Would Hyrule Warriors's success outside of Japan affect Koei Tecmo's financials?
I wonder if they can reach the 1 million goal.
It seems to be doing well in Europe.
I can't imagine Koei Tecmo signed a deal where they don't get notable royalties per every copy sold given they have the upper hand in this relationship on the basis that Nintendo needs Wii U games and Koei Tecmo doesn't need Wii U games.
My personal suspicion though is just that the expectations aren't especially high so when it does above those it raises the results.
Koei Tecmo isn't a big company so it doesn't take a lot to move their fiscal results around.
I doubt they have the upper hand to any real extent. Nintendo has been providing them with steady work for the last couple of years and Pokémon Conquest and Hyrule Warriors will probably provide decent returns based on sales volume alone.
I think letting KT publish the game in Japan was probably enough to sweeten the deal. Hyrule Warriors didn't sell amazingly but you've got to consider that KT likely has no development costs to earn back.
Well, in the normal publisher-developer relationship, a publisher pays the development cost and the developer basically never sees a dime of any sort of royalty, so then their statement would have to apply 100% to Japanese sales.
Even if they're getting like $5-$10 a copy that's vastly more than almost any independent developer would get from their publisher unless they were the absolute cream of the crop.
That said, the vast majority of deals aren't a publisher lending their development team to another publisher.
Depends on the contracts, if they get royalties from overseas sales then obviously yes, if they don't then not directly but it could increase the chances of a sequel which they could then make money from in Japan
I wonder if they can reach the 1 million goal.
It seems to be doing well in Europe.
Koei Tecmo is in a weak spot.I can't imagine Koei Tecmo signed a deal where they don't get notable royalties per every copy sold given they have the upper hand in this relationship on the basis that Nintendo needs Wii U games and Koei Tecmo doesn't need Wii U games.
Koei Tecmo revised their earning forecast upward due to good worldwide sales of Hyrule Warriors and PS4 versions of Warriors series (Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends Complete Edition, Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, Samurai Warriors 4) on the video game side.
https://www.release.tdnet.info/inbs/140120140929050959.pdf
What kind of ridiculously low expectations do they have lol
Not only is this not the normal developer-publisher relationship because Koei Tecmo is itself a publisher, but there's also a brand crossover here. It's really more like Mario & Sonic Olympics or Pokémon Conquest than it is a purely contracted game like Wonderful 101 or Metroid: Other M.Well, in the normal publisher-developer relationship, a publisher pays the development cost and the developer basically never sees a dime of any sort of royalty, so then their statement would have to apply 100% to Japanese sales.
Even if they're getting like $5-$10 a copy that's vastly more than almost any independent developer would get from their publisher unless they were the absolute cream of the crop.
That said, the vast majority of deals aren't a publisher lending their development team to another publisher.
What kind of ridiculously low expectations do they have lol
I would consider basically any relationship in which you can get a royalty instead of just the budget to be an upper hand when that's not the way the vast majority of scenarios work.
Obviously they're not dictating the exact nature of the product and the deal to Nintendo, but I feel they almost assuredly have a lot more strength than say Ubisoft signing a random developer.
I think that comes with the territory of hiring a publisher owned developer though. It will likely apply exactly the same to DQ Heroes.
Koei Tecmo is in a weak spot.
They desperately need someone to fund their games or licenses to sell their games.
In the current climate (with raising costs) their biggest seller (which usually top 1-2 million at best) can't carry them.
Project Zero is a series which can't survive without Nintendo.
Musou is being crossed with other more popular IPs like Dragon Quest, Zelda or One Piece.
Their higher profile titles Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden can at best achieve 1-2 million in sales (actually DoA5 transitioned to F2P).
Koei Tecmo has about 200 developers and support staff in China, 100 more in Vietnam and about 80 people based in Singapore, and seeks to increase overseas workforce by about a third next year, he said.
Keighley Tecmo has about 200 developers and support staff in China, 100 more in Vietnam and about 80 people based in Singapore, and seeks to increase overseas workforce by about a third next year, he said.
LOL wat? XD
Same here. Maybe Zero Escape needs a mascot
sörine;132147638 said:Zelda Musou did pretty well for a Wii U game, and it was the best Musou debut this gen by a good bit, but in absolute terms I think it's quite low by historical Musou standards. I feel like the same sort of game would've done 200k+ on Wii or even Gamecube possibly in the first couple years. It also probably would've done a lot better on 3DS even if significantly cut back.
Okay that makes sense. By "upper hand" I'd assumed you meant in terms of the relationship (with Nintendo) directly not comparably versus the usual contracted developer/publisher agreement, and one that would equate to holding a majority of power between parties. Nintendo did literally dictate the nature of the game (Musou with Zelda skin), they held oversight and they're publishing where it's going to do the vast majority of sales worldwide so I'd assume they still held more power in this specific relationship at the end of the day.I would consider basically any relationship in which you can get a royalty instead of just the budget to be an upper hand when that's not the way the vast majority of scenarios work.
Obviously they're not dictating the exact nature of the product and the deal to Nintendo, but I feel they almost assuredly have a lot more strength than say Ubisoft signing a random developer.
I realize the term might paint a more drastic picture than I mean to imply.
when I say this generation I'm referring only to hardware cycles. That doesn't seem to be to be a really unique interpretation either, although it certainly seems to rub you the wrong way in this instance. Does it usually?What?
edit: Oh, I forgot who I was replying to. Sorine has a "unique" way of reporting Warriors sales. By "this gen," he's referring to just PS4 (maybe Vita too) and Wii U. Comparing late ports on PS4 to an exclusive, while simultaneously ignoring all of the PS3 releases post-Wii U isn't distorting the truth at all.
What?
edit: Oh, I forgot who I was replying to. Sorine has a "unique" way of reporting Warriors sales. By "this gen," he's referring to just PS4 (maybe Vita too) and Wii U. Comparing late ports on PS4 to an exclusive, while simultaneously ignoring all of the PS3 releases post-Wii U isn't distorting the truth at all.
It's also interesting how in a post where I'm talking about how Zelda Musou sales are low that's the thing Takao zeroes in on the imply bias. lolSo when he says 'this gen', he really means 'this gen', shocking.
What?
edit: Oh, I forgot who I was replying to. Sorine has a "unique" way of reporting Warriors sales. By "this gen," he's referring to just PS4 (maybe Vita too) and Wii U. Comparing late ports on PS4 to an exclusive, while simultaneously ignoring all of the PS3 releases post-Wii U isn't distorting the truth at all.
sörine;132185213 said:Okay that makes sense. By "upper hand" I'd assumed you meant in terms of the relationship (with Nintendo) directly not comparably versus the usual contracted developer/publisher agreement, and one that would equate to holding a majority of power between parties. Nintendo did literally dictate the nature of the game (Musou with Zelda skin), they held oversight and they're publishing where it's going to do the vast majority of sales worldwide so I'd assume they still held more power in this specific relationship at the end of the day.
This agreement doesn't seem too usual for Nintendo either, they've recently entered into similar brand collaborations with Sega, Bandai Namco, Atlus, Spike Chunsoft and even Koei Tecmo themselves before. They do seem like sort of a leader in this area though, at least among major global publishers.
In fairness Koei forgot about it too.sorine actually forgot a compelling addition; Samurai Warriors Chronicles 1 and 2nd on 3DS.
SWC: 43,044 / 155,059
SWC 2nd: 35,806 / 68,360
Hyrule Warriors still debuted higher than both of those and those were also exclusives, hell SWC was a launch title (I say this as some argue launch titles benefit greatly from "launch hype".
Edit: Just for the hell of it:
Hyrule Warriors: 78,773 / 114,252
Edit: Fixed both SWC numbers due to japanltdranking having up-to-date numbers.
I definitely agree with this, Nintendo's in a comparably unique situation where it makes more sense for them to leverage these kinds of deals. Nintendo also seems to only work with Japanese publishers on these co-branding/publishing projects though, I sort of wonder why that might be and if it's a reflection of their own priorities or their limits.I feel this happened because it works well for the unique case of the vendor and publishers in question.
Like a lot of these publishers have staff they can't put to notably great use, and Nintendo has more IPs than they can leverage effectively and consistently.
Making Smash doesn't make sense when you can make Call of Duty or Batman or Far Cry instead, but it makes a lot of sense when your best selling series is Tekken.
Giving Smash to an outside publisher to develop also makes a lot of sense when it's going to get the game done faster and better than actually handling it internally as well, especially when you never really had a longstanding dedicated team to manage the franchise.
Similarly teaming up Sonic with Mario works well for both parties (Sonic still has some solid draw in various regions, Mario needs no explanation), and it's not like Sega has all that much else going for them.
And with this case, obviously Zelda appeals to a lot of people internationally while Musou appeals to more people domestically to an extent that the team-up actually works for them in terms of exposure even if it's not a slam dunk sales win.
I don't really see this kind of scenario existing more broadly though because Sony and Microsoft aren't overflowing with IPs compared to output and the few remaining major Western publishers are too big to actually need someone else's IP, especially if it has a major profit depreciation.
The competition in this case also includes four non-ports (3 on 3DS, 1 on Vita) and several Vita day-and-date multiplatform releases. Late ports only account for around half the Musou this gen.what i'm saying is that wii u is a last gen console
No. I just think awarding Hyrule Warriors as having the best Warriors debut this gen is a bit pointless when the competition is a bunch of late ports. When you compare the game to all Warriors post-2012, its sales aren't the best.
Street Fighter versus Tekken comes to mind, as does Capcom vs SNK, but not many others.sörine;132193748 said:I definitely agree with this, Nintendo's in a comparably unique situation where it makes more sense for them to leverage these kinds of deals. Nintendo also seems to only work with Japanese publishers on these co-branding/publishing projects though, I sort of wonder why that might be and if it's a reflection of their own priorities or their limits.
The only other deals like this from notable publishers I can really think of are Level 5's Layton/AA crossover, the various Musou extensions with Bandai Namco and Square Enix, and the other Mystery Dungeon spinoffs over the years. Are there any others?
sörine;132193748 said:I definitely agree with this, Nintendo's in a comparably unique situation where it makes more sense for them to leverage these kinds of deals. Nintendo also seems to only work with Japanese publishers on these co-branding/publishing projects though, I sort of wonder why that might be and if it's a reflection of their own priorities or their limits.
The only other deals like this from notable publishers I can really think of are Level 5's Layton/AA crossover, the various Musou extensions with Bandai Namco and Square Enix, and the other Mystery Dungeon spinoffs over the years. Are there any others?
sörine;132193748 said:I definitely agree with this, Nintendo's in a comparably unique situation where it makes more sense for them to leverage these kinds of deals. Nintendo also seems to only work with Japanese publishers on these co-branding/publishing projects though, I sort of wonder why that might be and if it's a reflection of their own priorities or their limits.
The only other deals like this from notable publishers I can really think of are Level 5's Layton/AA crossover, the various Musou extensions with Bandai Namco and Square Enix, and the other Mystery Dungeon spinoffs over the years. Are there any others?
They wanted Nintendo to partner for Skylanders too but they balked so they ended up going it themselves.Technically SiNG Party would count. It was developed by an Activision owned developer. Really odd case there as it doesn't really leverage anyhing as a Nintendo game AFAIK.
Don't know if this would be of any interest to your conversation but (going by memory) Nintendo published in Japan Ubisoft games like Rayman Legends, Just Dance and even Epic MIckey (Disney Int. from the Wii days). Going as back as the GameCube days, NIntendo lend some of it's character IP to EA, by having cameos of Mario characters in some of it arcade type sports games like NBA Street. SO the have been onto this from quite some time.sörine;132193748 said:The only other deals like this from notable publishers I can really think of are Level 5's Layton/AA crossover, the various Musou extensions with Bandai Namco and Square Enix, and the other Mystery Dungeon spinoffs over the years. Are there any others?
what i'm saying is that wii u is a last gen console
No. I just think awarding Hyrule Warriors as having the best Warriors debut this gen is a bit pointless when the competition is a bunch of late ports. When you compare the game to all Warriors post-2012, its sales aren't the best.
I forgot all the fighter crossovers! The SNK/Capcom ones were so long ago I'd probably discount them as not recent enough though. Nintendo and Konami also did a Mario DDR game way back as well. And actually the other Mystery Dungeon crossovers (Torneko, Chocobo, Druaga) are probably too old too now.Street Fighter versus Tekken comes to mind, as does Capcom vs SNK, but not many others.
Nintendo did publish a LEGO title and SiNG Party by Activision, and let Next Level work with their IPs, so I don't think they'd be opposed to a Western collaboration, but I'm not sure there's much interest on the Western publisher side since most of the ones who would have benefitted have shut down.
Namco x Capcom and Project X Zone are prime examples too. Wasn't there a Nippon Ichi crossover game too?
Cross Edge wasn't it?
Not to derail the thread but generations are based on time not technology. Hyrule Warriors is the best Warriors debut this generation until something surpasses it. Those post-2012 Warriors sales were from a time when consoles were last in their prime.
I'd say more a pathetic one. Musou's done so much worse this gen than last out the gates. PSP, PS3 and even Wii completely stomped everything this cycle.Which is a worthless factoid.
Street Fighter versus Tekken comes to mind, as does Capcom vs SNK, but not many others.
Nintendo did publish a LEGO title and SiNG Party by Activision, and let Next Level work with their IPs, so I don't think they'd be opposed to a Western collaboration, but I'm not sure there's much interest on the Western publisher side since most of the ones who would have benefitted have shut down.
what i'm saying is that wii u is a last gen console
No. I just think awarding Hyrule Warriors as having the best Warriors debut this gen is a bit pointless when the competition is a bunch of late ports. When you compare the game to all Warriors post-2012, its sales aren't the best.