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Media Create Sales: Week 48, 2011 (Nov 28 - Dec 04)

test_account

XP-39C²
We just had that discussion regarding the Tales series, and it's even more true in the case of a direct sequel: If people felt burned by the original game, they won't suddely rush out to buy the direct sequel that continues the first game's story.

It might be a way better game all around, but people would have to realize that first. That's hard to achieve when one part of the potential buyers didn't pay attention to the sequel to begin with because they quite simply aren't interested in a direct follow-up to that particular game of the series, and another part of the potential buyers remains skeptical towards everything the developers say and everything that's being shown due to being burned the first time around. A person who is in "wait and see"-mode won't buy the game at release, but after his friends tell him whether or not the game is good or bad.

Sure, there's also the part of the fanbase who either liked the original game or trust in the developers even though they weren't a fan of the original; but the other groups shouldn't be neglected either.
Oh, sure, i can definitely see this situation. I was just wondering why he thinks that Square Enix deserves that XIII-2 sells poorly if it is a better game compared to XIII. I take it like he didnt like XIII that much, that is fair enough of course, but if XIII-2 is an improvement over XIII, doesnt XIII-2 deserves to sell better then? :)
 

rosjos44

Member
yes - because if we complete the similarities it would be a step release of a game that people would still be playing on a platform they already own (and assumedly in the 5-6million unit sales range)

And of course people who'd be interested in playing pokemon would already have the Nintendo machine and will already be balls deep into the game. The hard ask would be to get these people to start AGAIN from scratch , collect 97% the same pokemon, do the same missions etc

So you'd be down to picking up balls out crazy fans and people who haven't played the latest pokemon but were itching to the second it wasn't on Nintendo hardware.

So if the game sales more than 800k your whole fight in this thread would be wrong correct? Because it seems that the pre orders exceed way more than the initial shipment.

The point is fans will always be fans. Yes you have those die hard neo gaf fans that would hate the games going elsewhere and they would refuse to buy it. However, their is a fanbase out their in the millions and those millions just want their next MH fix on their handhelds. So I bet 95% of those individuals really do not care what system it is on.
 

Michan

Member
Zelda's already out of Comgnet? *sigh* If it weren't for the US, I'd be sure that this would be the end of Zelda as we know it...

If not for the west, Nintendo would just switch fully to the Wind Waker style.

Zelda is safe. It still pulls good numbers in all territories.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
So if the game sales more than 800k your whole fight in this thread would be wrong correct? Because it seems that the pre orders exceed way more than the initial shipment.

The point is fans will always be fans. Yes you have those die hard neo gaf fans that would hate the games going elsewhere and they would refuse to buy it. However, their is a fanbase out their in the millions and those millions just want their next MH fix on their handhelds. So I bet 95% of those individuals really do not care what system it is on.

if the game sells more than 800k, yes, i am wrong. *shrug*

As for your second statement, i've not said once that this had anything to do with 3DS. If 3G was coming out on the Vita (with an added restriction of no player port over) i would still predict it would have the same problems i -think- they're going to have getting those 95% of individuals who do not care what platform it is on.

The next fix that the masses will really bite on is MH4
 

Michan

Member
if the game sells more than 800k, yes, i am wrong. *shrug*

As for your second statement, i've not said once that this had anything to do with 3DS. If 3G was coming out on the Vita (with an added restriction of no player port over) i would still predict it would have the same problems i -think- they're going to have getting those 95% of individuals who do not care what platform it is on.

The next fix that the masses will really bite on is MH4

I admire your perseverance.
 

BurntPork

Banned
If not for the west, Nintendo would just switch fully to the Wind Waker style.

Zelda is safe. It still pulls good numbers in all territories.

I said "as we know it." Nintendo would probably lower it to a second- or third-tier franchise. No more big ad campaigns, no more orchestrated music, no more huge teams, and some vaporware thrown in the mix.
 

Fularu

Banned
I said "as we know it." Nintendo would probably lower it to a second- or third-tier franchise. No more big ad campaigns, no more orchestrated music, no more huge teams, and some vaporware thrown in the mix.

When all is said and done, ZSS will do about 5 million worldwide, slightly more or slightly less but not by much.

I think many pubs and devs would LOVE to have a "second or third tier"gme selling anywhere near that.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
I admire your perseverance.

why thank you.

well, there's nothing really in it for me - it's just i'm holding a different take to what people are expecting to happen with MH3G.

Whilst i've chosen not to buy MH3G (for a reason that i think _might_ mirror other players dialemma) , i'm on board the 3DS train and whilst i had my usual "new monster hunter" moan, i'm extremely impressed with how Monster Hunter looks on the machine and am looking forward to MH4.
 

Dalthien

Member
FFXIII has preorder incentives on many retail chains and none on comgnet stores. This can explain the low preorder number.

Possibly, but Sinobi also made a point to comment on low momentum for XIII-2 preorders. I suspect he would be referring to the broader market, and not just comgnet. I can't imagine sales will be as low as a 1/3 of XIII week one, as suggested by comgnet numbers, but it definitely looks like it might be a big step down from XIII numbers (which were already historically low for a mainline FF game). We'll get all the gory details soon enough!
 

BurntPork

Banned
When all is said and done, ZSS will do about 5 million worldwide, slightly more or slightly less but not by much.

I think many pubs and devs would LOVE to have a "second or third tier"gme selling anywhere near that.

Apparently, you guys missed the "if" in my post.
And it's selling worse than Kirby in Japan, which most would call second-tier.
 
... But in fact, I'm thinking about a 400k for MH3G's second week as a maximum.

Ehehehehehe.

You wish! I'm predicting FF13-2 to perform terribly compared to series expectations but that would be a bomb the likes of which have never been seen before. That's Spirit's Within levels of bad!

That would mean that Type 0 would end up doing better than a mainline FF game...
 

Boney

Banned
I said "as we know it." Nintendo would probably lower it to a second- or third-tier franchise. No more big ad campaigns, no more orchestrated music, no more huge teams, and some vaporware thrown in the mix.

the only thing regarding the actual game in your point is orchestral music.

Because I'm not feeling mean, think of something like the Metroid series on GBA and tell me why such a thing is bad.
 
That would mean that Type 0 would end up doing better than a mainline FF game...

Type-0 is better than a number of the mainline games...

Anyways, I'm hoping XIII-2 does well in the end. If this game is a mea culpa from XIII, and sales don't reflect a positive consumer response, I'd hate for SE to get a Cartman complex and go "Fine! Whateva! I do what I want!"
 

Alrus

Member
Doesn't Kirby generally outsell Zelda in Japan anyway?
Pretty sure the DS Kirby games > DS Zelda's.

Yes Kirby is quite a big seller in Japan. I'm pretty sure Kirby Wii will end up at 500-600k when it's done selling, if not more.

And the mainline kirby games on the DS are over a million (Super Star Ultra and Squeak Squad). The spin-off are quite a bit lower, but they're spin-offs after all.
 

PunchyBoy

Banned
So,
My predictions about hardware:
3DS: 268000
PSVita: 364000

Don't ask my why, I just put numbers I choose from whatever or something like that
 
Leave him alone guys

There's nothing wrong with what he said. If Zelda didn't sell well in the US, Nintendo wouldn't treat it as highly as they do. Am I missing something from this arguement?

Besides the fact that this is a Japanese sales thread.
And the fact that it's fucking Zelda...
 

guek

Banned
Zelda will never sell as well as mario, but it means more to nintendo than just sales.

Zelda is their #1 hardcore franchise and they know it. Mindshare is very important. They know people get up in arms about zelda. Whether or not it hits 10+million units is irrelevant. Regardless of how well it's been doing on shelves, even Skyward Sword has made a big splash among critics. Zelda really excites their base, and that's why nintendo will continue treating it like the triple-A franchise it is.

I'm predicting 3+ million worldwide for Skyward sword, though I dunno, maybe that's a bit too optimistic. TP broke 6 million iirc, but the hype was also far greater back then. If wind waker could break 4 million, I think skyward sword should be able to break 3.
 

Datschge

Member
Taking aside that the fanbase of the Tales series obviously appreciates good production values, which neither the DS nor Wii games offered, I think that during the last several years Namco sent out the picture that they don't put much effort into Tales games on Nintendo plattforms.

Hearts and Graces did, but those were too late.

Aside from that sales have repeatedly shown that the traditional kind of Tales games don't fly on handhelds by either Nintendo or Sony. The only notably selling Tales games on a portable system is the fanservice series Radiant Mythology on PSP, everything else (except arguably the Eternia port early in the PSP's life) has quite substandard sales considering the effort involved.
 
I think that poisoning the well certainly has an effect, but I also don't think that consumers are really completely stupid

I don't think I would call "assuming Namco-Bandai is out to screw you over in some way" stupid, per se. :p

I mean, I agree that well-poisoning isn't the whole story. Presumably there's a depressive effect because the DS isn't really suitable for anime cutscenes and prodigious voice acting. That'd certainly contribute to all Tales games doing worse on DS than elsewhere. But that doesn't really provide a reason for Hearts to do exactly as badly as Tempest.

Well its comgnet points do suggest it'll do exactly that badly

This is part of why we don't treat the Comgnet charts as valuable data. :p
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
This is part of why we don't treat the Comgnet charts as valuable data. :p

i was about to say - if the Ltd Edition is top of the Weekly preorder charts, that's got a maximum of 20,000 units from the get go right?

So that's a pretty small sample.
 
But the fact remains that Tales of also didn't do well on either SNES nor GC. The first it has in common with many other new SNES RPG IPs which only exploded after being continued on PS. But all attempts to recreate the success it found on Playstation on other consoles has failed pretty badly. And as has been pointed out numerous times minor spin offs on PSP did a lot better than the main games on DS.

Tales of represents a certain type of JRPG that only really strived on Playstation hardware. FFXIII may have created an umbrella for games like Tales of but that umbrella didn't work back on SNES although DQ and FF were both already almost at their peaks then. That didn't do shit for other RPGs (not by Square). The cheap CD medium on PS on the other hand did. Arc the Lad did close to a million from out of nowhere. Star Ocean and Tales took off, other new IPs like Suikoden succeeded. It's funny that Atlus gained only little numbers with Persona.

I'm not only talking about those and I also give a reason for that growth you're talking about. My point is the rise of the mid-level, close to a million selling RPGs and the Playstation are connected and many fans are still making that connection. As long as they know Tales will also be released for PS they really don't have any reason to switch over to another system, unless they have the money to buy multiple systems (most will buy used and sell again for that). Hence the difficulty of the franchise moving towards Nintendo platforms. It might work if the whole genre could move towards a certain platform but there's really no reason why this should be happening. It certainly didn't work on DS, since as I have pointed out, JRPGs on DS performed more closely to SNES than to PS1/2 (increasingly worse actually), DQ9 being the sole exception.

I'm not really sure we have enough data to say that "mid level" RPGs didn't happen at all until PS1, or that the data we do have even supports that claim. Famistu tracking only seems to go back to late 1994 (though they would on occasion give out older figures), so it's leaving out a huge chunk of SFC's lifespan but here's what I could find for non-DQ/FF RPGs over 200k:

Chrono Trigger (Square) 2,030,000
Seiken Densetsu 2 (Square) 1,500,000
Romancing SaGa 3 (Square) 1,300,000
Romancing SaGa 2 (Square) 1,170,000
Super Mario RPG (Nintendo) 1,089,795
Seiken Densetsu 3 (Square) 647,288
Tactics Ogre (Quest) 503,977
Bahamut Lagoon (Square) 474,680
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (Nintendo) 429,673
RPG Maker 2 (ASCII) 234,923
Tales of Phantasia (Namco) 228,738
Tengai Makyo Zero (Hudson) 200,202


Additionally Saturn managed some decent mid-level RPG hits around the same period (late 1994 to early 1998).

Super Robot Tasien F Complete Chapter (Banpresto) 513,782
Sakura Taisen 2 (Sega) 509,091
Super Robot Tasien F (Banpresto) 464,169
Sakura Taisen (Sega) 359,485
Devil Summoner (Atlus) 355,656
Grandia (ESP) 344,555
Dragon Force (Sega) 272,166
Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers (Atlus) 258,678
Tengai Makyo: The 4th Reveleation (Hudson) 234,932
Lunar: Silver Star Story (Kadokawa) 200,035


And since you brought them up, for some perspective:

[PS] Genso Suikoden (Konami) 167,000
[PS] Genso Suikoden II (Konami) 374,319

[SFC] Star Ocean (Enix) 175,861
[PS] Star Ocean: The Second Story (Enix) 700,458

[PS] Tales of Destiny (Namco) 829,618
[PS] Tales of Phantasia (Namco) 550,393
[PS] Tales of Eternia (Namco) 669,248

[PS] Arc the Lad (SCE) 1,090,000
[PS] Arc the Lad II (SCE) 816,949
[PS] Arc the Lad III (SCE) 379,040

[PS] Persona (Atlus) 391,556
[PS] Persona 2: Innocent Sin (Atlus) 274,798
[PS] Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (Atlus) 200,103
 

cvxfreak

Member
I have a personal request.

Whenever a blog or retailer ranking is quoted, can the poster please provide a URL? I like making sure I read the original Japanese when reports like those come out.

Thanks!
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
will be interesting to see if 3DS can maintain the last few weeks and get the 95k or so it needs on average per week to hit 8m.

Needs strong games next year to push on.
 

saichi

Member
I'm predicting 3+ million worldwide for Skyward sword, though I dunno, maybe that's a bit too optimistic. TP broke 6 million iirc, but the hype was also far greater back then. If wind waker could break 4 million, I think skyward sword should be able to break 3.

you are talking about before next fiscal year, right?
 

Dash Kappei

Not actually that important
I said "as we know it." Nintendo would probably lower it to a second- or third-tier franchise. No more big ad campaigns, no more orchestrated music, no more huge teams, and some vaporware thrown in the mix.

ROOOOOOOTFL

Come the fuck ON! You can't be serious.
Are you?
 

Alrus

Member
will be interesting to see if 3DS can maintain the last few weeks and get the 95k or so it needs on average per week to hit 8m.

Needs strong games next year to push on.

Well line up for the begining of 2012 is pretty damn nice, so the 3DS will probably keep selling at a nice pace.

We really have no idea on what's coming for fall/winter though, that's going to be interesting.
 
Well line up for the begining of 2012 is pretty damn nice, so the 3DS will probably keep selling at a nice pace.

We really have no idea on what's coming for fall/winter though, that's going to be interesting.

Likely a Pokemon game and didn't Capcom say they were working to get MH4 out in 2012?
 

Alrus

Member
Likely a Pokemon game and didn't Capcom say they were working to get MH4 out in 2012?

Yeah a Pokemon game would be a sure bet. Now will it be a "mainline" game, or a Ranger/Mystery Dungeon spin-off? We still haven't heard anything about Pokemon Grey...

No idea about MH4, we really don't know much about that game... now that MH3G is out, we'll probably get more info though.
 

jman2050

Member
Yeah a Pokemon game would be a sure bet. Now will it be a "mainline" game, or a Ranger/Mystery Dungeon spin-off? We still haven't heard anything about Pokemon Grey...

No idea MH4, we really don't know much about that game... now that MH3G is out, we'll probably get more info though.

They said that they were deving MH3G and MH4 simultaneously, which seems to indicate that MH4 is much further along than we might have thought.
 
I could see Tomodachi Collection 2 being a big holiday game too. And there's still the DQVIIr rumor, it said around 6 months after Monsters 1r irrc.
 

Alrus

Member
I could see Tomodachi Collection 2 being a big holiday game too. And there's still the DQVIIr rumor, it said around 6 months after Monsters 1r irrc.

Well I don't know if Tomodachi will be nearly as big as the last one... Isn't it a very much "expanded audience" title? Nintendogs didn't fare so well...

Anyway, it will probably be a slow burner, no big numbers right out of the gate.
 

Jonnyram

Member
I could see Tomodachi Collection 2 being a big holiday game too. And there's still the DQVIIr rumor, it said around 6 months after Monsters 1r irrc.
Don't forget Animal Crossing 5, FFVIr, FFVIIr, FFXV, DQX add-on, DQXI, New Super Mario Bros 2, Nintendogs & Cats & Mice, etc.
 
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