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[KuwabaraTheMan]

I hope other companies will take notes and release new 2.5D games... multiplatform.

...

Like Klonoa 3 , Castlevania , Contra, something!!

The Klonoa sales for the Wii version don't make me think a new version is particularly likely...

 

[Cipherr]

I don't know why you're being so arrogant, but I'll be quoting this for later.

Im not sure why, hes absolutely right, even though theres a lot of crossover in the two, the concentration of the traditional gamer on the PS360 is flat out much higher than it is on the Wii. I cant really imagine what would lead you to think otherwise, but Im open to hearing your reasoning for believing so.

 

[velvet_nitemare]

You are correct on both counts, but its success in the US needs to be framed properly (which most of GAF won't do)

Personally I think anything above 300-400k in the US would be cause to rejoice given the sales of the series on Western shores.

Do you mean lifetime or 1st month. Pretty sure the PS2 MH did more than 300K lifetime.

If it does that 1st month though, that would be decent, but not a patch on a PS360 top 10 list like the other poster seems to think.

 

[Frenck]

How do you explain the red ink all over pretty much every 3rd party out there, except for Activision, who make one of those megahits?

Did you just miss the thread saying the average multiplatform game has a development budget of between $18-28 million. We've been given budget numbers from development studios for what would be considered 'mid-tier' games and the numbers are huge. Lost Planet had a $20 million dev budget. Bionic Commando had a $20 million budget. I think everyone would agree they are pretty much the definition of 'mid-tier' HD games.

Again, you can't tell me that a majority of all HD games are financial disasters. That's simply not true. If it was true there would be no game industry anymore so many years into this generation.

If the number of large scale financial flops would vastly outnumber the amount of large scale financial successes, as the post I quoted suggests, the industry would have collapsed in 2006 or early 2007 and not even Wii and the handhelds could have saved it.

I'd call Lost Planet, Bionic Commando, Devil May Cry 4 and Resident Evil 5 high budget games, definitely NOT mid-tier compared to your average HD game. I really doubt that From Software games like Demon's Souls, Chromehounds and Armored Core (which all are mid-tier games in my opinion) or games like BlazBlue, Civilization, Just Cause or Ninja Gaiden 2 had such huge budgets. Those are your average HD games, not something like Bionic Commando or Lost Planet which were tentpole releases.

I'm not saying that everything is fine or that the large third party publishers wouldn't be screwed without the DS and the Wii but I disagree with the statement that a majority of all HD games are large scale finacial flops. It's just that the few games that flop disastrously hit rock bottom with the force of an atomic bomb.

Maybe we need to define what a large scale failure is. The perfect examples would be Strangehold, Lair and Bionic Commando, games that flopped incredibly hard. I'm not talking about all HD games that didn't meet expectations, there are lots of them, I'm talking about large scale financial flops.

I was responding to this pretty general statement: "This model produces a few large scale successes and lots of large scale failures"

I wasn't saying everything is rosy and that the industry is fine.

 

[Beer Monkey]

My 63-year old mom bought a Wii, for herself, this xmas. Wii goes WAY beyond the traditional videogaming demographic.

 

[Son of Godzilla]

stuff

I don't want to be mean but the things you are typing are not what you mean to say.

 

[Version 3.0]

All sides need to realize that there is a continuum of quality, a continuum of budget, a continuum of market, and a continuum of sales; the discussion should center around where this obvious mapping falls apart and what we do about those examples.

Agreed. I would argue that there's been far more cases of games (or game lineups) having far too high of expectations placed on their sales than games (or lineups) having realistic expectations and falling short.

Or, to use your terms, there's been a lot of this:

Publishers developing D tier games with D tier budgets and D tier marketing, but expecting A-B tier sales.

And there's been very little (arguably none) of this:

Publishers developing A tier games with A tier budgets and A tier marketing, and achieving D tier sales.

 

[jay]

You think the Wii's "gamer" demographic is about the same amount as the PS360's?!:lol

Do you have any real info on this beyond the argument that if core gamers owned Wiis core games would sell better on Wii?

The Yankee Group did a report on the Wii's expanded audience in 07 which is admittedly a while ago. One of the Yankee Group analysts had this to say at that year's E3, "According to a publisher I have spoken to, less than 10 percent of Wii buyers did not previously own a console."

I haven't seen any other figures thrown around since.

 

[Version 3.0]

I was responding to this pretty general statement: "This model produces a few large scale successes and lots of large scale failures".

I have a hard time believing that, too, but virtually that exact statement comes out of the mouth of CEOs and studio heads again and again.

 

[hellclerk]

Is the Wii userbase was so discerning, then why do shitty titles like Game Party sell over a million? The truth is the Wii userbase is not discerning at all. And that makes sense: when you have an install base as large and demographically like the Wii's, its userbase is going to be undiscerning for the most part (though there exists high potential that the userbase will become discerning after a while, hence why shitty minigame collections don't sell on the Wii anymore).

But they ARE discerning. What's happened is that the buying public doesn't trust the game press so they depend on non-review areas. Game Party, if you would notice, has a depreciating sales record across its sequels, so it means that the consumer is learning that such games aren't very high quality. In addition, there are plenty of what we would consider core games with higher sales than the entire Game Party combined that have had alot of exposure, and that's what drives sales: exposure. For the Wii, you find that on television.

Its such a silly argument though. On one hand people while argue that the Wii's hidden strength is that 3rd parties don't need big budgets but then on the other hand they'll complain about the Wii not having big budget games comparable to PS360 games. Its a catch-22.

Well that's the thing, a big budget Wii game is STILL smaller than a mid-budget HD game. I wouldn't know what to do with a $30million for a Wii game than to spend 2/3s on marketing it. It's not a catch-22, it's about making compelling software and then getting it exposed on the market.

 

[RBH]

Really happy to see NSMB Wii do so well.

 

[ShinNL]

Im not sure why, hes absolutely right, even though theres a lot of crossover in the two, the concentration of the traditional gamer on the PS360 is flat out much higher than it is on the Wii. I cant really imagine what would lead you to think otherwise, but Im open to hearing your reasoning for believing so.

My problem is that I can't prove anything now because I believe there are no top quality third party Wii games. That's why I got mixed up in this argument in the first place: I hate it when people use games as Rabbids Go Home as arguments for "third parties are doing their best". That said: if games like Guitar Hero and Animal Crossing can sell as much as they do (which I believe doesn't belong to the bowling group), then I think the Wii has a substantial gamer market that used to be on the PS2. I might be a little biased but I don't think my logic is completely flawed.

 

[Tmac]

Pretty obscure to say the least especially so when you say the lead before the PS3 even hit was around I don't know 5 million or so in the US maybe and now it's 7.5 or so. It doesn’t mean much when your still 3rd at the end of the day every single year.

Both are usefull. LTD numbers are more suited for comparing the actual difference, while yearly sales numbers are much more usefull than LTD numbers to identify sales trends.

And according to NPD there's a clear trend, 360 RELATIVE sales are going down each year, if you take into consideration only the years that both consoles were in the market for the hwole year, its down from 64% to 57% and finally to only 52% in 2009.

Will microsoft manage to revert that trend? What are the chances that microsoft will, since they haven't been able to do that yet? What will happen if they dont?

 

[Flachmatuch]

I was responding to this pretty general statement: "This model produces a few large scale successes and lots of large scale failures"

I wasn't saying everything is rosy and that the industry is fine.

That's not even debatable ffs, it's just that you don't want it to be true. The majority of games that get on the market lose money.

I think the entire point of Wii being cheaper to develop for is just a garbage point to try and argue really, like someone grasping for straws to find positives for the Wii. IMO access to the number one selling console thats putting itself in homes at a pace faster than the industry has ever seen is a reason to WANT in on it from a business prospective. Putting effort into developing good games rather than shovelware is always going to cost lots of money, because talent costs money, and making a good game takes time, and time is money. So the budget POV is kind of moot. I do think that a very well developed game for the Wii would likely come in cheaper than an HD counterpart for sure....

You might not think so, but you conveniently forget that development costs have risen *compared to last gen* (ie. ps2...and technically Wii), and of course all the actual news and studies that say so. So no, the "development cost" point is far from moot...unless you want to deliberately ignore it.

But in these days when the marketing budget for a blockbuster game can exceed 20 million, the marketing is such a huge slice of the development pie that the cheaper cost of the actual Wii development is likely negligible.

Marketing cost is in the same range as development costs. This is btw exactly what's wrong with the industry ffs, and this is why developers should have at least tried to diversify and put out Wii stuff. Not with HD budgets, but with last gen budgets.

Also, advertising costs are higher *because games need to sell more*, and they need to sell *more because they cost more to develop*.

Doesnt matter though, IMO ship has sailed on this whole third party Wii thing. Seeing their PR about dropping Wii support just as it makes history saleswise it about all it should take for anyone to realize it. Im just hoping Nintendo isnt able to gobble up so much fucking marketshare they way they have been. Shit aint healthy, and these one or two Modern Warfare esque titles a year arent offsetting the massive slice of the pie Nintendo keeps taking every year.

Errr...are you saying that Nintendo is "gobbling up the pie"? Do you even realise what you're saying means?

Also, do you have a clue about what's "healthy"? Healthy in a market means *making money* and producing stuff that makes money. I think people here seem to expect Microsoft and Sony to subsidize their favourite games for all eternity.

Fun fact: Sony has lost all the money they ever made with the PS1 and the PS2 put together.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

nintendo is bioware
third parties are the player

 

[Metroidvania]

Man, I was wondering what was with all the 500s earlier.

Nice numbers all around, I'm kinda surprised NSMB did THAT well.

 

[Death Dealer]

If anyone replies with Resistance 3, Killzone 3, inFamous 2, Gears of War 3, Twisted Metal, Agent, Ar Tonelico 3, or anything else that we know is coming but that isn't announced for 2010, they can stuff it.

In an inteview, Rockstar said they are bringing Agent to PS3 in 2010.

 

[Flachmatuch]

Edit: fucked up double post sorry

 

[AlucarD.eq]

Can anyone help me with the bestsellers so far for PS3? At least from this year..

 

[FrankT]

Both are usefull. LTD numbers are more suited for comparing the actual difference, while yearly sales numbers are much more usefull than LTD numbers to identify sales trends.

And according to NPD there's a clear trend, 360 RELATIVE sales are going down each year, if you take into consideration only the years that both consoles were in the market for the hwole year, its down from 64% to 57% and finally to only 52% in 2009.

Will microsoft manage to revert that trend? What are the chances that microsoft will, since they haven't been able to do that yet? What will happen if they dont?

Does it even matter if they continue to outsell their main competitor each year and in terms of clear trends MS sale through is up yoy again just like last year. Does it even matter when they continue to sell a crapton a SW and will continue to do so for the rest of this generation. I don't know, does it.

 

[Stumpokapow]

In an inteview, Rockstar said they are bringing Agent to PS3 in 2010.

... and? It's a game they've said literally 0 about since that interview, we've seen literally 0 media for, and which has a "2010 but obviously not in the first half" release date. Let's go with "Not confirmed for 2010".

 

[velvet_nitemare]

Hopefully we get more number leaks over the coming days.

 

[lowlylowlycook]

Of course, the same argument is also lost on people who argue that a given Wii game failed because it "wasn't marketed enough", "wasn't good enough", or "wasn't mainstream enough".

Publishers developing D tier games with D tier budgets and D tier marketing expect D tier sales. Publishers developing C tier games with C tier budgets and C tier marketing expect C tier sales. Publishers developing B tier games with B tier budgets and B tier marketing expect B tier sales. Publishers developing A tier games with A tier budgets and A tier marketing expect A tier sales.

The issue comes when either publishers don't expect in line with what they put in OR sales don't return in line with what they put in. When something like Spyborgs gets fewer than a thousand sales, it really doesn't matter that it's not an A tier game, it didn't have an A tier budget, and it didn't have A tier marketing. What matters is that it didn't even get the 5-10k it would have probably eked out on PS2. When Little King's Story doesn't get 200k sales month one, that's not a problem. When it doesn't get 20k sales month one, that is a problem.

All sides need to realize that there is a continuum of quality, a continuum of budget, a continuum of market, and a continuum of sales; the discussion should center around where this obvious mapping falls apart and what we do about those examples.

Isn't part of the problem that 3rd parties have no idea if they have an A game or B game or D game on the Wii? I mean these people are obsessed with metacritic numbers, yet they know those numbers don't hold up for Wii games.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

it doesn't help that it sounds like a colecovision game that uses the concept as the title

"monster hunter"

"cave explorer"

"ocean swimmer"

:lol I think we can also credit Capcom with "street fighter".

 

[user_nat]

Both are usefull. LTD numbers are more suited for comparing the actual difference, while yearly sales numbers are much more usefull than LTD numbers to identify sales trends.

And according to NPD there's a clear trend, 360 RELATIVE sales are going down each year, if you take into consideration only the years that both consoles were in the market for the hwole year, its down from 64% to 57% and finally to only 52% in 2009.

Will microsoft manage to revert that trend? What are the chances that microsoft will, since they haven't been able to do that yet? What will happen if they dont?

Okay, now I get you.

Although I think the change has more to do with what Sony IS doing opposed to what Microsoft's NOT doing.

Spoiler

Although, I still believe that the actual sales number is more important than the % of HD consoles sold

 

[Christine]

I think my theory was right - the recession pushed sales that would otherwise have happened earlier in the year into December, especially for the Wii. Of course, this doesn't diminish the sheer impressiveness of these monster numbers.

 

[SonOfABeep]

yeah, there will be no catching up to MS install base. Sony will probably keep doing better than MS until MS does a redesign of the hardware or a price drop, or has something huge that's exclusive again. Their exclusives have been somewhat lackluster to me the last few years.

I don't think natal is the answer. I think a 360-slim is the answer. One that uses a more standardized hard drive and includes wi-fi, and doesn't break.

 

[the androgyne]

 

[Big B]

Do we ever get total software numbers?

 

[donny2112]

Sony stacked the deck in their favor by reporting a worldwide December number that included Black Friday in the U.S., and the Wii still outsold it in a December excluding Black Friday in the U.S. alone.

Wow.

 

[Grecco]

Isn't everyone already expecting that though?

Certainly not the third parties giving Natal/Gem strong support.

 

[Count Dookkake]

I hope the rampaging success of NSMBW encourages the release of more multi-player platforming games.

It seems there is a big audience for this.

Just don't eff up the controls!

 

[lowlylowlycook]

I think my theory was right - the recession pushed sales that would otherwise have happened earlier in the year into December, especially for the Wii. Of course, this doesn't diminish the sheer impressiveness of these monster numbers.

I think it's the opposite: in previous years the shortages moved the sales from December to other months.

 

[Hero]

See, as cruel as it sounds, the budget excuse doesn't mean much to anyone outside of the company's themselves. Little King's Story does luck out though in that while it doesn't use the Wii's controller and such, it is unique in its own merit which helps set it apart from competing titles in of itself.

Oh yeah, what's done is done. Even if every 3rd party changed their mind today there just isn't enough lead time to get those games out before the generation starts coming to a close.


The problem is that the sections of the Wii's userbase that would support PS360 games probably have a PS3 or 360. So any attempt at making a Wii game that merely emulates a PS360 title will pale in comparison to its PS360 brethren. For a Wii title to succeed it really does have to blaze its own path in a way.

Anyone who is truly a Wii-only gamer and cares about those types of games either buy games too infrequently or are too small in number to support such titles. As I've said before, there isn't a legion of secret gamers just waiting for the big title to finally hit.

No it doesn't. How did Resident Evil 4 'blaze its own way'? It was a port of a great game and it was rewarded with sales. Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop was a shitty port of a great game and it was met with horrible reviews and what I assume are pretty bad sales. This isn't a hard concept. Wii owners will buy good games. It's just the sheer number and diversity of the user base that allows a lot of the "casual" games to sell well in addition to that. Unfortunately third parties are fucking retarded.

There are obviously people/gamers who own the Wii who want and go buy big titles. I already mentioned Monster Hunter 3 being a prime example of this but you chose to ignore it.

 

[PSGames]

Good sales all around.

I hope MS picks up the pace with Sony nipping at their heels. They need to beef up 1st party and quit raping people on accessories.
DS and Wii are absolute beasts. I just wish more games came out for DS that I want to play, like earlier in the system's life.

Yep. Sony offers more bang for the buck hands down. I think this trend will continue unless they either drop the price or start offering feature parity with a PS3. BluRay add-on (for $50 to $100) would be a nice start. Also Natal needs to be bundled with all hardware at no additional cost.

 

[Frenck]

That's not even debatable ffs, it's just that you don't want it to be true. The majority of games that get on the market lose money.

This model produces a few large scale successes and lots of large scale failures.

Maybe my definition of "large scale" is off but essentially you said that there are more Strangleholds and Lairs than there are CoDs and Halos which is not true. Of course most HD games lose money, I completely agree here and that's why the third parties are in trouble. But there's a difference between barely breaking even or stopping just short of breaking even and having a game bomb hard on a large scale.

It's all just semantics anyway maybe you meant something different.

 

[Version 3.0]

Will microsoft manage to revert that trend? What are the chances that microsoft will, since they haven't been able to do that yet? What will happen if they dont?

It doesn't seem to me that Microsoft places the highest priority on "beating" the PS3. They've clearly considered profitability their #1 goal this gen. If they wanted to keep a better lead on the PS3's sales, I would expect that to be fairly easy to achieve by keeping the price gap as wide as possible. But they've been very stubborn with their price reductions. And a glance at their accessory pricing shows that the game division has been directed to stay in the black above all else.

As for your last question, what will happen if they don't reverse the trend? Probably nothing significant. If the PS3 continues its slow crawl to and past the 360's market share, and software sales follow, the 360 will continue to receive just as much support as it does now. When the two have sold 50 million units combined and Microsoft has a 66% market share, that's still far fewer potential customers than when they've sold 100 million units combined and Microsoft has a 45% market share. They're already receiving 90% or more of the same games. That's not going to change by more than a title here and there.

 

[hydragonwarrior]

Big name third parties will continue to make the most profit on PS3/XBOX360.

Nintendo will continue to make the most profit on... Nintendo systems.

I'm glad that Nintendo is making wads of cash, but I'd still like that third party situation to change.

 

[REK]

Wow! It really does print money!!!

 

[lowlylowlycook]

Big name third parties will continue to make the most profit on PS3/XBOX360.

Profit?

 

[BowieZ]

Cmon now, they are buying whats being highlighted, exposed, and projected towards them, which is expected, Nintendo being the only one to be able to do so is a marketing fail on the part of said developers, not some grand conspiracy theory by the old ladies wearing oversized hats at my moms church.

:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

 

[D4Danger]

Yep. Sony offers more bang for the buck hands down. I think this trend will continue unless they either drop the price or start offering feature parity with a PS3. BluRay add-on (for $50 to $100) would be a nice start. Also Natal needs to be bundled with all hardware at no additional cost.

now it doesn't have any expensive parts in it I think Microsoft would be foolish not to include Natal in new 360s.

That strategy worked quite well with the headset and Live subs.

 

[Christine]

I think it's the opposite: in previous years the shortages moved the sales from December to other months.

Maybe a little of both. I place a very low value on the hypothesis that people were buying Wiis simply because it was constantly out of stock, so the shortages would be moving Dec. '06 sales into '07, Dec. '07 sales into '08, etc. We'll have to see next year's numbers to make a judgement call.

Of course, if sales continue to rock into summer, I might have to revise my theory and blame most of it on the NSMBW.

 

[Flachmatuch]

Maybe my definition of "large scale" is off but essentially you said that there are more Strangleholds and Lairs than there are CoDs and Halos which is not true. Of course most HD games lose money, I completely agree here and that's why the third parties are in trouble. But there's a difference between barely breaking even or stopping just short of breaking even and having a game bomb hard on a large scale.

It's all just semantics anyway maybe you meant something different.

There have to be quite a few, because the CoDs and Halos make a lot of money. It's mostly irrelevant to my argument anyway and is nothing but nitpicking. Also, you also said this in your original post:

I'd say it's the other way around actually. It produces a lot of large scale successes and a few large scale failures. You have to be out of your mind if you think that a majority of all PS3/360 games are financial disasters. Nobody would make games for the two HD consoles if that was the case.

which kind of contradicts that it's "just semantics" and says that you simply didn't know that the HD part of the industry wasn't doing well.

 

[donny2112]

the juxtaposition between the Wii selling 3.8 MILLION UNITS IN DECEMBER HOLY CRAP and all the 3rd party threads lately are just insane.

INSANE.

Insane.

 

[Technosteve]

Wii owners should buy less nintendo games and more 3rd party. I want it to be back in the snes days.

 

[jay]

Wii owners should buy less nintendo games and more 3rd party. I want it to be back in the snes days.

Let me know when Chrono Trigger, Castlevania IV and Mega Man X come out.

 

[Tiktaalik]

Of course, the same argument is also lost on people who argue that a given Wii game failed because it "wasn't marketed enough", "wasn't good enough", or "wasn't mainstream enough".

Publishers developing D tier games with D tier budgets and D tier marketing expect D tier sales. Publishers developing C tier games with C tier budgets and C tier marketing expect C tier sales. Publishers developing B tier games with B tier budgets and B tier marketing expect B tier sales. Publishers developing A tier games with A tier budgets and A tier marketing expect A tier sales.

The issue comes when either publishers don't expect in line with what they put in OR sales don't return in line with what they put in. When something like Spyborgs gets fewer than a thousand sales, it really doesn't matter that it's not an A tier game, it didn't have an A tier budget, and it didn't have A tier marketing. What matters is that it didn't even get the 5-10k it would have probably eked out on PS2. When Little King's Story doesn't get 200k sales month one, that's not a problem. When it doesn't get 20k sales month one, that is a problem.

All sides need to realize that there is a continuum of quality, a continuum of budget, a continuum of market, and a continuum of sales; the discussion should center around where this obvious mapping falls apart and what we do about those examples.

Good post.

 

[SonOfABeep]

no doubt that PS3 is better hardware, I just prefer the Live experience and typically multiplats run better on 360, and I have established friends that only play on 360.

I very rarely use my PS3, mostly for blu-ray and movie streaming from my computer, but I can see why a newcomer to the HD generation would pick it.

 

[grandjedi6]

I don't know why you're being so arrogant, but I'll be quoting this for later.

For what? What could possibly happen that would allow you to come back and "own" me later on? Its not even a statement that can be easily disproven in of itself.