jj984jj said:
So you're not saying that CC can only be compared to other FF spin-offs or would not be more successful on PS2 or DS? Could it not do similar to ToS GCN and ToS PS2 if it were released on PS2? Could it not have done just as well on the DS if it was announced for it in the first place and was still a high quality game?
You're not comparing it to other FF spin-offs just because you can't make a comparison to how well it'd sell on PS2 or DS, even if none of them are really nothing alike and really can't be compared in the first place? You're not insisting that this is the most valid comparison to make with CC?
My statement on comparisons and on gauging success was this:
My position, and Charlie's position, is not Lancesque. It is completely contextual. The argument is that a game must be looked at through the prism of the closest possible direct comparison we can make. If multiple games are available, then look at as many comparisons as you can. The more the merrier. The more comparisons that can be drawn, the better we can evaluate the sales of a particular game. Honestly, the only criteria that matters to a publisher is "Did we make a big profit on this and build the foundation for future profit?" We don't know enough about the costs involved in Crisis Core to answer the first prong, but the second we can note is affirmatively a yes, because Square Enix clearly intends to build upon the success they achieved through Crisis Core with the high profile Dissidia and KH: Birth by Sleep games.
Contextually, everything else we look at tells us Crisis Core was a successful game. Do we look at its sales in absolute numbers? If we do that, we see only a handful of games selling 800,000 copies in a year. In an absolute sense, the numbers are impressive. Do we look at Crisis Core's sales in a relative sense by system? It's the third best selling PSP game, so it succeeds there as well. Do we look at it in a relative sense versus other comparable games within the same series? It passes here as well -- only FFT has performed better when looking at the breadth and depth of Final Fantasy spinoffs, which is a pretty diverse lot and Crisis Core has exceeded almost all of them.
I laid out multiple criteria there, and this game passes each of them. At no point have I stated that Crisis Core's sales are phenomenal or that it'd mindblowing how well it performed -- in fact, I specifically disputed this. But it is successful. Absolutely.
You really think it's not at all relevant how other Final Fantasy games have performed? You think Square Enix doesn't look at the sales of their prior titles to try to best measure their expectations for new games? That's silly -- of course they do.
This isn't Crisis Core 2 and there's no Crisis Core 1 we can compare to it, so making as broad a possible comparison is the best way to go about it. None of the games are directly comparable; that's the point, that's why it's beneficial to look at as many of them as we can. Some of the prior games are ARPGs, some are internal (some external), some were heavily marketed, some scored well, some were on primary systems and some were on secondary systems. It seems like the position being taken here is that because there's no one game that corelates perfectly to Crisis Core in every way, we should just not look at
any prior games for context's sake. This seems wrongheaded to me. There are certainly differences, we'll never get a 1:1 comparison. Though I find it really funny people keep saying "But Crisis Core is a good game!" Sure -- and it sold better as a result. Being a good game doesn't make the game
less of a success when it then sells more.
Frankly, I don't recall anyone here complaining when I highlighted Dragon Quest Swords sales in comparison to how other Dragon Quest spinoffs had done (see
here,
here, or
here). Nope, DQS wasn't directly comparable to DQM or Young Yangus (people certainly found it interesting that DQS outsold Yangus in its first week!) or Torneko or Slime Morimori. But it gave us a starting point. It told us how the various diverse DQ spinoff series had performed and that gave us the context that we could use to look at DQS's numbers rather than just having a number sitting out there in a vaccuum. Yes, comparative game performance is relevant. This seems like so banal and obviously correct a point that it's shocking to me you people are necessitating that I defend it. I also don't recall anyone getting up in arms when Kyotaro Nishimura came out and I said, "hey, cool sales -- here are some other adventure game starts for comparison, here are some other Tecmo game starts for comparison." I continue to believe that historical performance is one of the best things to look at here.
As to the other platforms: well, I specifically said that yes, Crisis Core may well have sold better on the PS2. May not have, but there are very good odds it would have, too. Of course, it would've been a very different situation -- the game would've costs a lot more money and it would've involved a much, much,
much larger development team than the mobile phone group under Hajime Tabata. Remember, even with FFX-2 heavily reusing assets from FFX, the game still needed pretty much the entire full scale FFX team to develop it. Regardless of how it may have performed on another system though (this is only hypothetical -- none of us has the answer to this question), I just don't find it important. Crisis Core was a big success on the system it was on. It does us no good to conjure up a scenario by which Square Enix is actually disappointed because they would've gotten better sales on a different system when the sales they actually got are really high any way you slice the numbers. If Square Enix is unhappy with the sales, they can port it to the PS2; I don't think they are, and I don't think they will.
But for the DS... right, I don't think the fictional Crisis Core DS would've sold more than the Crisis Core that was actually made because, as was pointed out earlier, I think the visuals played a huge role in Crisis Core's success. It allowed the Final Fantasy VII fanbase to revisit the world they loved so much in beautiful graphics that seemed almost Advent Children-like. That was a major, major selling point. If you don't think its graphics were a huge component of that success, please go and reread every impression thread, every anticipation thread... it was. Crisis Core DS wouldn't have been able to match that. I also don't think Crisis Core DS would've been handled internally by the really talented team that made Crisis Core, and that would've been a detraction as well.
I stand by this belief. Frankly, you have no evidence that I'm wrong, and I have no evidence that I'm right, because it's all a hypothetical -- and a damned stupid one at that. But I do know I made the same wager with regards to the two upcoming handheld Kingdom Hearts games -- I said Birth by Sleep would outsell 179. I stand by that. We'll see who's right soon enough.
