Level 5's business model revolves around launching a product on a 12 month schedule every year until it's no longer viable and then hoping they find the next viable product before the last one dies.
Media Create Sales: Week 27, 2014 (Jun 30 - Jul 06)
- Thread starter Chris1964
- Start date
Level 5's business model revolves around launching a product on a 12 month schedule every year until it's no longer viable and then hoping they find the next viable product before the last one dies.
John Dunbar
correct about everything
is there a wiiu/ps4 launch aligned chart floating around?
AcademicSaucer
Member
I have now realised that Island Days on the 3ds isnt on the chart, so bomba ?
Sounds like the Activision strategy. They're both prioritizing short term success over long term.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
The difference is that Activision actually manages to keep its IP's going for a long time.
While I definitely agree there's a similarity, I feel Activision actually does a much better job maintaining their brands as a whole.
Like switching CoD to three year cycles and going with the whole parallel team thing in the first place for both CoD and Skylanders is a lot more effort than Level 5 puts in to maintaining their brands.
A lot of the Activision brands that ended up doomed were also significantly less viable for long term survival. Like how long could Guitar Hero plausibly last, when almost every popular rhythm series has enjoyed a short to moderate window of success and then faded away?
Skateboarding (Tony Hawk) and licensed games (Warner's are not licensed, they own the IPs) are also businesses that totally imploded at retail on consoles from all angles.
Now, Activision's behaviors certainly didn't help with the aforementioned declines, but in recent years I feel they've taken maintaining their brands much more seriously than Level 5 still.
vinnygambini
Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
Strongly debatable.
Are people still asking this?
Which IPs do you feel they've killed off notably quickly, especially relative to Level 5's "after three entries at most it's pretty much fucked" run rate.
Activision ran Guitar Hero into the ground in 3 years, Tony Hawk 6. COD has been going a while I'll give you that. Skylanders could be irrelevant soon with due to so many competitors flooding the market.
What are the other competitors other than Disney Infinity?
Nintendo so far. I think we'll see a lot more in the future.
vinnygambini
Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
- Crash Bandicoot
- Guitar Hero
- Tony Hawk
- Spyro (debatable - Skylanders)
Though management certainly have a better grasp, comparatively to their earlier years, in maintaining the status quo as their properties such as Call of Duty and Skylanders have blossomed.
Dat Amiibo
Also that pokemon rumble garbage.
The Abominable Snowman
Member
It would have to average 11k-13k to catch up by week 40-43. What's going to bump it in the meantime?
djplaeskool
Member
Wizardry games, of course.
Dat Amiibo
I believe they have explicitly said that they will not use amiibos in a way that is similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity so that they won't directly compete. We know they will work throughout various games.
I do not view amiibos as a competitor to Skylanders or Disney Infinity nor do I think that any more people will join in the console market. Maybe for mobile.
Yeah they definitely did a notably worse job in the past. They seem to have had a lot of trouble maintaining series that lost their original developers especially (Crash, Guitar Hero, and the first incarnation of Spyro). Tony Hawk they managed to tank despite owning Neversoft.
Well they bought Grasshopper due to the CEO of Gung-Ho having a personal friendship with Suda, so I'm guessing a similar situation.
To be fair I think that was just Nintendo testing the tech and seeing how responsive people were to it. Seeing how people reacted to the size, price, packaging, manufacturing and retail implementation (since that was Gamestop exclusive in the US and GAME exclusive in the UK, no?) I don't think Nintendo had big ideas for that on a grand scale since its execution was strange. I think Amiibo will be a huge thing for Nintendo.
I think you underestimate the might required to get places like walmart to devote have a row of shelfspace to one game. It is a huge barrier to entry. Maybe Nintendo still has enough pull to get some of that, but I doubt anyone there are many others.
But Layton got 5 entries and two spinoffs.
test_account
XP-39C²
Fair enough. I dont think it will be over 1 million the first week, but we will know the answer in one week (or maybe even in 5-6 days) =)
Nintendo may not see skylanders as competition, but they are definitely competing. You can't release a skylanders like problem with out parent deciding between the two.
They are figurines for videogames, you bet they'll be in direct competition for store space, eyeballs, and allowances.
Although that's very true I think with things like this it only takes one straw to break the camel's back. You don't really need to try hard with things like this in order to make people grow tired and move on.
mickagau33
Member
Isn't Persona Q Atlus biggest success on 3DS ?
I'm not sure, that kind of product need a pretty hefty investment, and a lot of influence on retail (since it takes a ton of shelf space). There aren't many companies that would be able and or willing to try it.
Yeah but look at the sales.
Layton series:
1: 1,002,561
2: 945,630
3: 872,170
4: 676,069
5: 394,003
AA: 328,861
6: 249,366
If we add in the West it looks even worse in terms of polarization toward the beginning.
Nintendo doesn't like to view themselves as competitors with anyone. They're making figurines to use in video games, as a result it's going to be competing with Skylanders and Disney.
not sure in what realm 20% higher and "almost exactly" are the same thing.
6 and one spin off.
To be fair, it's a lot more difficult to keep the attentions of kids over an extended period of time than to keep the attention of teenagers and adults. When you're aiming at kids, there's always the next cool thing on the horizon (while the kids that liked your "old" stuff are growing out of it), so if you don't think that you've got a really great "evergreen" brand on your hand, it's a better bet to milk the popularity for as long as you are popular.
Of course, it's entirely possible that Level-5 has got their hands on a brand that has the potential to stay, but I doubt they expected this kind of success. They wanted a successor to Inazuma and got something that dwarfs it by comparison. It doesn't look like launching YK2 so soon is a mistake either. To the contrary, it feels like it's firing up the hype even more.
It'll be interesting to see how Level-5 handles the franchise from now on, though, considering that YK2's release date was probably already set (internally) before the anime made YK a phenomenon in Japan. Will they milk it further or are they going to handle it more carefully than their past franchises?
Either way, Level-5 will come up with the next franchise eventually. Some of their new IPs might not set the world on fire, but they've proven that it's always just a matter of time before they find something new.
1st Course
Member
You're right, seems very unlikely.
Percentage increases are meaningless when the numbers are this poor to being with. A 2k increase YOY is pretty weak considering the massive exclusives WiiU has gotten since. 3D World, Donkey Kong, and Mario Kart 8 weren't even out back then.
I don't know why but as soon as the 3DS game dropped shit just died. I remember everyone being ho-hum in regards to its announcement prior the the 3DS launch. A lot of excitement was brewing for the AA crossover but I think that took way too long to materialise. I think jumping to the 3DS funnily enough in this scenario was the wrong move. They were betting on the casual audience picking up the 3DS but by the time they started getting on board it was too late. What do you think?
michaelius
Banned
That's probably more a case of half of Japanise companies impoding (Konami, Capcom, Sega etc.)
Next week it's going to be 60% lower. They really should pull the plug, huh.
Percentages are fun!
Taiko is a slow burner. It's expected to be weak in first few weeks, but is a consistent seller throughout its lifespan.
Famitsu put SMTIV at over 250k by the end of 2013, so not yet. PQ should pass it at some point soon though.
Isleofsancroy
Banned
So i would say maybe Janurary 2015 the Ps4 may pass the 360 sales? I doubt it would take longer than the Wii u but I could be wrong.
I do think that conceptually a lot of the broadbase audience for the series is now on iOS/Android instead.
It's a harder setup to monetize certainly, but we're talking about a series that sold 15 million copies worldwide (if you add up the Japanese sales, they're only a small part of that).
This was done mostly with the first few entries on DS, the casual audience of which largely did not transfer to the 3DS.
It's also harder to continually sell iterative products to the casual audience. Making one f2p Professor Layton app on iOS/Android and then doing constant updates to it would have made a lot of sense. There's probably actually still a market for it given it's been a while since most of their audience even realized that a new Professor Layton game came out.
I don't think 1m consoles sold over the next 6 months is a very reasonable expectation, even including the holiday season. It has no compelling software announced for the next 6 months in Japan and is tracking close to the Wii U atm which only sold ~900k the entirety of last year.
And_Gignac
Member
Hopefully Level 5 can see the mini-Pokemon level of success Youkai Watch can bring them and deal with the IP intelligently.
Probably not.
There's no way it won't take longer than the Wii U, frankly. If the PS4 ever does rally, it'll be far later than January 2015.