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Media Create Sales 5/7 - 5/13, PS3 < 10k

Eteric Rice

Member
Sho_Nuff82 said:
I've seen nothing to indicate that this is remotely true on even the Xbox. You're giving the last gen consoles way too much credit. Things like RAM, fillrate, or computational power cannot be overcome by 'design'. There are only so many polygonal objects or AI characters or projectiles a system can keep track of before it chokes and sputters. With modern texturing techniques the poly-counts probably aren't the limiting factors in denizens in a given scene.

The difference between Saints Row and GTA San Andreas is almost embarrassing on a technical level, and the difference between Crackdown and Saints Row in gameplay and scope is very, very significant.

There seems to be a common misconception that all the PS3/360 have to offer is last-gen games in HD - that there hardware can add nothing to gameplay - this really isn't the case, and there are many games coming this year and next that will define their difference from the Wii.

I hate to derail the thread (with a rant on a decidedly American game) but I hate to see a great game get a bum rap.

The problem is, very few games will ever use that power for something other than visuals.

It's the same with AI. You can only make AI so good before it becomes frusturating for the player to beat it. And you don't want to piss off the player to much.

All three systems are going to do amazing things. But don't count the Wii out due to it's power. It's more powerful than the last gen (though maybe not by much), and the X-Box alone was never really fully exploited like the PS2.
 

corez

Member
JoshuaJSlone said:
Using all Famitsu for consistency, here are launch-through-26-weeks values which can go into a bar. I won't bother until Wii catches up, but if anyone wants to get to it first go ahead. Looks like there's some more obscure stuff early on I wasn't thinking of, too.

GBC: 1.52 M
NGP: 0.09 M
DC : 0.62 M
PoS: 1.03 M (PocketStation)
WS : 0.53 M
PS2: 2.60 M
WSC: 0.45 M
GBA: 3.10 M
GCN: 1.22 M
XBX: 0.26 M
DS : 2.20 M
PSP: 1.41 M
360: 0.14 M
PS3: 0.90 M

Wii: 2.32 M (3 weeks remaining)

This is my first time posting graphs on this forum. On the balance 3 weeks Wii sales I have used a figure of 60,000 per week.

Jpn4.JPG


edited: Resized the graph and changes to the PS3 quantity
 

Farmboy

Member
corez said:
This is my first time posting graphs on this forum. On the balance 3 weeks Wii sales I have used a figure of 60,000 per week.

edited: Resized the graph.

The PS3 isn't even with the NGP -- it should be ten times as high.
 

Vinnk

Member
OK, so far it's these games:

Super Paper Mario
Forza 2
Revenant Wing
Draglade (DS)
Case Closed (Wii)

Biohazard 4 Wii Edition (when it comes out)

SPM and FF12:RW havn't been supply constrained for the past 2 weeks. I don't imagine they ever will be, but I'll check again. Who knows? Has there ever been a game that becomes supply constrained after having adaquate supply for so long? Maybe Pokemon in the US and Super Mario Bros for GBA after the Micro was released.

Anything else?
 

D.Lo

Member
Hmm - so the next thing for the PS3 to fall behind is the Dreamcast...

I just looked at JJS's famitsu figures, and it seems that in about five weeks (week 31) the DC has a massive jump in sales, and stays well above where the PS3 is now, jumping as high as 78,108 for one week.

Could the Dreamcast overtake the PS3? I'm not so good with spreadsheets, but a rough calculation makes it look like the PS3 would have to sell as low as last week on average for the next six months for the Dreamcast to catch it.

So probably not, but it's pretty scary that the comparison can even be made.
 
Sho_Nuff82 said:
I've seen nothing to indicate that this is remotely true on even the Xbox. You're giving the last gen consoles way too much credit. Things like RAM, fillrate, or computational power cannot be overcome by 'design'. There are only so many polygonal objects or AI characters or projectiles a system can keep track of before it chokes and sputters. With modern texturing techniques the poly-counts probably aren't the limiting factors in denizens in a given scene.
Most of the concepts found in the PS2-generation GTA games were already there for the PS1-generation GTA games in uglier form. Even the GBC/GBA games keep a fair chunk of it, in their limited form. RAM is always a limit, yes, but not so limited that there's a necessity to forget that there's an exploded Model R car at location X-Y-Z when you're just a few dozen feet away, or to forget that the car driving behind you exists when panning the camera in a circle. DMA didn't go in knowing they could only remember cars within three dozen feet; they decided that having them disappear relatively near was an acceptable cutoff to retain system resources for other things, thus design choice. Just as in F-Zero X the decision was made to keep the look simple to allow for 30 simultaneous racers at 60 frames per second on N64 hardware.

If a team went into making a PS2 GTA-alike and put the emphasis on non-landscape items not disappearing so near, keeping track of these items for a larger radius even when out of sight, and more ledges to grab, I don't see why they couldn't. It'd be even easier for one of the post-PS2 systems, GCN/Xbox/Wii.

Certainly it is easier to do such things with X360-level power, and I'm glad some developers use it as such, but I really think design is the main factor. This is why so many Game Boy games of the 90s seem more advanced than NES games from the 80s, even with limited tech. On the very base level for wondering if a game is possible on a hardware, I think: would it be possible with simple stick figures for people and rectangular prisms for objects? If so, the rest is just adding on.
D.Lo said:
Hmm - so the next thing for the PS3 to fall behind is the Dreamcast...

I just looked at JJS's famitsu figures, and it seems that in about five weeks (week 31) the DC has a massive jump in sales, and stays well above where the PS3 is now, jumping as high as 78,108 for one week.
While there is an increase from extremely low to multiple-ten-thousands (Shortage ending? Major game in June 1999?), it's not quite as massive as you say. That 78,108 is one of the places where Famitsu combined two weeks, which I denote by sticking 2WEEK1 in for the previous week.
 

D.Lo

Member
JoshuaJSlone said:
While there is an increase from extremely low to multiple-ten-thousands (Shortage ending? Major game in June 1999?), it's not quite as massive as you say. That 78,108 is one of the places where Famitsu combined two weeks, which I denote by sticking 2WEEK1 in for the previous week.
Possibly stocking up for the September US launch before that?

Anyway, thanks for the info, but it doesn't change much in the (extremely rough) comparison I proposed, as I actually counted the weeks marked 2WEEK1 as zero anyway. Basically, the DC sold about 486200 (adding in the previous week for the unknown week) for it's second six months, putting it's total at 1,106,200 for it's first full year (based on your 0.62 million first 26 weeks above). So the PS3 would have to sell at or below 7930 consoles a week for the next 26 weeks to fall behind the Dreamcast at the one year mark.

As I said, not going to happen, but it's still a scary thought that the comparison can be made at all.
 
Eteric Rice said:
It's the same with AI. You can only make AI so good before it becomes frusturating for the player to beat it. And you don't want to piss off the player to much.

This is a common misconception, and it drives me totally nutters. Making AI that will always beat a human opponent is not at all difficult, especially when you're the one defining the rules of the game that the AI has to play in the first place. That is not what "good" AI is, or what developers are generally trying to achieve.

Good AI is AI that appears to act in a human, or at least an intelligent, fashion. Such AI may not make the game harder, but it makes it more interesting, and increases the sense of immersion. Good AI can also consume arbitrary amounts of processing power without making the game any harder. That being said, the architectures of the XBOX360 and PS3 are absolutely terrible for AI, so in the real world they probably don't even have a huge advantage over the Wii on that kind of code.
 
D.Lo said:
So the PS3 would have to sell at or below 7930 consoles a week for the next 26 weeks to fall behind the Dreamcast at the one year mark.

As I said, not going to happen, but it's still a scary thought that the comparison can be made at all.

Well, if the PS3 continues its downward slide . . .

Anyway, I agree that the PS3 is unlikely to fall that consistently low. But it is undeniable that the PS3 has gotten progressively worse. I think a valid comparison are weekly sales PS3 vs Dreamcast at this point in their lifespans.
 
cartman414 said:
Thanks Square2005.

I do wonder a little: why did FF6 outsell its predecessor by only 100,000? Shorter legs/more front-loaded?
Yeah it was more front-loaded (Square was better prepared than with FFV)

FFV ~ 475,000 (30,685 <famitsu raw) dabued on 12/6/1992 (one day) then sold massive loads over the rest of the Christmas-New Years holidays. And long legs

FFVI ~ 1,210,000 (278,159 <famitsu raw) dabued 4/2/1994 (two days). More front loaded but had long legs too.

The main difference was probably price:

FFV: 9,800 Yen (~$80) at current exchange rates
FFVI: 11,400 Yen (~$95) " " " "
 

Deku

Banned
Jon of the Wired said:
This is a common misconception, and it drives me totally nutters. Making AI that will always beat a human opponent is not at all difficult, especially when you're the one defining the rules of the game that the AI has to play in the first place. That is not what "good" AI is, or what developers are generally trying to achieve.

Good AI is AI that appears to act in a human, or at least an intelligent, fashion. Such AI may not make the game harder, but it makes it more interesting, and increases the sense of immersion. Good AI can also consume arbitrary amounts of processing power without making the game any harder. That being said, the architectures of the XBOX360 and PS3 are absolutely terrible for AI, so in the real world they probably don't even have a huge advantage over the Wii on that kind of code.

I think you confused intelligent AI with difficult AI. More processing power does open the way to more complex AI behavior. But as has been pointed out, for most games, the programming of the AI barely scratches the potential of what the processor can handle. Since most AI are rules based anyways, an increase in computational speed doesn't mean better AI, it just means it can do more calculations.

The problem with the next-gen machines in sofar as AI is concerned is that they are designed as all purpose gaming platforms and the use of AI in the games are not that critical.
 
I don't think SE will price FFXIII over 10000Y, at least not the regular version. I can easily see a normal version for 8000Y, 10000Y limited edition, 15000Y collector edition with some keychain and 70000Y bundle with FFXIII logo on a white PS3.
 
Deku said:
I think you confused intelligent AI with difficult AI. More processing power does open the way to more complex AI behavior. But as has been pointed out, for most games, the programming of the AI barely scratches the potential of what the processor can handle. Since most AI are rules based anyways, an increase in computational speed doesn't mean better AI, it just means it can do more calculations.

I think I was trying to clarify the difference between the two. My main point was simply that the difficulty of a game and the computational requirements of the game's AI are orthogonal, and that therefore there is no point at which using more CPU power for AI will be undesirable because it would make the game too hard.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Kurosaki Ichigo said:
I don't think SE will price FFXIII over 10000Y, at least not the regular version. I can easily see a normal version for 8000Y, 10000Y limited edition, 15000Y collector edition with some keychain and 70000Y bundle with FFXIII logo on a white PS3.

Uh, FF12 was 8990 yen.
 
The PocketStation is a miniature game console created by Sony as a peripheral for the PlayStation. Released exclusively in Japan on December 23, 1998, it features an LCD display, sound, a real-time clock, and infrared communication capability. It also serves as a standard PlayStation memory card.

Sega called it Visual Memory Unit :D
 

yayaba

Member
steverulez said:
What is the (a?) Wonderswan?

People keep mentioning it and I have no idea what it is...

Portable put out by Bandai. It had a few good exclusives at the time from Square Enix like the FF remakes.
 
Square2005 said:
Yeah it was more front-loaded (Square was better prepared than with FFV)

FFV ~ 475,000 (30,685 <famitsu raw) dabued on 12/6/1992 (one day) then sold massive loads over the rest of the Christmas-New Years holidays. And long legs

FFVI ~ 1,210,000 (278,159 <famitsu raw) dabued 4/2/1994 (two days). More front loaded but had long legs too.

The main difference was probably price:

FFV: 9,800 Yen (~$80) at current exchange rates
FFVI: 11,400 Yen (~$95) " " " "

Wow. I take it the cart size was responsible.

I remember reading that FF5 was on top for 8 straight weeks.
 

Vinnk

Member
Kurosaki Ichigo said:
I don't think SE will price FFXIII over 10000Y, at least not the regular version. I can easily see a normal version for 8000Y, 10000Y limited edition, 15000Y collector edition with some keychain and 70000Y bundle with FFXIII logo on a white PS3.

As Stumpokapow pointed out FF12 was 8990 yen and I can't imagine that the new Blu-Ray game is going to cost less (unless Sony is fully subsidizing S-E's loss). Several Epic Playstation 2 games came out above the 8000 price point and unlike the “SNES going into PS1” days when there was a drop in game prices, the PS3 games are priced the same as PS2 or higher. Since this is THE must have PS3 game in Japan that many people bought a PS3 to play, what’s a couple thousand yen more? S-E has to know that this game won’t sell the number of copies they are used to, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see the standard edition of the game cross the 10,000 yen mark. I would be shocked if it was less than 8500.

That said, I am sure the US edition will be $60. Americans are not used to the “RPG price hike” like the Japanese and I don’t think S-E wants test it with their flagship title.
 

Innotech

Banned
Vinnk said:
As Stumpokapow pointed out FF12 was 8990 yen and I can't imagine that the new Blu-Ray game is going to cost less (unless Sony is fully subsidizing S-E's loss). Several Epic Playstation 2 games came out above the 8000 price point and unlike the “SNES going into PS1” days when there was a drop in game prices, the PS3 games are priced the same as PS2 or higher. Since this is THE must have PS3 game in Japan that many people bought a PS3 to play, what’s a couple thousand yen more? S-E has to know that this game won’t sell the number of copies they are used to, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see the standard edition of the game cross the 10,000 yen mark. I would be shocked if it was less than 8500.

That said, I am sure the US edition will be $60. Americans are not used to the “RPG price hike” like the Japanese and I don’t think S-E wants test it with their flagship title.
Those game prices are definitely going to N64 levels. that cant really be good from a consumers view.
 
Super Paper Mario´s legs are amazing.
I´d love to see what people would say, if it became Wii´s next million seller...would it becoem a non-game then?
 

Scum

Junior Member
MasterMFauli said:
Super Paper Mario´s legs are amazing.
I´d love to see what people would say, if it became Wii´s next million seller...would it becoem a non-game then?
Of course! Once you hit a million on Wii and/or DS, you achieve non-game status. ;-)
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
MasterMFauli said:
Super Paper Mario´s legs are amazing.
I´d love to see what people would say, if it became Wii´s next million seller...would it becoem a non-game then?
No chance for it to become a million seller, but it will definitely sell better than the GC game.
 

milanbaros

Member?
MasterMFauli said:
Super Paper Mario´s legs are amazing.
I´d love to see what people would say, if it became Wii´s next million seller...would it becoem a non-game then?

Mario is a non-franchise now anyway. So passing a million would do little for its non game staus.
 
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