Support NeoGAF

[AndresON777]

Killzone 2......the Waterworld of gaming

:lol

 

[clashfan]

We need to all unite in the Official Killzone 2 thread and bump it high to the sky to prove that Killezone 2 is not a bust.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Hi guys! Just wanted to come in and request Madworld sales.

 

[JB1981]

Welp, I'm just glad we're going to get a Killzone sequel because I think GG is very talented and have a promising future. PS3 gamers are MULTIPLATFORM gamers, though. They don't give a FUCK about 1st Party Titles.

 

[Stoney Mason]

We need to all unite in the Official Killzone 2 thread and bump it high to the sky to prove that Killezone 2 is not a bust.

Been there done that!

 

[Saerk]

Most games don't cost $40 million+ to make. KZ2 did, hence, higher expectations.

It may surprise you to learn that Transformers 2 could grossover $150 million at the box office and be a failure, whereas Let The Right One In is a huge success by making only $10 million.

Relative sales are relative.

Fixed that for yah

 

[DCharlie]

No sane person would actually believe a game would pull the PS3 back into sales.

It's weird , i don't know who this is aimed at, but it's pretty much GAF Sony fans who do this title on title.

I'm sure we'll move on to inFamous next, then Uncharted 2 after that and maybe GT5 Real Edition after that (if ever) , but we'll run through the exact same routine again and again.

how do so many 360 owners know to buy L4D? How do so many 360 owners know to buy Fable, Gears, etc...??

X360 captured the hardcore gaming market?

 

[Stop It]

It's true if we're to believe the European sales charts. Which is why when I said it I got responses like, "This is the NDP sales results, please don't question our blanket statements that Halo Wars is selling better than Killzone 2." Never mind the fact that they're pretty much dead even in North America anyway.

Call of Duty is a huge franchise that is big precisely because of the annual holiday releases. If selling less than that means being a loser, there's a lot of losers.

Killzone 2 is performing well. And here's the kicker, and it may sound like a shocker to you, but Bioshock and Gears of War were big performers too. But at the same time, we're not in the holiday months, and Gears of War also had the benefit of very little direct competition. Not to take away from the success, but you can't exactly ignore the environments that helped produce those results.

But again, it seems many peoples measurement of defining failure is by pitting one games success against another games greater success. That just doesn't add up. We've seen games bomb and fail on the PS3 and X360 and I can say quite unequivocally that KZ2 is not in the same territory.

.

First of all, both MS and Sony have stated that Halo Wars and KZ2 have sold 1m worldwide, I'd say they're about equal overall.

Secondly, it isn't Acitivsions fault that they managed to get CoD W@W out on time for the holiday season and Sony didn't, remember this was meant to be one of PS3s Marquee titles yet for some reason they decided to let it slip to Feb 09, that is their own fault.

KZ2 May be "performing well" but frankly, it can't be anywhere near initial expectations for the game. Remmeber that this project took at least 2.5 years to complete, used a heck of a lot of resources (It was Hollands most expensive media project, with figures of 40million Euros+ being bandied about for the development alone) and is a tour de force (And a great game), so it should be directly compared to AAA titles released on other systems, not spin off RTS games that were by a team who were subsequently fired!

The fact is that KZ2 selling 600k, while OK, is simply not enough. It wont pay for the investment made, unlike Halo Wars which probably costed a huge amount less.

Frankly, if the best 1st party titles on PS3 cannot outsell the best 3rd party ones, SCE might as well not bother, as i said, 600k in 2 months is NOT a bomb, but conversely is not good enough.

COD4 did just +570K in 4 weeks compared to Gears 1 in 3 weeks despite selling to double the user base? FAILURE!!!

Thats 1570k TTP.

 

[chubigans]

On a side note I also find it odd that Sony fans were knowledgable enough to buy more copies of the better Sony baseball game but still Killzone 2 is a massive secret to the PS3 base some are arguing.

That game (The Show) actually had a nice marketing blitz.

XBox Live + NXE + Friends List. It's the perfect storm of just toomuchery, and one can only give in to the rolling tide.

Very true. Just playing UNO with strangers on the 360 brings up the ol' "Hey man did you see that game coming out? Looks awesome!"

We need to all unite in the Official Killzone 2 thread and bump it high to the sky to prove that Killezone 2 is not a bust.

:lol :lol

 

[phez]

So is the 619K LTD for KZ2 since its release two months ago a strong figure?

Not a stealth troll, I just want some context and perspective for a AAA titles selling that much for this time of year.

last year: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=279520

2007: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151743

 

[Brannon]

Sway love

I agree, but I have to reinforce that people still, to this very day, have $599 in their minds as well. It doesn't matter if you can gett it for $399 (still to expensive in this economy), the Playstation 3 is 'officially' five hundred and ninety nine US Dollars. Only one thing could MAYBE change that, and Sony simply isn't going to do it at this time.

 

[Warm Machine]

Didn't it go over 1.5 worldwide?

Don't know.

The common idea that a game has to sell millions to cover its costs is so broken. This is why games as a business can be profitable. Break even isn't that hard, it is in cases like Midway where their costs continually outpace their sales over the course of 4 or 5 releases that they go under.

Most games only need 350-500k in sales to break even depending on their budgets of course.

 

[Ten-Song]

And thus Resident Evil 5 looked out, and shouted out to the masses, "Give me an egg!"

 

[Stoney Mason]

Welp, I'm just glad we're going to get a Killzone sequel because I think GG is very talented and have a promising future.

And that's all that probably matters in the long run. Most of us are having fun based on being tortured by one of the most annoying fan bases to come around on GAF in a long time.

The game always seemed good to me. The worst of the fans were the pits however on this board.

 

[Slurmer]

Yay for The Show, Halo Wars, RE5
and for KZ2 charting again (it wasn't even included in the prediction thread, was it?)

On a side note I also find it odd that Sony fans were knowledgable enough to buy more copies of the better Sony baseball game but still Killzone 2 is a massive secret to the PS3 base some are arguing.

The Show had a sweet commercial.

 

[nib95]

Its the PS3 fans who keep claiming that one game after another will be the breakout thing Sony has been looking for and quite frankly needs this generation.

I think 360 fans convince themselves PS3 fans think this way. Truth is, most PS3 fans are saying the PS3 needs a price drop, and that no single game is going to make the difference. It's the 360 fans who keep regurgitating the same PS3 saviour/secret game rhetoric. I'd imagine PS3 owners themselves are just happy they are getting great and exiting new exclusives. I mean, Killzone 2, Flower, MLB The Show 08 and now Fat Princess and InFamous right around the corner. Happy times indeed.

 

[gkryhewy]

We need to all unite in the Official Killzone 2 thread and bump it high to the sky to prove that Killezone 2 is not a bust.

If only there were just a FEW more marketing avatars.

 

[chubigans]

It's weird , i don't know who this is aimed at, but it's pretty much GAF Sony fans who do this title on title.

I'm sure we'll move on to inFamous next, then Uncharted 2 after that and maybe GT5 Real Edition after that (if ever) , but we'll run through the exact same routine again and again.

No it's freaking not. Several people have already said Infamous will not sell well. Not a single person has said it would do anything for PS3 hardware.

But have fun pretending that Sony fans think Infamous will sell 500k in a month.

 

[Gaborn]

Sony just needs a $100 price drop. That's about it.

... and then what? What exactly do you expect that price drop to gain sony? A few more sales? at this point... so what? Do you expect it to pass the 360? REALLY?

 

[Nirolak]

last year: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=279520

2007: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151743

360 ARMY OF TWO ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-08 606.1K
PS3 ARMY OF TWO ELECTRONIC ARTS Mar-08 224.9K

I had forgotten how amazing well Army of Two did. I wonder how well the second one will sell this year.

 

[AndresON777]

COD4 did just +570K in 4 weeks compared to Gears 1 in 3 weeks despite selling to double the user base? FAILURE!!!

 

[overthehill99]

Are we gonna get the top 20 soon?

 

[Stoney Mason]

Are we gonna get the top 20 soon?

It usually takes at least a day.

 

[jetjevons]

Most games only need 350-500k in sales to break even depending on their budgets of course.

That's not true of most 360 and PS3 releases.

 

[FrankT]

GIF above is the stuff of legends. :lol

 

[Stop It]

I'm sure we'll move on to inFamous next, then Uncharted 2 after that and maybe GT5 Real Edition after that (if ever) , but we'll run through the exact same routine again and again.

Well frankly, if GT5 doesn't sell a copy for every single PS3 owner at the time of release, I am going to personally punch every PS3 owner who doesn't buy it.

This generation is sorely lacking in awesome racers (I can count them on one hand) and GT5 should be 100% specfuckingtacular.

 

[Halvie]

Are we gonna get the top 20 soon?

PLEASE

 

[Averon]

It's weird , i don't know who this is aimed at, but it's pretty much GAF Sony fans who do this title on title.

I'm sure we'll move on to inFamous next, then Uncharted 2 after that and maybe GT5 Real Edition after that (if ever) , but we'll run through the exact same routine again and again.


X360 captured the hardcore gaming market?

There has been no "InFamous will change the tide" type posts from Sony fans or anyone else for that matter. But it doesn't matter. Watch people in the May NPD thread say "bu bu bu InFamous was suppose to be the PS3's savior". The meme is just trolling at this point.

 

[Chichikov]

One of these things is Snoop and one of them is Omar.

Yeah, that what I was sa... wait, what?
In any case, nothing in this thread is as awesome as Omar or Snoop.
Even to use them as metaphors to anything NPD related is insulting.

 

[WinFonda]

By your logic, though, we shouldn't be comparing game to game, we should be looking at its relative success, which would bring us to development and marketing costs and if KZ2 is selling the same as HW, it's not good because I don't think anyone would argue that KZ2 had a LOT more money invested in it on both of those fronts.

You can compare game to game, but if you want to do it fairly, you need to take into account a shit ton of different factors, and yeah, relativity has to come into play. As I said, I think both games had positive and negative things at work.

Surely for Halo Wars, it has the Halo branding, which is a huge IP. Also, especially in the US, there is a sizable install base advantage for the Xbox 360. Now for being a console RTS, no question, Halo Wars was a much larger success than Killzone 2 was at being a first-person shooter. But also, 600k in North America on the PS3 and 600k in NA on the 360 have slightly different meanings.

For Killzone 2, it had a lot of hype and positive press. I think it's fair to say it lived up to its critical expectations. It also had rather lackluster initial beginnings with the first Killzone. I don't know its budget or marketing costs, but frankly, I'd be surprised if profitability was completely off the table for the game. Halo Wars had quite a lengthy (perhaps even turbulent) development cycle. So without knowing all the data there - it's pure speculation.

 

[Rated-Rsuperstar]

... and then what? What exactly do you expect that price drop to gain sony? A few more sales? at this point... so what? Do you expect it to pass the 360? REALLY?

It'll gain them new consumers. Will it pass 360, no. And I don't care if it doesn't. But at $300 it won't be stupidly expensive.

 

[Big-E]

Holy shit great numbers for The Show. IIRC that was a huge increase from last year isn't it? There is justice in the world.

 

[TheGreatDave]

Are we gonna get the top 20 soon?

Hopefully!

 

[Mrbob]

Well frankly, if GT5 doesn't sell a copy for every single PS3 owner at the time of release, I am going to personally punch every PS3 owner who doesn't buy it.

This generation is sorely lacking in awesome racers (I can count them on one hand) and GT5 should be 100% specfuckingtacular.

Get on your boxing gloves then because I have no intention of buying GT5. Boring car racing games bleh.

I will be partaking in plenty of Sony's first party this upcoming year and the years ahead, but have zero interest in gran turismo!

 

[lowlylowlycook]

Don't know.

The common idea that a game has to sell millions to cover its costs is so broken. This is why games as a business can be profitable. Break even isn't that hard, it is in cases like Midway where their costs continually outpace their sales over the course of 4 or 5 releases that they go under.

Most games only need 350-500k in sales to break even depending on their budgets of course.

Yeah, making money in the games industry is sooo easy this gen.

Hope to see you in the threads that pop up when EA, Activision, etc. etc., put out their earnings.

 

[Dabanton]

Why did Nintex get clipped?:lol

 

[Baby Milo]

yaaay the show

 

[Tiktaalik]

*yawn* So KZ2 is a flop, because it will sell over a million in the USA?
Wow, I love these flops

Way to move the goalposts.

No one is saying that KZ2 is a flop, but it's obvious that it's not meeting the sky high expectations that have been set for it based on previous trailers, Sony marketing and the media.

 

[Stop It]

Holy shit great numbers for The Show. IIRC that was a huge increase from last year isn't it? There is justice in the world.

That may be true but I'll never get to play it. Apparently there are only 10 of us here in the UK who actually LIKE baseball, so we don't get any baseball games any more

 

[shykyoichi]

Overestimated my predictions. >.<

 

[nib95]

Way to move the goalposts.

No one is saying that KZ2 is a flop, but it's obvious that it's not meeting the sky high expectations that have been set for it based on previous trailers, Sony marketing and the media.

That is exactly what was lacking...

 

[Gaborn]

It'll gain them new consumers. Will it pass 360, no. And I don't care if it doesn't. But at $300 it won't be stupidly expensive.

But what I'm saying is that new customers is only valuable if you can afford doing a cut that large. I don't think they believe they CAN afford it, meaning they don't expect those new customers to sufficiently offset their increased expenses incurred from a $100 cut enough to justify the drop. If sony was working towards passing the 360 for example and it was close then sure, I could see the point. But right now that's just wishful thinking.

 

[Averon]

It'll gain them new consumers. Will it pass 360, no. And I don't care if it doesn't. But at $300 it won't be stupidly expensive.

What's the point of going down to $300 if it'll just bankrupt SCEI? The only way Sony can afford to drop the PS3 to $299 is if the SW sales rises enough to cover the huge losses they'll take on the HW. The fact that Sony hasn't done it yet, despite all the reasons in the world too do so, should tell you that Sony doesn't think the SW sales can cover the massive HW losses they'll assuredly take. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if SCEI is content with selling only 200-250k PS3 a month on average at $400.

 

[Stop It]

Get on your boxing gloves then because I have no intention of buying GT5. Boring car racing games bleh.

I will be partaking in plenty of Sony's first party this upcoming year and the years ahead, but have zero interest in gran turismo!

*Shakes fist in Mrbobs general direction*

Why did Nintex get clipped?:lol

I think he might have been slapped for generally being insane this last week. That or his comments about certain stereotypes about the Dutch, which, considering that he IS a Nederlander, would be harsh.

 

[ZealousD]

Halo Wars cannot outsell KZ2. If it does then Sony should surrender the console war.

I will be floored if Halo Wars comes close to KZ2. But I could just be ignorant.

no, there are like 10 times more replies in KZ2 thread than those in halo warz thread :lol

i would be more than surprised if kz2 cant beat halo wars in Mar :lol

I have no doubt that Killzone 2 will out sell Halo Wars because first person shooters sell better than RTS on console. It would be shocking if Halo Wars sells well, and even more shocking if it has legs.

I'm just leaving these here. I'm sure there's more.

 

[cvxfreak]

So much for move and shoot. :lol :lol

 

[chuckddd]

Oddly enough, I just saw the commercial for MLB09 The Show during a baseball game. Talk about finding your target audience.

 

[Zhuk]

Private Hoffman said to me in a previous thread about KZ2 that if it did less than 750,000 in Feb and March NPD that he could consider that disappointing figure sales for KZ2.

Even Private Hoffman think the game did badly and didnt live up to the expectations of every KZ2 fan who were running amok on the boards with their avatars like it was the second coming of christ.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=14458442&postcount=93

Not really a fair comparison given that Gears 1 launched during the first part of November during its debut, and KZ2 only has two days of tracking.

That being said, I have full confidence that Feb + March will show sales above 750k for KZ2.

And another brilliant gem:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=14456710&postcount=16

I think it'll do well for a fighter, which isn't exactly the most poppin' genre out there.

I think Halo Wars is going to not do very well. Microsoft closed down ensemble and they don't appear to have much confidence in the product. I'm reluctant to say "bomb", because they may do enough to turn a profit based on the Halo name alone. Who knows.

Killzone 2 and RE5 will both do quite well.

Ahh the delicious irony of it all! :lol

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

It's weird , i don't know who this is aimed at, but it's pretty much GAF Sony fans who do this title on title.

I'm sure we'll move on to inFamous next, then Uncharted 2 after that and maybe GT5 Real Edition after that (if ever) , but we'll run through the exact same routine again and again.

Actually, what he's saying has been true for a while. Sony fans have more or less resigned themselves to the PS3's fate for the last few big releases. Sure, they went nuts with the list wars (even including Final Fantasy VII Remake and Lair as system saviors at one point) at the beginning of the gen and while some may still BELIEVE, the ones who stick around long enough know now to keep their stated expectations muted.

I'm a little disappointed that Madworld didn't make the top ten this month, though not because the game appeals to me personally. Rather, it's because publishers/devs seem to be looking closely at this game's sales as an indication of more traditional games' performance on the console. Which wouldn't be a good indication at all, of course, since the trick to sales success on any console would be to look for gaps in the market - at needs not being met. I believe that Madworld's performance will be more a function of need for a game of its type overall rather than the need for it on the Wii specifically.

I want Madworld to succeed because it might eventually mean a wider variety of software built for the Wii. I suspect asking GAF to understand would be pissing into the wind, but whatever.

 

[shintoki]

I'm just leaving these here. I'm sure there's more.

Its like shooting fish in a barrel!