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Media Create Sales: Week 35, 2012 (Aug 27 - Sep 02)

No offense dc but i take your monster hunter predictions with a huge grain of salt. Calling the splitting the userbase argument bunk ignores all the ecidence that capcom has not out out mainline handheld games to xompete on different platforms. And no the ios games are not big competition. Capcom would be splitting their potential user base into factions that couldnt play together and competing with themselces. There is very little chance of a vita or psp mh as long as mh4 is on 3ds
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
I think with EDF3P it's likely that it could be a game that hungry Vita owners who want to play together will buy more so than a Vita seller. I don't think it'll top EDF2P simply because the userbase is so different between the two, but I think 50-75K LTD is possible.

50Κ LTD is something that can happen but listing games that will sell below 6 digits and expecting them to keep momentum for Vita is not happening.

EDF2P had the advantage of double pack and was coming from EDF2 which had sold 250k. EDF3P is coming from an Xbox360 release and the latest (new) entry of Earth Defense Force sold below 100k again. I don't see what's so special with this title that suddenly everyone will run to buy.
 

Takao

Banned
There is a double pack for EDF3P. I might actually split the costs with someone and get one of those if D3 US shows no interest in releasing it in the west.
 
15./09. [3DS] Kobitodzukan: Kobito Kansatsu Set <ETC> (Nippon Columbia) {2012.07.26} (¥5.040) - 10.576 / 82.188 (+11%)

Sleeper hit?
 

Kyoufu

Member
50&#922; LTD is something that can happen but listing games that will sell below 6 digits and expecting them to keep momentum for Vita is not happening.

EDF2P had the advantage of double pack and was coming from EDF2 which had sold 250k. EDF3P is coming from an Xbox360 release and the latest (new) entry of Earth Defense Force sold below 100k again. I don't see what's so special with this title that suddenly everyone will run to buy.

1. It has double pack

2. PALEWING

3. 4 player game
 
At this point I have given up trying to make understand that Vocaloids voices can be really awesome, I don't even try. You get it or you don't, I guess it´s a matter of taste,

So many great songs from many different Vocaloids, I don't get tired of them.

Edit: Ok, what the hell :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKUDHPw15m0&feature=related (Prima)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZzD8q6OIAo (IA)

I made no judgment as to the quality. Shit, it's a better trend than its opposite: Auto-Tune.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
I'm actually half expecting a PSP "3rd G" for the holiday period at this rate given the PSP is the machine everyone predicted to be dead by Q2 this year yet is seemingly impossible to kill and it would be an -easy- 4+ million seller.

You are entering crazy mode with Monster Hunter again. What some of us expected for PSP since last year has totally happened. The system has taken a big dive at hardware and software sales this year, it can't go straight to zero within 12 months. I remember you were the one arguing it would happen so fast.

1. It has double pack

2. PALEWING

3. 4 player game

OK, it has all of these. Take the prediction: <=70K LTD. (and I think I'm generous with 70K)
 

jman2050

Member
No offense dc but i take your monster hunter predictions with a huge grain of salt. Calling the splitting the userbase argument bunk ignores all the ecidence that capcom has not out out mainline handheld games to xompete on different platforms. And no the ios games are not big competition. Capcom would be splitting their potential user base into factions that couldnt play together and competing with themselces. There is very little chance of a vita or psp mh as long as mh4 is on 3ds

You could have just said "800k" and saved yourself a couple of sentences.
 
Did Miku over-/under-perform or perform pretty much as expected? Likewise Vita-bump.

Regarding all this MonHun discussion and single platform vs splitting the userbase - doesn't every PCPS360 game essentially counter this notion that a single platform is better? Although I think it's a bit of a catch-22 - I don't think Capcom will bother without a solid installed base, while a solid installed base won't really come without more software.
 

FoneBone

Member
You could have just said "800k" and saved yourself a couple of sentences.

Yeah, dcharlie is pretty much insane when it comes to talking MH. It doesn't matter how exhaustively the split-userbase issue has been argued multiple times - with him it's always "LOL NO IT WON'T." (And maybe insert some derision of Nintendo fanboys for it.)


Regarding all this MonHun discussion and single platform vs splitting the userbase - doesn't every PCPS360 game essentially counter this notion that a single platform is better?
No. Local multiplayer and online multiplayer are very different beasts in that regard.

Recyclin' some old posts:
Er, right. That's the point. In a meaningful sense, the difference is between a problem people can fix and a problem people can't. If your friends own 3DSes, and MH4 comes out for it, you're excluded. The solution is to buy a 3DS -- which you can (theoretically) feel good about, because now you own the platform, you can play its exclusive games, etc. You had to spend more money but none of it was wasted.

Contrariwise, if you all own a Vita and a 3DS, and your friends all buy MH4 for 3DS and you buy it for Vita, you're screwed. There's no solution here (if you opened your game already) except to throw it in the trash and go buy the same game again. (Or, probably, you just get cranky and tell your friends to suck it and get left out, or maybe everyone stops playing because it's not as much fun without everyone participating -- all bad ends for Capcom.)

There's really not a lot of wiggle room here. It's straight-up nonfunctional for a franchise like this to go multiplatform on an individual title unless there's cross-platform play.


... Again, online play is, moreso than anything else, a tool for playing with strangers or acquaintances (and maybe making them into friends) as a way of engaging in multiplayer when your friends aren't available. By definition, people can still always find others to play with in a popular game even if 100% of their friends bought on a different system; that's simply not true for a game like MH.

That's friction, and friction is deadly to business. Some people play with different groups of people regularly. Some people get started late compared to everyone else. Some people play in large mixed groups -- remember, MH is a game whose biggest market is teenagers, and it took off partially because people can play with everyone at their school, not just necessarily their 2-3 best buddies.

Each time you introduce platform choice here, you concretely lose money. Every person with two groups of friends that break for different platforms, you're looking at someone who might just not bother. When you can't get a monoculture going in large pools like a school, you're no longer dragging in new customers via peer pressure and trend-following because there's no longer a "buy this one thing and you'll be able to play with everyone" option. The factors that drive legs disappear and you split your upfront sales and then drop off the charts, or everyone just picks the preferred entry and standardizes on that and the investment in the second platform is completely wasted.

I mean, I don't know what to tell you here. Your entire theory about how this works is wrong. You want to use online FPSes in the US as an analogy here but the big differences between the two situations make it a really inaccurate analogy. Literally 100% of the appeal of this game is built around the idea that you buy it and play local multiplayer with people, so anything that makes that easier and more fun (rather than complicated and more work) will make the game sell better. ..

From a purely economic standpoint, the purpose of online play isn't to let you play with friends, it's to let you play with strangers. The goal is to make it possible for your customers to play with others even if their friends don't game, or own the game in question, or have time to play with you on the same schedule. It reduces friction by making MP always available: if you buy a game at launch, you're basically guaranteed to find people to play it with at any hour of the day, without doing any coordination or negotiation to get your friends on board. People can do the work to play with their friends if they want, but the feature has still served its purpose even for people who never once play with someone they know personally.

MH is tapping people into a much smaller pool of potential partners, which means they have to optimize for maximizing people's opportunities to play -- which in turn means making sure everyone can play the game with everyone else.
 
Sony created several MH related PSP releases including an extended 9hour PSP for the release of MH3rdP - to say Sony "sat on their backsides" is more than a touch unfair.

They needed to create strong IPs. Soul Sacrifice should have come out around the time Namco created their own MH clone. SCEA and SCEE learned that you can't fully depend on 3rd parties, SCEJ hasn't learned that yet.

Now onto the "get on one platform" - Capcom -doesn't give a shit-. It's as simple as that. Capcom -absolutely will- support the Vita if/when it gets to an X million units threshold, there is no benefit to them not doing that when they get there (the "splitting the userbase" argument is a load of old wank - again, they don't give a flying toss. The more people they can sell to the better, plus there's the Tri/3rd etc differentiators to highlight them as being "different" regardless of how slight that maybe over time) .

I'm actually half expecting a PSP "3rd G" for the holiday period at this rate given the PSP is the machine everyone predicted to be dead by Q2 this year yet is seemingly impossible to kill and it would be an -easy- 4+ million seller.

There's no value to Capcom tying themselves to a platform outside of short term locked exclusivities - they are the power player here, not Nintendo. They know their IP is strong and they can do what they want with it. 3DS is absolutely the right choice for the moment, but i can honestly see another PSP game, a vita game, a (full) iOS game, a Wii U game, a PS3/X360/PC/PS4/X720 game...

Kinda hard to say Capcom gives a shit about vita when the LP spin off is not coming to it, no RE, no DMC, no MH, no Capcom games other than the E3 2k12 announced SFvT in sight.


I'd imagine Sony already threw a hat to keep FFXHD off 360.

I honestly doubt that. There are much better games to money hat than an HD port of FFX.
 
Did Miku over-/under-perform or perform pretty much as expected? Likewise Vita-bump.

Regarding all this MonHun discussion and single platform vs splitting the userbase - doesn't every PCPS360 game essentially counter this notion that a single platform is better? Although I think it's a bit of a catch-22 - I don't think Capcom will bother without a solid installed base, while a solid installed base won't really come without more software.
The MH series is heavily reliant on local multiplayer. Why bother developing for a system with considerably higher dev costs but a considerably lower install base when there's another system with lower production costs and higher install base?
 
How many PCPS360 games depend on local multiplayer?
I can't really think of any right now - although I didn't quite take that into consideration, and it's a good point. I haven't particularly played MonHun - so I'm assuming that's a vital part of the game - and part of why it took off in Japan while failing generally to catch on in the west.

But many of them they still create closed networks with regard to online multiplayer - which would presumably be an argument against multiplatform development. Although, not entirely analogous.

EDIT: Hmm, reading charlequin's argument, it makes sense - not so much that the intent is to play with strangers, but that there's a pool of strangers to play with in the event your friends are unavailable. I would imagine given the option, people would play with friends.
 

donny2112

Member
My only worry is that no other software was bumped up. This (seems) to suggest that Vita was only for Miku and nothing else. Hopefully wrong.

The more I think about it, the more that seems likely. #30 on Famitsu is < 4K, so that means that 35K people bought a Vita (increase over last week) for Miku and couldn't be bothered to pick up 4K of the same game from that point. And with P4G having been released recently, they at least had that as an option. Seems like a "Buy for 1 game and bail" strategy to me.

For reference, 360 had no other games in the Top 30 when Blue Dragon was released, either, but that was also holiday season, so #30 was > 15K still.
 
It'll drop off a cliff. Alongside Miku's release was a nice bundle.

When is the next Vita game with a profile like Miku going to release in Japan? Honestly, I didn't even see this game being as big as it was, but I'm not familiar with the franchise either so I'm out of the loop
 

Takao

Banned
When is the next Vita game with a profile like Miku going to release in Japan? Honestly, I didn't even see this game being as big as it was, but I'm not familiar with the franchise either so I'm out of the loop

Another 150k+ game? Uhh, Soul Sacrifice (late 2012/early 2013) if SCEJ is really lucky? Vita's year end lineup doesn't have any real big sellers, just just a bunch of 50-100k games. Maybe there will be reveals at TGS, maybe there won't.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
No offense dc but i take your monster hunter predictions with a huge grain of salt. Calling the splitting the userbase argument bunk ignores all the ecidence that capcom has not out out mainline handheld games to xompete on different platforms. And no the ios games are not big competition. Capcom would be splitting their potential user base into factions that couldnt play together and competing with themselces. There is very little chance of a vita or psp mh as long as mh4 is on 3ds

we have , right now, active monster huntering on : PS3, PSP, Wii, 3ds, PC, x360 and possibly wii U (?) if the rumours are true.

As per before : look at it more like this (POTENTIALLY! I am not saying this is going to happen) - the Wii game line is now on Nintendo handhelds under the Tri line, 3rd is on PSP, Frontier else where etc.

Unless they got the craziest exclusive deal of all time for -full platform allegence- then i don't believe for a second that Capcom would exclude other platforms. It's simply not in their interest in terms of sales, regardless of "splitting the userbase" - that'll be dictated by circumstance : everyone in your school class plays 3DS MH? You ask for a 3DS. It's that simple. Monster Hunter crazies will buy it across all platforms. (though i am absolutely convinced the 3DS is the right choice due to a number of factors, the main being the mean age of the players and the cost of buy in which is where the 3DS has a huge advantage over Vita (not PSP))

Yeah, dcharlie is pretty much insane when it comes to talking MH. It doesn't matter how exhaustively the split-userbase issue has been argued multiple times - with him it's always "LOL NO IT WON'T." (And maybe insert some derision of Nintendo fanboys for it.)

fuck me - you show me a single anti Nintendo fanboy statement regarding the 3ds. I'm pretty much the biggest (sane, not dribbling fucking insane) 3DS fan on the board and my investment in the platform speaks for itself.

The Split Userbase is nonsense simply because it's going to happen at some point -regardless- if Capcom truly gave a shit about keeping the fanbase together then they'd have stuck 3rd G on the PSP and no 3DS version would exist until the existing close to 5 million PSP players had been served. Then move and make it clear where the next gen is (money trucks aside). I dunno - this goes back to "who has the cards" here - and it's Capcom. I'm pretty sure they can dictate terms to any of the Japanese big houses for this IP and they don't -need- to give anyone long term exclusivity. It's their IP and it's the big console makers slobbering over it that gives them leverage. Unless the Nintendo deal was absolute insanity, i'm pretty sure we'll see Monster Hunter on multiple platforms -eventually-. Whether that's the Vita or not isn't exactly important.

Contrariwise, if you all own a Vita and a 3DS, and your friends all buy MH4 for 3DS and you buy it for Vita, you're screwed.

will be dictated by local user base. If everyone owns a 3DS then everyone plays it on 3DS, everyone owns a PSV then you get it on PSV. The other facet of this is that i'd expect differences between the two strands so that hardcore MH'ers get different content.
You are entering crazy mode with Monster Hunter again. What some of us expected for PSP since last year has totally happened. The system has taken a big dive at hardware and software sales this year, it can't go straight to zero within 12 months. I remember you were the one arguing it would happen so fast.

yes, i responded to your mocking prediction last year to Jonnyram that the PSP would be dead by March (?) and here we are... Sept and it's very much going absolutely nowhere in Japan. I can't seeing it last into 2013 but the early death noises were waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay wrong.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Great news for Vita. If it can avoid a cliff drop off over the next few weeks maybe it can garner some momentum

Who's kidding who here, it will. Still nice to see there is possibility but it needs to have them games consistently and a price drop. Let's enjoy it for what it is. Even if there is mocking like usual round these parts.
 

schuelma

Wastes hours checking old Famitsu software data, but that's why we love him.
we have , right now, active monster huntering on : PS3, PSP, Wii, 3ds, PC, x360 and possibly wii U (?) if the rumours are true.
.

Putting all of those platforms together and call them all "active monster huntering" is kind of misleading, don't you think?
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
Putting all of those platforms together and call them all "active monster huntering" is kind of misleading, don't you think?

in japan - PSP, X360 (just!), PC and 3DS are most definitely still seeing Monster Hunter action.

US is a completely different scenario where the franchise might not be totally dead but in a very strong coma.

which is where the meat of the Nintendo/Capcom deal is, but hey....
 

Takao

Banned
Will Kagura reach the first game's numbers? Games like this are front-loaded, no?

The first one had some nice legs, but that's not the breast of comparisons since the 3DS was quite young and Kagura was a new IP at the time.

I'm terrible at puns.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Putting all of those platforms together and call them all "active monster huntering" is kind of misleading, don't you think?

Well, the 3DS certainly has more Monster Hunter, and Frontier (360/PC) just got updated with Capcom noting they're interested in expanding it to more platforms.

We could consider both the PS3 and PSP to be non-active in the sense that they have no announced upcoming games.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
We could consider both the PS3 and PSP to be non-active in the sense that they have no announced upcoming games.

PS3 has fallen off a cliff, but people are actively still playing MH3rdP but... yeah... without anything on the horizon i have PSP marked as "coma" - again though, my point is that if MH3rdP G was to be announced for PSP only then i wouldn't die of shock. I doubt many people would.
 

HardRojo

Member
Well if it takes silly games that cater only to otakus to save the Vita so be it, it is a nice hardware and I don't want to see it going down anytime soon.
 

Takao

Banned
Well if it takes silly games that cater only to otakus to save the Vita so be it, it is a nice hardware and I don't want to see it going down anytime soon.

I think AKB48 will do well on Vita even with the PSP SKU. That seems like the kind of audience who wants the best experience possible.
 

Wonko_C

Member
Did Miku over-/under-perform or perform pretty much as expected? Likewise Vita-bump.

Regarding all this MonHun discussion and single platform vs splitting the userbase - doesn't every PCPS360 game essentially counter this notion that a single platform is better? Although I think it's a bit of a catch-22 - I don't think Capcom will bother without a solid installed base, while a solid installed base won't really come without more software.

SEGA expects to sell 250,000 units in a month. It doesn't seem likely.
 
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