"; you have to inspect where LBP's sales are for that month.
Despite a game like Fable 2 having really high first month sales, it did about 185k in November, which is similar to what LittleBigPlanet did (140k), difference being that LBP had much less of a stronger initial showing. And, I guess the point of me saying that is even though it didn't chart in November, it still didn't necessarily fall off the map completely with 40k in sales. It does appear that word of mouth has been rather kind to the title given what you'd expect from its initial debut.
mr_bishiuk
Banned
Private Hoffman said:
As I stated in my post Banj was never pushed as a major holiday game for MS, they didn't even mention it in its PR so clearly they didn't have high expectations for it. We dont have a clue what Banjo's shipped figures are either.
Meanwhile I would argue that Sony had high expectations for LBP as did everyone they have been hyping it for 2 years! before the release if you had said to me you expected to hit 1.3m units in the US NPD's for Oct-Dec I would not have thought you would be miles out, Fable for example hit 800k in October but here we have World wide SHIPPED figures at 1.3m! Maybe you are right and this approx what Sony expected personally I doubt it but I guess we'll never know what their internal estimates are/were so its pointless arguing about whether they hit their targets.
IcebergSlim3000
Member
The obvious answer is it looks like a kiddy game on a system meant for grown up's. None of the features that make it a fun game are ever mentioned in the ads.
Private Hoffman said:
Right, it did 140k in November. I'm not saying that's a BAD thing. It's just not what you'd expect from a "biggest title in '08" game. What about Motorstorm 2? What about Resistance 2 (well, not the best example)? What is it about this game that you have enough faith in to say that it may at some point down the road remain enough on people's radars to make an impact on casuals when the price of the PS3 goes down? If LBP continues to slow down in sales (as most titles do after a month or so, and particularly after the holiday season) it's not going to make it to a price drop, it'll be out of casual consumers minds by then.
makingmusic476
Member
I was basing those numbers off of information found in another forum, but looking back at the forum, the sources are a bit sketchy.deepbrown said:
Burai said:
I feel so sorry for you.
You should have checked the Cheap Ass Gaf'er thread through December.
Prince of Persia got knocked down to £17.99 10 days after it launched, deals through December included Fallout 3, Fable 2, Gears 2, LBP, Resistance 2, Valkyria Chronicles, Motorstorm Pacific Rift, Mirror's Edge and a crapload of other games for half price just months after release, there sure were positives from the recession at Christmas.
The game going cheap fast is because of the economic situation.
LBP is only cheaper online as far as I'm aware. It's still at full retail in store. In comparison, Mirror's Edge and POP are under £20 everywhere.Steroyd said:I feel so sorry for you.
You should have checked the Cheap Ass Gaf'er thread through December.
Prince of Persia got knocked down to £17.99 10 days after it launched, deals through December included Fallout 3, Fable 2, Gears 2, LBP, Resistance 2, Valkyria Chronicles, Motorstorm Pacific Rift, Mirror's Edge and a crapload of other games for half price just months after release, there sure were positives from the recession at Christmas.
The game going cheap fast is because of the economic situation.
In Zavvi these two games could be as low as £9! Go shopping guys, 50% sale on everything!
nelsonroyale
Member
loads of games were being sold cheap over the holiday season in the uk...
Mirrors edge, farcry 2, fable 2 etc all could be had for 20 odd squid
Mirrors edge, farcry 2, fable 2 etc all could be had for 20 odd squid
Similar threads
- Locked
- Poll