Support NeoGAF

[charlequin]

Well, he's right, actually. The Tales series has historically always done better on Sony systems.

This is absolutely true. Nonetheless, Link316's "analysis" here is somewhat.... lacking.

I wonder if it'd have done any better were it a 100% Tales Studio project?

Probably? Being outsourced killed the momentum on Legendia pretty significantly.

If none of the PSP games are applicable for comparison he should really have said "Sony consoles"

It's Link316. Responding to his misleading and poorly thought out spinalysis with your own makes you look ridiculous. :lol

 

[ethelred]

This is absolutely true. Nonetheless, Link316's "analysis" here is somewhat.... lacking.

Oh, agreed. There are reasons why these games have historically done better on Sony systems beyond "they were on Sony systems and that was the causation." One really needs to look at the specific reasons behind these successes and failures. We can pretty easily pinpoint why Tempest was a failure, and it wasn't because it was on a Nintendo system; similarly, we can state exactly why Innocence is likely to underperform other main series titles and it isn't because it's on a Nintendo system (except to the extent that it's on the same Nintendo system that Tempest came out on last year).

Probably? Being outsourced killed the momentum on Legendia pretty significantly.

Being bad killed the momentum on Legendia. :/

 

[vitaflo]

Probably already said but Wii LTD should beat GC LTD by the end of the year.

 

[SovanJedi]

If none of the PSP games are applicable for comparison he should really have said "Sony consoles", but more importantly TOI had no possible chance to outperform any of the PS2 games given the launch shipment.

I think the ad-hominem was uncalled for, btw.

I wouldn't get worked up about Link316 to be honest, he's an atrocious anti-Nintendo troll. While he may have been right about the games selling best so far on Sony consoles, his comment was clearly intended to aggravate people. Just ignore it in future.

The damage caused by Tempest may surely be reversable though - if I remember correctly, Tales of Innocence is doing better than Heroes of Mana did after the Children of Mana/Dawn of Mana double-hit stained the Mana name enough for it to cause huge problems to future games in the series. Further word of mouth may save it in time too. I have hopes for it.

Has anybody on NeoGAF got the game yet by the way? Any feedback? (I should probably look for myself, but I am sloth-like in my research)

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

That's a remarkably stupid remark, even from you. Tales of Innocence is neither a port nor a spinoff. It has been fully pushed by Namco as an original main series Tales game. The "next Tales of."

Didn't they do that with Tempest too, until basically trying to make everyone forget it hapened?

Its the same price (1890Y).

It has Yakuza 2 at 1890, but the first at 2800. Possible IGN and/or donny made a flub somewhere, though.

 

[Jokeropia]

It wasn't an ad hominem. An ad hominem is an attempt to refute a remark through a personal attack. Now, hypothetically, if I had said, "Your point is wrong because you're a fucking tool," that would be an ad hominem. On the other hand, if I were to say, "Your argument is wrong because of logical reasons X, Y, and Z, and oh yeah, that's really stupid," that's not an ad hominem.

Simply using insults to help discrediting a statement or a person can qualify as well actually, even if the post in this case admittedly included an actual argument as well. (So it wasn't all ad-hominem, it just included one.)

This is all beside the point, however.

 

[ethelred]

Didn't they do that with Tempest too, until basically trying to make everyone forget it hapened?

Yeah, that wasn't a very good plan.

 

[Kurosaki Ichigo]

Do you guys know whats funny?

That Tales of the World Radiant Mythology for the PSP sold 80k first day with a 72% sell through.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5164276&postcount=781


Can we keep the bullshit now to a minimum please?...

 

[Magicpaint]

Do you guys know whats funny?

That Tales of the World Radiant Mythology for the PSP sold 80k first day with a 72% sell through.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5164276&postcount=781


Can we keep the bullshit now to a minimum please?...

Hmm, so I was right about this selling worse than RM...at least for now.

Puts the ToI numbers in an even worse light.

 

[charlequin]

Being bad killed the momentum on Legendia. :/

So very true. :lol Actually, I wonder whether it's possible to retroactively infer how much of Legendia's sales underperformance is due to people knowing it was bad vs. people guessing it would be bad due to its pedigree? If it put up normal day 1/week 1 numbers and fell like a rock I'd guess the latter, but low day/week 1 numbers might imply the former. Or I'm trying to read too much into this and I'm full of crap. :lol

The damage caused by Tempest may surely be reversable though

I think it is, at least hypothetically. Non-terrible sales on Innocence and solid word of mouth will at least help lay a better foundation for the next game. It helps that...

Has anybody on NeoGAF got the game yet by the way? Any feedback?

...the feedback is pretty positive. Check out the official thread.

 

[Vinnk]

Really, wackyjappy should just be an instaban.

Anyway, NMH has pretty much zero advertising, most people don't even know what it is. Usually at school I can talk to my kids about games and they will at least know what it is, with NMH they were like "what???????"

So yeah, there's your reason lol.

Same here. Several stores in my town didn't even order the game. And there wasn't a single kiosk or even poster anywhere. Which is really too bad, it's a really good game. Sorry it is keeping me away from putting up my full report. I promise the get to it soon.

But yeah, NMH is disappointing but far from unexpected.

Uncharted got robbed. I loved it at TGS. The lines there were fairly long and the press seemed to like it. I expected it to do bad, but not quite this bad.

 

[Mithos Yggdrasill]

Hardware - This Week | Last Week |       YTD |        LTD
1. NDS   -   124,627 |   116,694 | 6,278,504 | 20,284,183
2. WII   -    74,764 |    54,362 | 3,025,786 |  3,945,429
3. PSP   -    74,626 |    75,027 | 2,460,200 |  6,992,329
4. PS3   -    37,092 |    50,564 |   971,402 |  1,428,960
5. PS2   -    13,703 |    14,875 |   696,206 | 20,851,065
6. 360   -     6,632 |     7,117 |   208,990 |    473,692
7. GBA   -        33 |        82 |    50,280 | 15,348,359
8. NGC   -        32 |        44 |    10,417 |  4,179,885

GBA = 4 GBA + 9 SP + 20 Micro
NDS = 36 DS + 124,591 Lite

Wow. Sorry to quote the entire graph, but the Differences between Famitsu and Media Create are always too big. DS and Wii are at the top once again. What really make me sad, is that WIi Fit has had a bigger impact then Mario galaxy.

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

Same here. Several stores in my town didn't even order the game. And there wasn't a single kiosk or even poster anywhere. Which is really too bad, it's a really good game. Sorry it is keeping me away from putting up my full report. I promise the get to it soon.

But yeah, NMH is disappointing but far from unexpected.

Uncharted got robbed. I loved it at TGS. The lines there were fairly long and the press seemed to like it. I expected it to do bad, but not quite this bad.

From my understanding TGS' turnout has never been a good indicator of sales performance though. It's generally a free unreleased game Arcade, isn't it?

 

[MechaX]

Do you guys know whats funny?

That Tales of the World Radiant Mythology for the PSP sold 80k first day with a 72% sell through.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5164276&postcount=781


Can we keep the bullshit now to a minimum please?...

Well, that's pretty disappointing. But I guess we just need to wait and see how ToI's first week figures are looking in the next MC thread.

Although, this slightly bothers me because I think that the game should have done much better than RM, whether it is Tempest stigma, Wii Fit fall-out, or what-have-you. No matter what, this just bothers me.

 

[*Guaraná]

How something can be disappointing and expected at the same time?

 

[Mithos Yggdrasill]

Don't worry guys Japan's 2008 release list so far is fine sales wise:

Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest VI
Dragon Quest IX
Kirby Superstar Deluxe
Fire Emblem DS
Blue Dragon DS
Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2
Inazuma Eleven

Not all of those will be huge hits, but I think maybe 4 to 5 of them could be million sellers. Then there is a bunch of stuff that hasn't been announced.

Square-Enix is pratically sustaining the DS alone. Each Dragon Quest remake will sell at least 1 million and DQIX....will sell millions, that's sure !

Wii comparisons: At 53 weeks, Wii is where GCN was at 226.9 weeks (January 13, 2006), where GBA was at 39.8 weeks (December 21, 2001), where DS was at 53.0 weeks (December 3, 2005), where PS2 was at 62.9 weeks (May 12, 2001), and where PSP was at 91.2 weeks (September 4, 2006).

You can see that Wii is right at where DS was; at least without going into further decimal points. Expect Wii to fall behind now.

Agreed. But anyway, it is an amazing performance.

 

[Anasui Kishibe]

things back to normal again.

Oh, and Layton really surprised me. FEBRUARYARGHATON

 

[ethelred]

I wasn't endorsing, just correcting. Anyway, I wonder how Alfa Systems feels about their best performing Tales game to date?

I wonder how Alfa Systems feels about their second best performing Tales game to date! :lol

 

[HK-47]

Square-Enix is pratically sustaining the DS alone. Each Dragon Quest remake will sell at least 1 million and DQIX....will sell millions, that's sure !

Better hope they dont overdose the public on FF and DQ or sales will suffer

 

[Culex]

I didn't even realize that the Wii passed 3 million YTD before the PS3 passed 1 million YTD.

 

[Mithos Yggdrasill]

Here are the full numbers with more details:

ToI = 75k = 50% of shipment

MnG2P = 40k

LO = 40k = 50% of shipment

Power Pro-kun Pocket = 20k

Gintama DS = 15k

Yuusha PSP OMG GOTY = 15k = 60% of shipment

No More Heroes = 10k
Silent Hill Zero = 10k

VF5 Xbox360 = 10k EL BOMBA

Uncharted = 7k OMG MEGA BOMBA

Ryu ga Gotoku 2 BEST PRICE = 7k BEST SALES

WTF at happened to Minna no Golf 2 ?! The first sold very well and I expected more then 100k the first day and 200k for the first week. Disappointed.
Disappointed even for Silent Hill Origins, but I expected it somehow.

Not so bad for Tales of Innocence (but not great either). And No More Heroes sold as I expected. Probably it will do like Killer 7.

So I'm back....hey splitting numbers is not good, j/k but I'm going to do my usual list to keep track of it better. Not really good numbers imo, I guess most titles will be saved with holiday legs but I was expecting more of quite a few releases there.

NDS Tales of Innocence - 75k (50% sell through, 150k shipment)
PSP Minna no Golf Portable 2 - 40k
360 Lost Odyssey - 40k (50% sell through, 80k shipment)
NDS Power Pro Kun Pocket 10 - 20k
NDS Gintama: Gin-Oh Quest - 15k
PSP Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida - 15k (60% sell through, 25k shipment)
PSP Silent Hill Zero - 10k
WII No More Heroes - 10k
360 Virtua Fighter 5 Live Arena - 10k
PS2 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories - 8k (20% sell through, 40k shipment)
PSP Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories - 8k (20% sell through, 40k shipment)
PS2 Ryu ga Gotoku 2 (The Best!) - 7k
PS3 Uncharted: El Dorado no Hihou - 7k
PSP Chronicle of Dungeon Maker 2 - 2k
WII Doraemon Wii - 1k
NDS Arkanoid DS - <1k
WII Minna de Asobou de! Namco Carnival - <1k

Tales of the Tempest sold 60k first day of a 200k shipment (30% sell through). For comparison, Tales of Destiny Remake sold 210k first day (74% sell through), and taking a main entry rather than a remake, Tales of the Abyss sold 280.000 first day.

Again, only Tales of Innocence and Lost Odyssey sold decently (a little bit less for ToI) The rest is disappointing. And holy shit to the bomb of Arkanoid DS.

 

[jarrod]

I wonder how Alfa Systems feels about their second best performing Tales game to date! :lol

Foiled again.


Damn it Scamco...

 

[Frillen]

No More Heroes deserves more, but expected.
Uncharted deserves more, but expected.
Silent Hill Zer0 deserves more, but expected.

how you disapoint me this week japan.

How can something be expected and at the same time be disappointing?

Edit: Lol, beaten.

 

[donny2112]

That's Yakuza, right? According to my information, it already had PlayStation 2 the Best rerelease last October at 1890 yen. Now a new one... that's more expensive? They added something to it?

I checked Famitsu, and they have the price at 1890 Yen, like Kurosaki Ichigo said. IGN probably just has the price incorrect on its website.

That is a completely (dragonquestviii) objective look at (dragonquestviii) the state of how (dragonquestviii) PS3 and Wii fail to match up to (dragonquestviii) an aging PS2.

:lol

Possible IGN and/or donny made a flub somewhere, though.

Me = copy-and-paste

The IGN article is dated November 20th, so the price could have changed since then. Or, since it's not the main part of the article (Gaming Life in Japan), they could've just not cared if they put all the prices in correctly or not. This is Anoop we're talking about here.

Spoiler

Kidding! <3 Anoop.

 

[Mithos Yggdrasill]

That's a remarkably stupid remark, even from you. Tales of Innocence is neither a port nor a spinoff. It has been fully pushed by Namco as an original main series Tales game. The "next Tales of."
.

Maybe the public hasn't understood this point, Ethelred and they expect a Tales of for consoles.

 

[charlequin]

How something can be disappointing and expected at the same time?

Disappointment has to do with what you want to happen and expectation has to do with what you think will happen. Tales of Innocence is in fact a perfect example of a game whose sales are disappointing yet expected.

Better hope they dont overdose the public on FF and DQ or sales will suffer

There's not much evidence at all that the main series sales of either are at risk. The DQ remakes aren't even anything unusual for the series; 1-3 were all remade on SNES and then again on GBC.

There's a risk that the FF spinoff branding will start to wear thin (I think FFTA2 is early evidence of this happening) but there aren't actually that many FF spinoff titles right now that are announced but still unreleased. A more educated position on this will probably have to wait until we know more about what S-E's 2008 looks like.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

On the other hand, one title that did quite better than expected is Power Pro Kun Pocket 10 for DS. Previous games in the series, first week numbers (LTD):
Power Pro Kun Pocket 6 03.12.04 GBA 55,429 (265,183)
Power Pro Kun Pocket 7 04.12.02 GBA 39,270 (213,210)
Power Pro Kun Pocket 8 05.12.01 DS 16,215 (122,788)
Power Pro Kun Pocket 9 06.12.07 DS 21,801 (144,631)

As seen above, previous DS entries were lower than the latest GBA ones, but 10 has done in its first day as much as other DS entries first week, so it looks fairly good to match 6-7 numbers for the week. Its a series with long legs due to its release date as you can see.

This shouldn't be a surprise really. Given the fall in quality of the console Pawapuro games, and the fact that most of the "good" developers on the Pawapuro production teams have switched over to the DS, and that the Pawapuro fanbase is rabid enough to know all of this, I would be surprised if there wasn't an increase.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

WTF at happened to Minna no Golf 2 ?! The first sold very well and I expected more then 100k the first day and 200k for the first week. Disappointed.

Looking back on the first, it (and the rest of the PSP launch) was released on the last day of a sales week, so we do have good day 1 sales for it; 66K according to Famitsu. So 40K is a bit of a step down. It is a leggy franchise, though.

 

[Cosmonaut X]

And No More Heroes sold as I expected.

It's already outsold the LTD of the GameCube edition of Killer 7 and pretty much matched the first week sales of the PS2 edition. It won't light up the charts - and I don't believe anyone should have expected it to - but it looks like it's on its way to at least outselling that particular game.

 

[Lightning]

Lost Odyssey sales DID NOT deliver.

 

[WrathOfOtaibah]

Why was Virtua Fighter 5 such a sales failure in Japan? Especially since VF4 on PS2 brought in over 400,000, the PS3 and 360 versions of VF5 would be lucky to get half that combined.

 

[Aeris130]

Maybe the public hasn't understood this point, Ethelred and they expect a Tales of for consoles.

Heh, I didn't even know there was a main series to that one.

 

[ethelred]

Why was Virtua Fighter 5 such a sales failure in Japan? Especially since VF4 on PS2 brought in over 400,000, the PS3 and 360 versions of VF5 would be lucky to get half that combined.

Why? Because the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are both failures in Japan. Once successful franchises being lucky to do half their old numbers is the norm these days.

 

[jarrod]

VF5 seems a bit worse received critically than VF4 too, that may have impacted things some. VF3tb did okay on Dreamcast iirc, despite the machine itself generally tanking.

I dunno, I'd like to see AM2 try their hand at an original DS VF release (Kids 2? Kids Megamix?) and see how that pans out.

 

[Moor-Angol]

This shouldn't be a surprise really. Given the fall in quality of the console Pawapuro games, and the fact that most of the "good" developers on the Pawapuro production teams have switched over to the DS, and that the Pawapuro fanbase is rabid enough to know all of this, I would be surprised if there wasn't an increase.

We could also add about the fact this is the first release for DS (and GBA) using a 3D engine, and not a 2D as always happened in the past.

 

[WrathOfOtaibah]

Why? Because the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are both failures in Japan. Once successful franchises being lucky to do half their old numbers is the norm these days.

Even the DOA games' first day sales beat out Virtua Fighter 5's. I thought that the sales were far worse than I expected, even taking into account the lukewarm at best reception for the PS3 and almost flatlined 360.

 

[manueldelalas]

DS is pratically sustaining Square-Enix alone. Each Dragon Quest remake will sell at least 1 million and DQIX....will sell millions, that's sure !

Fixed for the truth

 

[Tron 2.0]

Easily accessible to people? Especially Mario, Zelda is a toss up because the game involves more skill.

The hell?

Because a game is easily accessible it's not hardcore? Bullshit.

 

[Linkup]

So much for LO outselling ToI.

 

[Lightning]

Anyone expecting VF5 to sell on the 360 were kidding themselves. Sega should not have launched with VF5, that was where it fell down. Things for the PS3 are starting to pick up now but the negative press surrounding the systems launch pretty much killed any game success.


LO is not going to be reaching Blue Dragon numbers unless it shows a remarkable improvement.

 

[jarrod]

Even the DOA games' first day sales beat out Virtua Fighter 5's. I thought that the sales were far worse than I expected, even taking into account the lukewarm at best reception for the PS3 and almost flatlined 360.

Sure, but there's general genre decline too... DOA4 undershot what DOA3 managed, despite being a far better game (which is arguable for VF4 vs VF5). Tekken PSP undersold VF5 even too actually, despite being a generally just as popular series and being on a far bigger platform base. Naruto GNT EX is doing far worse than the GC GNT games did too, with a decline comparabl to VF5 actually. There's lots of factors working against VF5 really... I'm more curious to see how Tekken 5 pans out in Japan (SC4's going to tank for sure tho).

 

[tanod]

Anyone expecting VF5 to sell on the 360 were kidding themselves. Sega should not have launched with VF5, that was where it fell down. Things for the PS3 are starting to pick up now but the negative press surrounding the systems launch pretty much killed any game success.


LO is not going to be reaching Blue Dragon numbers unless it shows a remarkable improvement.

At their respective releases, both the PS3 and 360 versions are vastly inferior (gimped, even) to the version they have in the arcades. This wasn't necessarily the case with previous iterations of the VF series.

 

[Shaheed79]

Does anyone have any idea how much BD and LO cost to develop? They have to of lost tons of money on those games it's just not good buisness.

 

[Pellham]

They're as much hardcore as Mario, if not moreso. FE is as hardcore as they come, actually.

Hardcore to me would be something like Disgaea or Shin Megami Tensei which has a very specific niche userbase only. Fire Emblem has a lot of hardcore fans but a lot of casual gamers buy the games as well. The third FE game sold 600,000 copies after all. That's not the kind of sales "as hardcore as they come" get.

 

[f@luS]

Why? Because the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are both failures in Japan. Once successful franchises being lucky to do half their old numbers is the norm these days.

putting the ps3 and the 360 together in japan is...a big error. The ps3 is going not so bad the past month (40 K + almost every time) so dont burry it already

 

[neptunes]

putting the ps3 and the 360 together in japan is...a big error. The ps3 is going not so bad the past month (40 K + almost every time) so dont burry it already

why do you care so much?

 

[jarrod]

At their respective releases, both the PS3 and 360 versions are vastly inferior (gimped, even) to the version they have in the arcades. This wasn't necessarily the case with previous iterations of the VF series.

Uh, no... every previous mainline VF was far more of a downgrade than VF5 is. VF5'ss the first time we had the game on weaker arcade hardware than consoles actually.


I think VF5's lukewarm performance is a really a perfect storm of differing combined factors though (fledgling userbases, weak critical reception in arcades, general genre decline, etc). Really, I don't think sales would've been much (if any) better on Wii or something though, it's a little unfair to place the onus entirely on platform selection.

 

[jeremy1456]

putting the ps3 and the 360 together in japan is...a big error. The ps3 is going not so bad the past month (40 K + almost every time) so dont burry it already

That was with a price drop, new console color, and launch of the newest installment of a very popular series in Japan (Dynasty Warriors).

I think it's fair to combine the two.

 

[f@luS]

That was with a price drop, new console color, and launch of the newest installment of a very popular series in Japan (Dynasty Warriors).

I think it's fair to combine the two.

a fake price drop (it was almost the same price before. Its mostly a new color (but no new model, a new color only has never been a big hit in sales, at least not a classic color like white) , its not like PSP slim or dslite, ps2 or whatever you want. It was around 10k weekly , its now around 40k weekly. Its quite good i think

 

[ethelred]

putting the ps3 and the 360 together in japan is...a big error. The ps3 is going not so bad the past month (40 K + almost every time) so dont burry it already

Oh, I'm not just lumping them together. They're clearly a different tier of failures -- one is the gold medalist of failing while the other achieves only silver. Nevertheless, they're still both failures.