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Media Create Sales: Week 10, 2013 (Mar 04 - Mar 10)
- Thread starter Chris1964
- Start date
Hino only said it would be the last game with Hershel Layton, not the last game using the Layton brand or in that universe.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=489014
electroplankton
Banned
They should have hyped this entry with something like "Will Professor Layton die?" or something like that. But probably, the release so close to the crossover hurts more.
Of course it depends on the scale of the project, but if a developer haven't yet touched the 3DS and have years of experience on PS3 I think the development could be speedier on the latter.
I mean if you already have the tools (and maybe some assets) and the knowledge to use them that's a big advantage.
Also I expect that those smallish japanese developers that are using Sony middleware to release games for Sony's Vita and PS4.
Exterminieren
Banned
They're not big budget games, sure, but the 3DS entries are exponentially more expensive, with their 3D environments and fully voiced anime cutscenes.
It's still set before the first Layton game.
They couldn't do that, because this is the climax of the Layton prequel trilogy. That's part of the problem; people don't seem to be interested in the start of the story.
I'd be very surprised if some Professor Triton trilogy with different gameplay weren't in the works. Maybe taking the example out of Miracle Mask's tomb raiding sections.
Vita version of Phantasy Star Online 2 bought or downloaded for free 350k times.
- Total (PC+Vita) ID accounts for the game crossed 2.5 million on 03/10.
- Peak simultaneous players at 93,141 on 03/09.
- Total (PC+Vita) ID accounts for the game crossed 2.5 million on 03/10.
- Peak simultaneous players at 93,141 on 03/09.
To add to this I think that Nintendo guarantee some sort of economic advantage , just not a check, as lowered royalties and parternship in marketing the game in Japan or abroad.
As with the Capcom 5, there was probably a clause where 3DS had to reach a certain userbase before MH4 release to make Capcom obligations still valid.
Impressive!
Since the retail version sold between 64k (Famitsu) and 72k (MC), the free version has been downloaded 278k-286k times.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Do you remember the forums around the time the Vita price was announced?
Cause while I agree with you (it was entirely obvious from the start) you might get some arguments about how it wasn't.
Based on that I'm surprised there hasn't been more posts about how the Vita is going to take over now.
michaelius
Banned
The only chance Vita had to outsell 3DS was if Nintendo kept 250$ price and MH was Vita exclusive.
pieatorium
Member
And the Vita had internal memory with memory cards that weren't grossly overpriced.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
In the face of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7? Hardly.
I mean, is this suddenly crazy town where the original DS wasn't eventually priced near the PSP but was still outselling it?
SquiddyCracker
Banned
Wow, Wii U is doing 9 times greater than the Wii!
Good job Nintendo!
Good job Nintendo!
pieatorium
Member
This is the town where 3ds was selling like early PS3 numbers before the cut and those games.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Here's a hint: it was the games.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Maybe it wouldn't be selling quite as well, but it would still be pulling decent numbers.
Never, for a fleeting second, did it ever look like the Vita (even if it had Monster Hunter exclusively) would be particularly competitive with the 3DS.
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
I agree
100k for a new IP on VITA is good. It is really sad to see people to try and spin it as a Bomba.
Not every game is an EA or Ubisoft triple A that needs to sell millions of copies to even make its investment back.
Sadly it seems to be a trend on Gaf in general to think if a game doesn't do millions of copies it is somehow a failure.
Not every game is an EA or Ubisoft triple A that needs to sell millions of copies to even make its investment back.
Sadly it seems to be a trend on Gaf in general to think if a game doesn't do millions of copies it is somehow a failure.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
I'm glad someone does, because the launch of new Sony hardware causes this forum to go gunny.
grimshawish
Banned
If the 3DS was the same price as the Vita I don't see how the sales against each other would be greatly impacted. Sales would be as by law of pockets some peoples would just be too empty to buy the device and games, but it'd still sell lots and lots.
Vita? With MH it'd be doing better but not atm, MH4 is still months away and a Vita version would create even more complexities. I don't feel MH3G would have sold as well on Vita either, higher res is one thing but end of the day 3G was selling as the 3D version of that MH game.
Personally I feel Vita struggles more from the lack of first party content than anything else; MH4 would bring a boost to the system and probably more third party content. However I doubt it'd be the same as with the PSP. MH and Vita would likely sell less than the previous generation.
How could Vita have been a big success? If Sony had started creating franchises on the PSP and brought them over with Vita. This would have promised a userbase who'd follow the console. End of the day MH alone didn't drive 20M sales, it was instead its creation of a userbase leading to a lot of important third party games over the years.
Sony instead are playing catch up for a lack of investment.
Price cut has made the value of Vita+Game much better and I do feel the best thing for Sony and the handheld market would have been releasing a new portable at £120 that was less of a jump in visuals but took the low end market from under Nintendo's feet.
Nintendo took a huge risk and left themselves open to attack by making their most costly handheld yet. Sony let them away with it, seeming to ignore the ability to make a cheaper, simple, single screen device.
Vita VS PS3 isn't tooo terrible.
Vita? With MH it'd be doing better but not atm, MH4 is still months away and a Vita version would create even more complexities. I don't feel MH3G would have sold as well on Vita either, higher res is one thing but end of the day 3G was selling as the 3D version of that MH game.
Personally I feel Vita struggles more from the lack of first party content than anything else; MH4 would bring a boost to the system and probably more third party content. However I doubt it'd be the same as with the PSP. MH and Vita would likely sell less than the previous generation.
How could Vita have been a big success? If Sony had started creating franchises on the PSP and brought them over with Vita. This would have promised a userbase who'd follow the console. End of the day MH alone didn't drive 20M sales, it was instead its creation of a userbase leading to a lot of important third party games over the years.
Sony instead are playing catch up for a lack of investment.
Price cut has made the value of Vita+Game much better and I do feel the best thing for Sony and the handheld market would have been releasing a new portable at £120 that was less of a jump in visuals but took the low end market from under Nintendo's feet.
Nintendo took a huge risk and left themselves open to attack by making their most costly handheld yet. Sony let them away with it, seeming to ignore the ability to make a cheaper, simple, single screen device.
Vita VS PS3 isn't tooo terrible.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
Thing is, Sony first party has never had much selling power outside of Gran Turismo.
They've tried but they just don't have the ability to develop new Japanese centric franchises with any sort of selling power.
shinra-bansho
Member
Hot Shots Golf - it was actually more successful on the PSP than Gran Turismo. It's no mega-seller though either way.
grimshawish
Banned
They haven't tried very hard though have they? Fact is they don't have the vision, experience or skills to build franchises like Animal Crossing or a game even like that. Thats fine when there is a large market for the supposedly 'hardcore' games you focus on.
In the last 8 years Sony just have not been expanding into new genres or games; they've sat with the vast majority of their output being for western tastes and at a quality that is very much sub-par the quality third parties offer in similar franchises.
GT does well for one big reason; its in a genre that is under-served, and is done to an incredibly precise quality. Its similar Animal Crossing in that it also steps over the boundaries of who plays video games, it engages with an audience after that perfect racing simulator, not just people 'already playing games' (as their other output does). Bringing a new audience to the platform who may then buy other games.
Sony's first party content is hugely lacking, and the PS4 reveal stuff was rather depressing in how backwards looking their software was compared to the hardware and social side.
For me the Vita is a flawed piece of hardware backed by little strategy; but this is not really why its struggling. Its struggling because Sony are not good at making games.
I wouldn't say that they've "tried". SCEJ has been horribly mismanaged for years and their typical strategy on trying to find a compelling title is hiring a lead developer who just left somewhere else and sticking a random collection of SCEJ folk behind him to push out a game.
You could argue that the reason why Soul Sacrifice is actually one of their best recent attempts is because Marvelous AQL is big enough to not need as much technical support from the SCEJ randoms.
Same goes with Demon's Souls where From had a clear vision that SCEJ simply helped with.
Outside of Polyphony, Team Ico, and Team Siren they don't even have coherent teams, let alone proven team leads and hierarchy.
Yoshida claimed when he took over that big changes were in order for SCEJ, since then he put Allan Becker (founder of Sony Santa Monica) in charge in February 2012 (so just a touch over one year ago) and the two of them have greenlit Rain, Puppeteer, and Mark Cerny's PS4 title Knack, at a minimum.
It'll be interesting to see where they go over the next few years. If Becker brings some of that SSM magic to SCEJ they could quickly catch up to the high quality SCEA and SCEE have shown this past generaiton, and likely with a more Japan-centric content focus.
shinra-bansho
Member
They make plenty of good games, quite a few to reasonable success.
Sony's software strategy has never seemed to me intended dominate their platform. It's been to help cultivate a conducive environment and receptive audience for what really moves their systems - third parties.
Duckroll also mentioned it had gotten Facebook campaigns and as we saw with ACNL social sites can do wonders for a game. Iwata specifically brought up social sites having been an important factor in bringing the adult female audience to the 3DS because they could access those sites with their smartphones.
I guess if SS fans want the game to have legs they should take lots of screen shots and put them on twitter or FB. Traditional good word of mouth should help also, obviously.
Leaving out GE2, I'm not really sure about Sony even wanting those other titles to be Vita exclusives. Regarding their cross buy strategy Sony repeatedly said they wanted the Vita to be a companion system to the PS3, i.e. sell it to existing PS3 owners. When Kawano commented on Vita's post price drop sales having been 4 times a much as in the two week before the price drop he also named One Piece Pirate Musou 2 as a cross save title to follow in the wake of the price drop.
grimshawish
Banned
Then honestly they should be ditching a lot of the franchises that they seem far too intent on just letting limp along. Put their attention to places third parties are not active in; where they do this I still feel outside of GT there is a lack of focus on the audience they are engaging with. Knack for example, why is this the game to show off cross play? Why is this the game to be pushed at launch? Why is it a game for a family audience (next gen needs to push for this so it is a good thing) that seems to be just a simple action game? Something already done over the years and has been proven to usually be ultimately a bit mediocre as the balance of 'action', 'family' and 'being simple enough for a mass audience' just makes the battle elements a bit uninteresting.
Now Knack looks like an interesting game so am not being over critical of it as a game but I am critical of Sony's software strategy and allocating resources behind that sort of title and also still having something like Killzone which is obviously not important since the next gen systems will probably have a good few FPS games to boot (you know like the best selling PS3/360 franchise for example?).
If first party content is not important, why have it?
They just need to make it important, bring in audiences who are not being attended to by third party developers and focus on them.
Mario does well because it is both complex and simple; you can play it in many ways to remove or add challenges. Its aimed very much at everyone in a fantastic way, but without reducing the games mechanics in doing so.
Animal Crossing is something everyone can walk into (this is an important aspect of Nintendo software); but its main role for Nintendo is to bring in an audience who maybe don't play a lot of games. Once again it allows for more general or deeper playstyles.
Killzone...it uhm...shoots things. A simplistic way to look at it I suppose but honestly thats about it. Resistance - the same. I don't understand the target audience for these two franchises.
I can see who Gravity Rush is for but it just needed more time.
I can see who SS is for, even if its a very competitive genre, its not on the Vita so in some ways Sony is bridging that gap.
The 'Sony doesn't focus on first party' is fine; but I don't think that lets them off the hook for the lack of strategy and general aimlessness in their first party output. This is whats hurt the Vita the most. In fact am pretty sure it helped them lose MH as Capcom realised it could take the majority of its audience to the 3DS as a successor console AND sell to a Nintendo orientated audience AND kill off the competing system.
I just think we need more GT types. Bring people to the platform.
Why on earth would third parties turn up, in this world of thousands of different computer devices; when yours offers no real benefit to them or cost of not developing on it? (e.g. you control a certain part of the market).
this is an interesting analysis.
Atleast if they know where the problem is, they will finally reach the solution. because i thought they dont even know wot is wrong.. Hope to see some Japanese centric block buster games from them both for handheld and console.
shinra-bansho
Member
You seemed to have somewhat missed what I wrote.
The overarching aim doesn't appear to be to bring in audiences that aren't being attended to by third parties. It's to ensure there is an audience, and strengthen that audience, for third parties.
It's about positioning and branding the platform as a home to a diverse array of core games targeted at males, aged 15-35.
It's the same approach Microsoft have adopted from them. Halo complements other first-person shooters on the XBOX platform as much as it competes with them.
It's the approach that Nintendo have seemed reluctant to do; although with publishing Bayonetta and funding more titles like X, perhaps they're finally doing so.
Why would third parties turn up? Well, they have for three generations of home console. And there's relative certainty they'll be on the PS4 and XBOX3; while a cloud hangs over the Wii U.
Why has such an approach failed on handhelds? I would say it's because, fundamentally, Western third parties aren't interested in handhelds; and similarly, SCEWWS does not focus on handhelds.
AranhaHunter
Banned
Until I actually see those games announced, and more importantly, running, on PS4, I'm not gonna hold my breath. Capcom has been in bed with Nintendo lately, MH3 moved from PS3 to Wii and PS3 is the only console from this generation to not get a MH game that wasn't a port. The new IP they showed actually looked like smoke and mirrors and far from being completed, same with SE and FF, they announced Versus in what, 2006? So let's not hold our breath on that one. I'll wait to see where MGS PP or MGS GW goes before proclaiming it's already there. WiiU had much of the same/similar announcements before being released and we know what happened there.
I have yet to be convinced that MH can't thrive being a multiplatform release. COD, for example, is a game that thrives being played online, with friends. Few people want to play COD by themselves or with randoms, I would guess. XBL is the leader in that aspect this generation and many people keep playing on XBox because their friends are on XB. Wouldn't it stand to reason that Activision would release COD exclusively on XBox then? Being a multiplatform release will not hurt MH IMHO and, if anything, Capcom could have 2 branches of the franchise, "Monster Hunter" on Nintendo and "Monster Hunter Portable" on Playstation.
IMO they would also need to buy a couple of devs/pubs to get close to SCEA/SCEE standards. One only needs to take a look at SCEA (ND, SP, SSM, Bend, etc) and SCEE (GG, MM, Cambridge, Evo, etc) and see why their output is so much greater, SCEJ is PD and SCEI, Team ICO and Team Siren are all within SCEI. SCEE is probably close to purchasing QD, especially if Beyond is successful. SCEJ would need to purchase at least 2-3 studios as well as expand internaly in order to compete.
Also, SCEJ kinda did a couple of niche, handheld specific IPs during the PSP days, namely Locorocco and Patapon (developed externally). It's far from ideal, but maybe they should be releasing a new Loco and a new Patapon in the coming months, they won't sell systems, but will help with the baseline. Patapon has grown in numbers with each new iteration while locorocco fell sharply, maybe have junior people work on those franchises to release soonish and experienced staff work on bigger budget new franchises.
Goes to show you that ratings on PSN, in terms of sales, are only good for one thing, establishing the minimum amount sold. There's about 5-6K ratings there, at best, 2% of the people rated their purchase. AC had something like 3k WW and 90-120k download, so about 3% of people rated their purchase.
lunchwithyuzo
Banned
I think this case can be made for SCEWWS, but less so for SCEI/Japan Studio. If you look at their own more notable efforts, games like Gran Turismo, Minna no Golf, Parappa, Xi, Doko Demo Issyo, PoPoLoCrois, Boku no Natsuyasumi, Ape Escape, Siren, LocoRoco, etc, and I think you see a library that definitely pushes outside the core male teen/twentysomething demographic. Japan side I definitely think Sony's strived more for broader "everyone" mainstream style software from the start, and arguably long before Nintendo made that pivot in the mid 2000s.
Lol
You seem to be confusing SCEI with SCE Japan Studio.
SCEI is the head organisation above SCEJ/SCEE/SCEWWS and everything else.
Knew this would do well on Vita, good stuff.
They would be stupid to not make SS a Vita exclusive, at least for a while.
Pachterballs
Banned
UP IN THIS BITCH isn't an insult at a person. lol.
lunchwithyuzo
Banned
There is no SCEJ, it's actually just SCEI based in Japan.
Pachterballs
Banned
by the time PS4 hits, SS would have been a vita exclusive for a long while.
http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/130220_e.html
"Tokyo, February 20, 2013 Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (SCEJ), a division of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. responsible for business operation in Japan..."
It exists. Now, if they are the same people as SCEI, I don't know.
Less than a year is a long while now?
Sucks to be a Vita, ppl complain when it doesn't get good new games and still complain when it does.
Would have cost slightly more i think.
pharmboy044
Member
That's the role of an underdog.
Good thing they didn't think like you