DMeisterJ said:
-Being the worst selling iteration in a series that has always sold 10 million is hardly a disappointment when it's poised to sell at least 8 million based off of how good a demo of the game sold.
Again you miss the point. Certain franchises have higher expectations. If the next COD game comes out and sells less than 10 million will it be a dissapointment? In isolation yes selling that much is good but when you factor in the history of the franchise it doesn't look so good.
DMeisterJ said:
-The cost of the game has been highly subsidized due to the aforementioned demo
Hasn't this been the case for the other GT's as well?
DMeisterJ said:
-Polyphony Digital has developed three other retail titles and this game in the last six years.
And this matters why? Again i addressed this already. I am not discussing what PD spends their time doing rather the relative success of the GT franchise.
DMeisterJ said:
I don't get why the fact that PD may or may not develop another GT PS3 game is relevant to the argument that GT5 will be a disappointment... What is the relevance?
I already explained this. If PD only gets out 1 GT game this gen instead of 2 they are essentially halving the earning potential of the series.
DMeisterJ said:
Concerning whether or not they made the game for a profit, of course they did, why else would a business make something to sell?
Yet again you completely miss the point. Of course GT was made to make money but simply breaking even isn't enough. You were talking about GT5 prologue helping to make up the budget. To me this means little, GT5 isn't a game that should just make back it's budget. This is sony's biggest franchise and they need it to pull in big numbers.
DMeisterJ said:
And why is it relevant that this game outsells previous entries of the series?
Because in general businesses tend to like growth. Going backwards in sales usually isn't a good thing.
Oh and than theres the slight issue of the massive increases in cost associated with making games on a HD consoles. Selling less copies of games that cost more to make can't be good for business.
DMeisterJ said:
I mean, no PS3 game has done it yet, and GT5 will probably not reverse the trend. The PS3 userbase is about 100 million or so lower than the PS2 (shipped), so I'm not too sure Sony believes that GT5 can achieve a 27-28% attach rate, and I think that they're fine with that.
These are likely reasons that GT5 will have disappointing sales i don't see how that improves the situation. I guess when Sony is explaining the failures of the PS3 to investors they can just say "well considering we launched at $600 we have actually done pretty well".
I also don't see why they would be fine with earning so much less money with GT this gen. Not only will GT5 almost certainly be the lowest selling game in the series it will also be the only one released this gen. That is a huge loss of profits.
DMeisterJ said:
I will say that it could happen though. Look at GoW3. That launched on the PS3 with the lowest install base that a GoW game has ever launched on, and in a month where three other huge games came out and managed to sell even more than GoW 1 or 2 did on their opening months... It wouldn't surprise me in the least if GT5 did extremely well.
Poor example for 2 reasons. Firstly because of the size of the franchise. The GOW series sells less than 4 million each iteration and is more targetted towards the core crowd. It's not a franchise that would be handicapped by a small userbase.
GT5 on the other hand is a series that has traditionally sold well over 10 million. It also appeals to a much broader base of gamers. It is much more likely to be hamstrung by a small install base.
Also selling more in the opening months means little. How does GOWIII compare to 1 and 2 in ltd sales?
Edit:
KingDizzi said:
Where are you getting all this from? I know GT5
was heavily bundled in Japan in 2008 for a few months but cannot recall it being bundled with hardware in EU or NA for an extended period of time. There was a bundle for GT5
with a 40GB system released but besides that nothing I can think of. All big new games are bundled, Halo 3 got a bundle, GeOW3, Killzone 2 etc so you need to understand the difference between a bundle and a pack in. A pack in is something like Wii Sports or that Forza 2/Viva Pinata bundle which came with every pro for a period of time.
Kind of hard to source this type of thing. I am almost certain i remember there being a few bundles with prologue in it.
KingDizzi said:
No one cares about youre opinion that GT5
sales were due to "heavy bundling mostly in Europe" and that inflated sales, cold hard evidence would be best in a situation like this.
Again im not sure what evidence i can really provide. Short of scouring the internet looking for the specific bundles and trying to find out exactly how much each one sold.
Also even if we assume that there were absolutely no bundles it changes little else of what i posted.
KingDizzi said:
That said I agree with you about GT5 being the worst selling mainline GT game to date but still think it will reach 8-9 million with ease.
And considering the franchises history and the fact that this will almost certainly be the online maing GT released this gen that would be a huge disappointment.
