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[NDP_Mulcair]

Great! Thanks for the link. So unless I'm misreading the info we are looking at

A bit >500k for DQVIII in US
~1 million for DQIX in EU & US

Then we know that Dragonball Xenoverse is more than 2.5 million units sold WW. The question then becomes what sort of split does the title have for Asia vs US/EU. Historically do Dragonball games (tenkaichi, budokai etc etc) sell more in Asian or western markets? If we can get some more info on the splits to expect for these games we should be able to estimate how many sales to expect for the title in the EU and US markets.

They sold significantly more WW right? Hence a sales ratio might be a bit more informative and help us estimate how much of the >2.5 million were sold in the US.

Okay, that's a question I can answer right now because I have some historical data with me.

It's tough to use sales ratios (or historical sales) to try and predict Dragon Ball sales because the series has really changed sales-wise in the USA over time and it tends to fluctuate.

In the USA, the Dragon Ball Z series has obviously declined from the massively popular Budokai series. Initially it was very strong (>1 million for Budokai 1 and Budokai 2), then by Budokai 3 LTD started declining below 1 million.

Although, the series remained popular (below the 1 million mark, of course) as it progressed into Tenkaichi.

For example, here is how Budokai Tenkaichi 2 performed in December 2006 in the USA, four years after the franchise appeared in the West:

It was ranked #22 on the NPD software revenue chart and sold 0.44% of unit sales in the USA despite the launch of the Nintendo Wii, the PlayStation 3, and the strength of many other IPs.

Then in the PSP / Wii / 360 / PS3 gen the Dragon Ball IP declined further from its PS2 glory days, but it's hit a plateau and has ebbed and flowed around that plateau since then, remaining at a sufficiently high enough threshold to continue worth investing in localization. So not below 100K or anything horrible like that, but nothing like Budokai.

Of course, in recent years you have to take into PC sales and digital sales as a factor which wasn't available for these kind of IPs in the past. As I mentioned in my previous post, PC sales are really starting to become important with Xenoverse at 401K PC worldwide owners.

 

[demigod]

Western development teams have ballooned because the game development companies behind them (Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Take Two) have been able to float massive budgets.

Major Japanese publishers (Square Enix, Sega, Koei Tecmo) tend to be much smaller and as such can't invest as much resources into their games.

That's why Japanese games tend to have become more niche. It's hard to stand out when your team can't afford nearly the same level of marketing (I'm looking at you, Sega of America).

What the hell happened to all the money JP companies made from the glory PS2 days?

 

[Welfare]

What the hell happened to all the money JP companies made from the glory PS2 days?

HD development ain't cheap.

 

[AniHawk]

That's why Japanese games tend to have become more niche. It's hard to stand out when your team can't afford nearly the same level of marketing (I'm looking at you, Sega of America).

sega of japan basically murdered sega of america. in fact, sega of america hq is listed under two addresses. one is in burbank, and the other is in irvine. the one in irvine is atlus usa.

 

[Vena]

That's why Japanese games tend to have become more niche. It's hard to stand out when your team can't afford nearly the same level of marketing (I'm looking at you, Sega of America).

We've had exceptions but almost all of them have been with the brunt of Nintendo's marketing arm behind them in North America. Bravely Default, Monster Hunter coming to mind as recent examples, further back we had DQIX. Otherwise, unless its named Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, or some other mega-franchise there's no much one can do in the market unless they get large backings from either the first party or some other partnerships.

Other than that, its been about making and appeasing sustainable audiences such as on 3DS/Vita, and more recently PC and slowly PS4.

 

[Nightengale]

What the hell happened to all the money JP companies made from the glory PS2 days?

HD development ain't cheap.

Cheap is true, but it's also kinda underselling it a little bit.

With HD development came a massive need to change development pipelines and hire way, way, way more people. Games that previously took 40-50 people to make suddenly required 200+ people, and with bigger teams means more specialisation, basically deeper specialization and a completely changed pipeline of creating games.

Western developers had no real choice but to embrace that new reality of game development, because their bread & butter are in console/high-budget gaming development. Like it or not, every major western dev had to become that much bigger and embrace efficient game development techniques to maximise efficiency in a time when games were taking longer and longer to make.

Japan was different. Japan did not need to immediately embrace that new gaming reality, because there was something unique and different about their market, in the sense that their handheld gaming market (PSP + DS) were bigger and more vibrant than their console market.

So instead of the entirety of the Japanese dev scene going into the hell and high waters of HD development, a sizable chunk of them... simply took their existing team sizes and pipelines over to PSP and DS development, where they could continue their small dev teams and less efficient games development pipelines. Japanese games development became a lot more domestically focused and insulated as their development and market needs serve the local audience.

And the other portion of the Japanese dev scene that jumped into that HD development scene had a very, very rough start. FFXIII's engine nightmare is well-documented, many early console Japanese games did not have strong sales successes that caused them to fizzle out early, and it basically took the large portion of last gen before Japanese devs started to figure stuff out.

 

[KillerMan91]

Well big factor why western devs were more ready for HD gen was that a many of best selling games last gen were developed by former PC exclusive studios. Just look at some of the best selling HD games last gen and who developed those. Infinity Ward, Bioware, Bethesda, Epic, Dice etc. It has always kinda rubbed me wrong way when people have said that Japanese devs and publishers dominated gaming space in west during PS1 and PS2 eras. They didn't dominate the whole gaming space. They dominated console market. Most of the most talented western studios were making only PC games during PS1/PS2 era so when they made the jump last gen to consoles too it's not that weird to me that western games started to dominate console charts too. After all western games usually appeal more to western audiences. Sure Japanese devs also dropped the ball but I don't think that is the only or even the biggest reason for so different sales charts.

 

[Y2Kev]

It's not even clear what is being argued over the last two pages. Seems like you guys probably should have agreed on a definition of relevant to begin with.

 

[slavesnyder]

Xbox brought FPD, online gameplay, HD and western devs to console.
Japanese devs underestimated this and it took Them some time to realise that this will not get away.
So you either blend into or search your niche.

 

[Jigorath]

It's not like it's a fact. Jigorath is just speculating, the same way everyone else is. It's just done with the conviction of a preacher.

Sony very specifically referred to FFVII at PSX as a "console exclusive debut". You know what that means right? They didn't it call it a straight up "console exclusive" like they did with Kojima's game. If it was, they would have. Sony's been pretty clear about their exclusivity terms this generation so why would it suddenly be wrong here? There's a very large and obvious difference between the two terms.

 

[benny_a]

Sony very specifically referred to FFVII at PSX as a "console exclusive debut". You know what that means right?

I know what that means. Now show me the actual source that Sony paid for that.

And if you don't have that, then that's still speculating on your part, just like I could easily speculate that Sony probably doesn't have to pay for console sized Japanese games to come out on PS4.

 

[Jigorath]

I know what that means. Now show me the actual source that Sony paid for that.

Sony said the project was a "partnership" between them and Square. What else could it mean besides that Sony are investing in the game?

I could easily speculate that Sony probably doesn't have to pay for console sized games to come out on PS4.

Of course they don't. Who said this?

 

[Beer Monkey]

Wait, are there still people who believe the legend "Sony doesn't pay for exclusives", or is my reading comprehension horrible this morning?

 

[benny_a]

Sony said the project was a "partnership" between them and Square. What else could it mean besides that Sony are investing in the game?

Maybe we just disagree what partnerships mean. Every licensee is a partner. Unless the word "partnership", which also used by ActiBlizz's Diablo 3's announcement also meant Sony had to pay for that to come to PS4.

If they were investing in the game then it wouldn't be timed console exclusive debut.

You said the game is only an exclusive console debut because Sony paid for it. I don't see how that is anything but a speculation on your end. I think it's a console exclusive debut because the other target platform is not yet scheduled for release.

Wait, are there still people who believe the legend "Sony doesn't pay for exclusives", or is my reading comprehension horrible this morning?

Maybe. How about you quote the posts you don't understand.

 

[TeddyBoy]

What the hell happened to all the money JP companies made from the glory PS2 days?

In addition to what everyone else had said, Japanese game studios also tended to be extremely inefficient.

Sony Japan for example had over 40 titles in development in 2012 [source]. Now for SD games that might be ok and you can see this from Sony Japan's PSP/PS3 game development, they made good portable titles and released similar titles on PS3 as they were relatively easy for a small number of people to create an entire game [source] eg. Locoroco and Echochrome (titles like Demon Souls and White Knight Chronicles are collaborations so will have varying degrees of help of Sony Japan).

This won't affect every studio but together with this issue and the others already pointed out, you can see how these have all contributed to significantly decrease the quantity of Japanese home console games.

 

[Neuromancer]

The Xbox 360 was a beast in Japan!

 

[cartographer]

Regarding the earlier conversation about relevance:

Given this is a sales thread, isn't popularity the No. 1 thing that matters as far as relevance? It seems like needless nitpicking to say something is only more popular and not more relevant.

If we were discussing artistic or technological importance then sure, but as far as sales go it seems popularity is king.

 

[boredandlazy]

Sony said the project was a "partnership" between them and Square. What else could it mean besides that Sony are investing in the game?

Why don't you ask EA or Nintendo about a different definition of the word 'partnership'?

 

[spatenfloot]

Why don't you ask EA or Nintendo about a different definition of the word 'partnership'?

That would be unprecedented.

 

[CosmicQueso]

Given this is a sales thread, isn't popularity the No. 1 thing that matters as far as relevance?

No, actually it would be sales o_0

 

[benny_a]

No, actually it would be sales o_0

As far as I understand carographer says sales = popularity.

 

[cartographer]

No, actually it would be sales o_0

Yeah, but in this discussion the popularity was determined by what was selling more.

edit: IE a 200k sales title is more popular than a 30k sales title.

 

[Jigorath]

Why don't you ask EA or Nintendo about a different definition of the word 'partnership'?

Okay, what is your argument exactly?

 

[Another48Hours]

What the hell happened to all the money JP companies made from the glory PS2 days?

the problem is your assuming they made a lot of money.

 

[boredandlazy]

Okay, what is your argument exactly?

That the word partnership can mean many things in the videogame world. It doesn't always equate to money changing hands for example.

 

[Another48Hours]

Do we have ltd comparisons between ratchet, jak, sly, tak, and ty the tiger for the ps2?

Just curious as to which of the platformers did well.

 

[Psycho_Mantis]

Hmm okay let's see

-Dark Souls: Bloodborne a spiritual successor to the dark souls series was exclusive to PS4 and proceeded to outsell both previous entries on consoles.

- Resident Evil: the next entry has yet to be announced

-Final Fantasy: somehow the single biggest success in the series gets a remake that is exclusive to PS4 and that doesn't matter because reasons.

-Kingdom Hearts: there are no previous KH games available on the Xbox platform and a rerelease of previous titles are releasing exclusive to PS4.

-Street Fighter: Perhaps you've been living under a rock for the past year but in case you didn't know SFV is exclusive to PS4

-Tekken: Currently there has been no word whatsoever of Tekken 7 releasing in anything except PS4 and maybe PC. All indications are it will not be coming to XB1.

- Dragonball Z: LOL at you thinking this is relevant but Dragon Quest, Star Ocean, and so many others aren't.

-Metal Gear: the last titles did release on XB1 but the software split was staggeringly large. So even your "relevant" games are selling a pittance in the XB1

- Naruto: both this and Dragonball sales are a fraction of the sales of the other franchises I've mentioned but somehow these are more "relevant." Mmk then


Yea that list isn't exactly making the point you want it to. Your mental gymnastics are staggering to watch.

While I agree with your general notion, I think you are underestimating DBZ and Naruto, especially in the West

DBZ Xenoverse has sold 2.5 million+ (iirc 250k NPD opening)
Naruto UNS3 sold 2 million+ ( 1 million in US, 750k EU, 250k JP+Asia)

 

[gypsygib]

NDP is a useless total sales measure without downloaded and bundled games.

It's completely inaccurate.

 

[cartographer]

NDP is a useless total sales measure without downloaded and bundled games.

It's completely inaccurate.

NDP accurately measures retail sales. That's very different from "completely inaccurate" when it comes to sales.

Some information is better than none. And when it comes to most of these titles, the "some" in question is a solid majority of total sales.

 

[slavesnyder]

Well, I don't pay my partner.

 

[Square2015]

Source

510k US

690k EU

I made a math error it's apparently 1.2 million not 1.3. Correcting in my original post.

I have NPD up to Jan 07:
DQVIII 540k

It sold 9.8k that month so still going.

 

[Jarod McChicken]

Just a side note, I know the Tekken 7 case was discussed some pages ago, but I just came across this fresh calendar for Bandai Namco Games, and Tekken 7 is the only game planned for "home consoles" instead of precise systems.

With the plural, it's pretty clear they want to do it on Xbox One besides PS4, but why are they so coy to write it is beyond me. Anything about the arrival of Tekken 7 on consoles so far has been beyond me anyway, eh.

 

[Bgamer90]

Just a side note, I know the Tekken 7 case was discussed some pages ago, but I just came across this fresh calendar for Bandai Namco Games, and Tekken 7 is the only game planned for "home consoles" instead of precise systems.

With the plural, it's pretty clear they want to do it on Xbox One besides PS4, but why are they so coy to write it is beyond me. Anything about the arrival of Tekken 7 on consoles so far has been beyond me anyway, eh.

Yeah, it's obviously coming to another console outside of the PS4. Paris Game Week showed this as the game was in a different category from Street Fighter V ("console exclusive content" instead of "console exclusive").

After how poorly Tekken did on the Wii U, I would be surprised if Tekken 7 came on NX and not the Xbox One too. Guess we'll find out soon.

 

[Nyoro SF]

sega of japan basically murdered sega of america. in fact, sega of america hq is listed under two addresses. one is in burbank, and the other is in irvine. the one in irvine is atlus usa.

Yeah, they still haven't recovered from this move, and it's been almost a year since it happened.

Lol, I asked nicely yesterday. I'm greatfull for what we do get/got already, however, Ltd numbers for:

- Disgaea 5
- Tales of Zestiria
- Dragon Quest Heroes
- Omega Quintet
- Trails of Cold Steel

Would be great.

I hope we can get updates for this as well, because the shift in niche markets as the Vita passes from the mainstream and the PS4 comes to pick up that slack was something I really wanted to see in numbers

 

[Jigorath]

Just a side note, I know the Tekken 7 case was discussed some pages ago, but I just came across this fresh calendar for Bandai Namco Games, and Tekken 7 is the only game planned for "home consoles" instead of precise systems.

With the plural, it's pretty clear they want to do it on Xbox One besides PS4, but why are they so coy to write it is beyond me. Anything about the arrival of Tekken 7 on consoles so far has been beyond me anyway, eh.

Tekken is a weird one. I don't know why they haven't specified platforms yet.

 

[slavesnyder]

Let's say PSVR comes out this year. And I think we all agree that there should be a bundle. What I thought about is that this thing has the size of a bike helmet, plus the brick. Putting this into one box together with the console would result in an awfully large box. That would take a lot of shelf space. Plus you have other packs, too. VR-only, console only, bundles and so on.
I wonder if they even do such a VR-console-bundle-box or just say: buy the helmet and the console and we take 100$ off.
OR, also possible, they reveal the slim at E3. This might be a good solution to keep VR-bundle-boxes small.

 

[Neuromancer]

Let's say PSVR comes out this year. And I think we all agree that there should be a bundle. What I thought about is that this thing has the size of a bike helmet, plus the brick. Putting this into one box together with the console would result in an awfully large box. That would take a lot of shelf space. Plus you have other packs, too. VR-only, console only, bundles and so on.
I wonder if they even do such a VR-console-bundle-box or just say: buy the helmet and the console and we take 100$ off.
OR, also possible, they reveal the slim at E3. This might be a good solution to keep VR-bundle-boxes small.

It'll be that probably. Otherwise the box would be comically huge. Also I don't think a bundle like this would happen until the holiday, but even that may be a bit early.

 

[Another48Hours]

Again if anyone knows,

Any u.s./na ltds from the ps2 platformers? Crash, Spyri, ratchet, sly, tak, and ty?

 

[allan-bh]

I have NPD up to Jan 07:
DQVIII 540k

It sold 9.8k that month so still going.

In december 2007 was at 582k.

 

[slavesnyder]

It'll be that probably. Otherwise the box would be comically huge. Also I don't think a bundle like this would happen until the holiday, but even that may be a bit early.

That's what I thought. Taping two boxes together by store assistants might be enough.
Also, if VR flops, they dont have such a huge problem with repackaging returns. Still wonder what happened to all those kinects.
Customers can also combine with the console bundle they prefer.
On the other hand, this mighty bundle box would look impressive.

 

[Elandyll]

Let's say PSVR comes out this year. And I think we all agree that there should be a bundle. What I thought about is that this thing has the size of a bike helmet, plus the brick. Putting this into one box together with the console would result in an awfully large box. That would take a lot of shelf space. Plus you have other packs, too. VR-only, console only, bundles and so on.
I wonder if they even do such a VR-console-bundle-box or just say: buy the helmet and the console and we take 100$ off.
OR, also possible, they reveal the slim at E3. This might be a good solution to keep VR-bundle-boxes small.

Do you know what would be cool if they indeed do a bundle? Include a cool looking charging station (not for the PSVR itself, as it's wired, but a holder for the PSVR and a usb charger for a Move wand and a DS4 or two)

Something like

$20 or $30 more would be worth it imo for a "turnkey" system.

 

[Another48Hours]

That's what I thought. Taping two boxes together by store assistants might be enough.
Also, if VR flops, they dont have such a huge problem with repackaging returns. Still wonder what happened to all those kinects.
Customers can also combine with the console bundle they prefer.
On the other hand, this mighty bundle box would look impressive.

To be fair, looking at how long Kinect 1 was selling well I doubt that got many returns.

Well, outside the hardcore anyway.

 

[slavesnyder]

To be fair, looking at how long Kinect 1 was selling well I doubt that got many returns.

Well, outside the hardcore anyway.

I thought of kinect 2. I can imagine there were enormous amounts of XboxOnes with packed-in Kinects that did not get sold and had to be refurbished. This is costly. Collecting stuff, shipping back, unpacking, repacking, shipping again.
There were people talking of day-one-boxes in stores nearly one year after launch.
If Sony doesn't want to risc that I could understand.

 

[donny2112]

2) According to NPD data, adjusted unit sales in the USA (adjusted means adjusted by The NPD Group post-release) of Dragon Warrior VII (its predecessor) amounted to only about 215K. Dragon Quest VIII was a massive success by comparison.

It's always worth pointing out when comparing DQVIII sales to its predecessors that DQVIII was bundled with a demo of FFXII. FF was a monster series in the U.S. (the preceding FFX game sold ~2.5m in the U.S. or 10x DQVII's sales, for example), so a good bit of the increase between DQVII and DQVIII can be pretty easily put down to the inclusion of the FFXII demo with it.

It certainly exposed more people to the series, though, which helped later installments!

 

[Another48Hours]

I thought of kinect 2. I can imagine there were enormous amounts of XboxOnes with packed-in Kinects that did not get sold and had to be refurbished. This is costly. Collecting stuff, shipping back, unpacking, repacking, shipping again.
There were people talking of day-one-boxes in stores nearly one year after launch.
If Sony doesn't want to risc that I could understand.

I don't think that's what happened, Xbox with Kinect sold a lot, and as they got to the unbundling with lower sales their shipments dropped as well o think they really just had replaced their shipments with kinectlesd with the few Kinect ones left sitting on shelves as a second option. I don't think they any back or marginal at best.

 

[The Last One]

It's always worth pointing out when comparing DQVIII sales to its predecessors that DQVIII was bundled with a demo of FFXII. FF was a monster series in the U.S. (the preceding FFX game sold ~2.5m in the U.S. or 10x DQVII's sales, for example), so a good bit of the increase between DQVII and DQVIII can be pretty easily put down to the inclusion of the FFXII demo with it.

It certainly exposed more people to the series, though, which helped later installments!

Yeah, this definitely helped the game. Hope they do some similar regarding DQ XI.

 

[Birgitte2004]

NDP is a useless total sales measure without downloaded and bundled games.

It's completely inaccurate.

Not to mention all those digital console sales. I'm sure Xbox One is 90% digital this gen, and if you take that into account they are dominating.

 

[gtj1092]

It's always worth pointing out when comparing DQVIII sales to its predecessors that DQVIII was bundled with a demo of FFXII. FF was a monster series in the U.S. (the preceding FFX game sold ~2.5m in the U.S. or 10x DQVII's sales, for example), so a good bit of the increase between DQVII and DQVIII can be pretty easily put down to the inclusion of the FFXII demo with it.

It certainly exposed more people to the series, though, which helped later installments!

How much is a good bit? Seems like a simple solution for publishers to increase their sales if including a demo can nearly triple sales. I would think the 3D world, better graphics and the inceased popularity of dragonball had a much bigger effect.

 

[RexNovis]

Western development teams have ballooned in popularity because the game development companies behind them (Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Take Two) have been able to float massive budgets.

Major Japanese publishers (Square Enix, Sega, Koei Tecmo) tend to be much smaller and as such can't invest as much resources into their games.

That's why Japanese games tend to have become more niche. It's hard to stand out when your team can't afford nearly the same level of marketing (I'm looking at you, Sega of America).

It is basically exactly what we saw happen with the big studios in Hollywood. The results are the same. It effectively prices out the competition ensuring that nobody can compete on even ground. It is sad how well that has worked.

I do think indie development is mixing things up though and I couldn't be happier about the success that scene has seen both at the tail end of last gen and throughout this gen.

Okay, that's a question I can answer right now because I have some historical data with me.

It's tough to use sales ratios (or historical sales) to try and predict Dragon Ball sales because the series has really changed sales-wise in the USA over time and it tends to fluctuate.

In the USA, the Dragon Ball Z series has obviously declined from the massively popular Budokai series. Initially it was very strong (>1 million for Budokai 1 and Budokai 2), then by Budokai 3 LTD started declining below 1 million.

Although, the series remained popular (below the 1 million mark, of course) as it progressed into Tenkaichi.

For example, here is how Budokai Tenkaichi 2 performed in December 2006 in the USA, four years after the franchise appeared in the West:

It was ranked #22 on the NPD software revenue chart and sold 0.44% of unit sales in the USA despite the launch of the Nintendo Wii, the PlayStation 3, and the strength of many other IPs.

Then in the PSP / Wii / 360 / PS3 gen the Dragon Ball IP declined further from its PS2 glory days, but it's hit a plateau and has ebbed and flowed around that plateau since then, remaining at a sufficiently high enough threshold to continue worth investing in localization. So not below 100K or anything horrible like that, but nothing like Budokai.

Of course, in recent years you have to take into PC sales and digital sales as a factor which wasn't available for these kind of IPs in the past. As I mentioned in my previous post, PC sales are really starting to become important with Xenoverse at 401K PC worldwide owners.

I have NPD up to Jan 07:
DQVIII 540k

It sold 9.8k that month so still going.

In december 2007 was at 582k.

Cheers to all of you! Appreciate the information. So is it safe to say that Xenoverse is likely a bit more than DQVIII or DQIX in the west but relatively close then?

For what its worth I was able to get some more sales figures for these two titles

DQVII >590k in US and >410k EU

DQIX >500k in US and >5.4million WW

So it looks like the 2 most recent mainline entries in the series sold somewhere in the range of 500-600k in US.

Honestly I think the data shows that the series is far from "irrelevant" in the west which is basically why the comparison started to begin with.

Cheap is true, but it's also kinda underselling it a little bit.

With HD development came a massive need to change development pipelines and hire way, way, way more people. Games that previously took 40-50 people to make suddenly required 200+ people, and with bigger teams means more specialisation, basically deeper specialization and a completely changed pipeline of creating games.

Western developers had no real choice but to embrace that new reality of game development, because their bread & butter are in console/high-budget gaming development. Like it or not, every major western dev had to become that much bigger and embrace efficient game development techniques to maximise efficiency in a time when games were taking longer and longer to make.

Japan was different. Japan did not need to immediately embrace that new gaming reality, because there was something unique and different about their market, in the sense that their handheld gaming market (PSP + DS) were bigger and more vibrant than their console market.

So instead of the entirety of the Japanese dev scene going into the hell and high waters of HD development, a sizable chunk of them... simply took their existing team sizes and pipelines over to PSP and DS development, where they could continue their small dev teams and less efficient games development pipelines. Japanese games development became a lot more domestically focused and insulated as their development and market needs serve the local audience.

And the other portion of the Japanese dev scene that jumped into that HD development scene had a very, very rough start. FFXIII's engine nightmare is well-documented, many early console Japanese games did not have strong sales successes that caused them to fizzle out early, and it basically took the large portion of last gen before Japanese devs started to figure stuff out.

In addition to what everyone else had said, Japanese game studios also tended to be extremely inefficient.

Sony Japan for example had over 40 titles in development in 2012 [source]. Now for SD games that might be ok and you can see this from Sony Japan's PSP/PS3 game development, they made good portable titles and released similar titles on PS3 as they were relatively easy for a small number of people to create an entire game [source] eg. Locoroco and Echochrome (titles like Demon Souls and White Knight Chronicles are collaborations so will have varying degrees of help of Sony Japan).

This won't affect every studio but together with this issue and the others already pointed out, you can see how these have all contributed to significantly decrease the quantity of Japanese home console games.

You also have to understand that Japanese businesses are generally VERY slow to adapt to new technology. For example most places still use fax machines to send and receive messages between offices and rely solely on physical paperwork and forms for filing and requests. Basically if it works why risk fixing it. As far as game development goes you had studios used to being able to develop their games completely in house to having to rely on outside help (via premade game engines, physics engines etc). The result was japanese developers insisting on creating their own propriatary engines because as far as they have known thus far they were able to develop games entirely in house. The problem was that they underestimated the cost, time and difficulty of 3D engine development which in turn led to a sizable downturn in the production pipeline. Now we are starting to see widespread adoption of tools like Unreal Engine 4 in Japan and the results speak for themselves. As developers become more acclimated and comfortable with these tools we should start seeing production increase significantly. Furthermore it allows for an industry standard skill set which will hopefully help grow game development in Japan via common easily transferable skillsets.

TLDR: It is an exciting time for Japanese console development right now and I truly believe we are on the cusp of a resurgence in both production and relevance this generation. Only time will tell.

Regarding the earlier conversation about relevance:

Given this is a sales thread, isn't popularity the No. 1 thing that matters as far as relevance? It seems like needless nitpicking to say something is only more popular and not more relevant.

If we were discussing artistic or technological importance then sure, but as far as sales go it seems popularity is king.

Yeah, but in this discussion the popularity was determined by what was selling more.

edit: IE a 200k sales title is more popular than a 30k sales title.

The problem is defining at what point a title ceases to be "relevant." Is a title that sells 1000k units in the US relevant? What about a title that sells 800k units in the US or 700k or 600k or 500k or 400k? My point is that all of these titles have an audience when you add all these titles up with the audiences that they cater to that is certainly more sizable than some here seem to believe it is.

It honestly seemed to me like Jig was just saying only titles that come to XB1 are relevant and they are clearly relevant because they come to XB1. This became obvious when he switched the focus from Japanese developed to titles to Japanese developed titles that sold an arbitrary number and the again to Japanese developed titles that didnt have an established exclusivity agreement of some kind. Which I think speaks for itself.

My point was and remains that the Japanese titles coming to XB1 are the exception and not the rule and they are certainly not "only the relevant ones."

While I agree with your general notion, I think you are underestimating DBZ and Naruto, especially in the West

DBZ Xenoverse has sold 2.5 million+ (iirc 250k NPD opening)
Naruto UNS3 sold 2 million+ ( 1 million in US, 750k EU, 250k JP+Asia)

Yes this is true. I did not realize how much those titles actually sold in the US until I started looking into it. Furthermore while I knew that Dragon Quest regularly sold 4+ million copies WW I didnt realize how slanted the sales ratio for Dragon Quest was. Regardless to say that these titles arent relevant just seems absurd to me. Especially when they are very relevant in the market for which they are ostensibly made and their popularity and sales in that market will (hopefully) ensure that we see even more titles developed.

It's always worth pointing out when comparing DQVIII sales to its predecessors that DQVIII was bundled with a demo of FFXII. FF was a monster series in the U.S. (the preceding FFX game sold ~2.5m in the U.S. or 10x DQVII's sales, for example), so a good bit of the increase between DQVII and DQVIII can be pretty easily put down to the inclusion of the FFXII demo with it.

It certainly exposed more people to the series, though, which helped later installments!

Hah i actually had no idea. That's pretty awesome. I do think DQVIII became fairly popular in its own right but no doubt that the demo helped to put it on the map so to speak. Makes you wonder if Square will try doing this strategy for non FF titles again since the ony example we thus far this gen is the FFXV demo with Type 0. Perhaps they will include a FF7 remake demo with a non FF title.

NDP is a useless total sales measure without downloaded and bundled games.

It's completely inaccurate.

The information they report is accurate. That information is retail sell through. While it might not be the whole picture it still includes the vast majority of Software sales in the US. Furthermore, last I checked, there is no way "digital" hardware so their HW sales figures accurately represent the total market. Oh and they do track bundled games they just dont include the number in the top 10 chart. SO yep you are pretty much wrong every single account including the name: it's NPD not NDP.

NDP accurately measures retail sales. That's very different from "completely inaccurate" when it comes to sales.

Some information is better than none. And when it comes to most of these titles, the "some" in question is a solid majority of total sales.

See above man dont confuse NDP Muclair with NPD reports. He may give us insight from said company but dont let his name deceive you.

 

[Jigorath]

It honestly seemed to me like Jig was just saying only titles that come to XB1 are relevant and they are clearly relevant because they come to XB1.

What a bunch of bullshit. If that's what you think then you're clearly not paying any attention to my posts. Tons and tons and tons of games that release on Xbone are irrelevant to it's core market. The fact that you're trying to paint me as biased to Xbox (again) is fucking hilarious considering I spent way way way more time playing on Playstation systems rather than Xbox. Is this like a defense mechanism or something with you? Call someone teh bias everytime you disagree with them?

This became obvious when he switched the focus from Japanese developed to titles to Japanese developed titles that sold an arbitrary number and the again to Japanese developed titles that didnt have an established exclusivity agreement of some kind. Which I think speaks for itself.

I never shifted focus. This happened entirely in your head.

One more time, I'm gonna lay it out for you.

I don't consider that games that sell in this range

toz ~ 58k
d5 ~ 26k
dq ~ 31k

as all that important to the current state of the market. The audience these types of games are serving is (currently) very very tiny. And one more thing, I'll gladly admit I was wrong about mainline DQ's popularity in the US. It seems to do alright over here. Let's how XI will perform. Though all the spinoffs and remakes keep bombing which is a shame.

Looking back, I probably should have pulled out of this discussion as soon as you tried to turn it into some PS4/Xbone console warzz thing. Cause I knew at that point it would only go one way. My point was always about the importance of Japanese titles as a whole in the US. NPD_Mulcair understood that and weighed in with relevant information. You seem to think my point was "Xbox is getting tons of Japanese games whoooo!" and just responded to that. It wasn't. Xbox doesn't have much worthwhile when it comes to Japanese support. And it never will.

Now I really hope I don't have to do this dance with you again cause it makes me tired.