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Forspoken did well in all regions apparently

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
So, is this a diamond in the rough? Or is this as bad as the reviews made it seem? Or is it marketing doing its thing?
This is not a 65. Just like how Days Gone wasnt a 70 and Gotham Knights wasnt a 66.

An underrated game that is decent and fun to play. There are far worse games out there that are rated much higher. For whatever reason, the reviewers give a pass to some 7.5 games rating them in the mid 8s and then jump on the hate bandwagon rating them 6.5 instead.

This is probably a good 7.5 game probably going up half a point if you liked 100%-ing it. 6.5 makes it sound like trash which it clearly isnt.
 
Best to wait on those Square financial reports before claiming win or loss.
This.

Unless Sony fronted a lot of the marketing bill, or Square managed to save money somewhere they couldn't with the Tomb Raider reboot years ago, this is looking like a heavy under-performer. PS5 digital sales are nothing to celebrate in Japan, they're just now starting to get machines sold in the region, and the country still leans more on packaged software than digital, though it is a strong growing space, as Splatoon 3 has proved.

NA sales will be frontloaded, and debuting at number 7 ain't that great for this caliber of a game, as it's getting beat out by old releases like Eldin Ring. Game will likely drop hard next month with Howarts debuting and its appeal not being very strong to begin with. I can only imagine why Square delayed Forspoken so much. Game must've had a lot of technical issues. It doesn't look like they changed the content much, if at all, and I'm not sure where the confidence for this game's success would be coming from. I think the mystery and fantasy of it's initial tease as Project Athia tickled our fancy and drew real interest, but it was defeated with the first trailer unveiling the game as a contemporary Sekai anime plot with strong swearing and endless yapping within an open world.
 

Killer8

Member
This is not a 65. Just like how Days Gone wasnt a 70 and Gotham Knights wasnt a 66.

An underrated game that is decent and fun to play. There are far worse games out there that are rated much higher. For whatever reason, the reviewers give a pass to some 7.5 games rating them in the mid 8s and then jump on the hate bandwagon rating them 6.5 instead.

This is probably a good 7.5 game probably going up half a point if you liked 100%-ing it. 6.5 makes it sound like trash which it clearly isnt.

This really highlights how reviewers need to be using that whole scale. When the difference between a 6.5 and a 7.5 is just one point yet is enough to change opinion from "shit's trash" to "it's okay", we should start re-evaluating how we score games.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
I'm sure it did well (no reason why it wouldn't) but I'm not sure why Hi-Fi rush is a term of comparison? You'd imagine a game with two years of marketing and a massive pre-order campaign would sell better than one with five minutes of marketing and zero pre-orders, especially in the first few days.

Also, that table from NPD is dollar sales. Forspoken costs $70 Hi-Fi rush costs $30. It doesn't really prove what you think it proves.
Fanboyism? I mean why else compare sales of a game that is a console exclusive on PS5 that has been marketed for months and is full price to sales of a game that was surprise dropped that most people will play as part of their GP subscription? This extremely stupid comparison just makes me angry. What's next comparing the average processing power of a PS5 to Xbox Series consoles and declaring PS5 more powerful?

This game must have done well on their marketing push alone. The reviews were middling to bad. Sales are going to drop like a rock soon enough.
 
Extremely happy Forspoken did well. I never agreed and always dismissed any of the negativity around the game. To me, it always looked fun to play. Hi-Fi Rush's sales compared to Forspoken honestly never mattered. It's also game pass day one release that's exclusive to Xbox Series consoles and PC.

I shouldn't even have to bring up the zero marketing at all pre-release. But even then assuming that it did get pre-release marketing, that would have likely drawn every bit as much, if not more, attention to it via Game Pass rather than just boosting sales. Traditional sales are no longer the primary means (or the best way) to assess the success of all games on Xbox anymore if Game Pass on day one is at all a factor. This is more true for games that don't make it to other platforms besides Xbox and PC.

The goal of Game Pass, especially day one Game Pass releases, is to get more people subscribed and playing games through Game Pass, or to keep existing subscribers from leaving Game Pass. It's a very simple strategy, and it's working. While not lighting up a sales chart won't be the case for all major Xbox Game Pass day one releases, it will start to be more common as Game Pass grows in popularity and gains more subscribers. Xbox simply has a vastly different strategy or core business objective now. Just like the core business objective of games like Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, or Apex Legends isn't to make NPD or other sales charts. It's always great to see, but the goal is to feed the Game Pass beast and keep it growing.
 

Kerotan

Member
I find it kind of funny how you used to be the king of claiming the ps5s in Japan weren't being exported and they were totes buying only digital or ps4 games and now that the software sales continue to be incredibly poor you're the first to hide behind exports to China!

Anyway, unless square Enix has stopped taking crazy pills , they have the most over the top expectations. Remember the disappointment in tomb raider and hitman (and how out of sqe s nonsense hitman is a success)
I can't imagine squareenix is happy with forspokens performance
I never once claimed they weren't going to china. Where's your proof my guy.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Extremely happy Forspoken did well. I never agreed and always dismissed any of the negativity around the game. To me, it always looked fun to play. Hi-Fi Rush's sales compared to Forspoken honestly never mattered. It's also game pass day one release that's exclusive to Xbox Series consoles and PC.

I shouldn't even have to bring up the zero marketing at all pre-release. But even then assuming that it did get pre-release marketing, that would have likely drawn every bit as much, if not more, attention to it via Game Pass rather than just boosting sales. Traditional sales are no longer the primary means (or the best way) to assess the success of all games on Xbox anymore if Game Pass on day one is at all a factor. This is more true for games that don't make it to other platforms besides Xbox and PC.

The goal of Game Pass, especially day one Game Pass releases, is to get more people subscribed and playing games through Game Pass, or to keep existing subscribers from leaving Game Pass. It's a very simple strategy, and it's working. While not lighting up a sales chart won't be the case for all major Xbox Game Pass day one releases, it will start to be more common as Game Pass grows in popularity and gains more subscribers. Xbox simply has a vastly different strategy or core business objective now. Just like the core business objective of games like Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, or Apex Legends isn't to make NPD or other sales charts. It's always great to see, but the goal is to feed the Game Pass beast and keep it growing.

It's a bit crazy that people would think that a $30 game that dropped in the middle of nowhere was going to beat a $70 game with pre-orders on a chart measured in $. The numbers Hi-Fi Rush would have needed to do to make that happen would have been insane. Hi-Fi Rush had an amazing launch for a game of its price and genre, we'll have to wait and see what Square thinks of Forspoken.
 
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GymWolf

Member
This is not a 65. Just like how Days Gone wasnt a 70 and Gotham Knights wasnt a 66.

An underrated game that is decent and fun to play. There are far worse games out there that are rated much higher. For whatever reason, the reviewers give a pass to some 7.5 games rating them in the mid 8s and then jump on the hate bandwagon rating them 6.5 instead.

This is probably a good 7.5 game probably going up half a point if you liked 100%-ing it. 6.5 makes it sound like trash which it clearly isnt.
6,5 is only trash for stupid people who don't know how the fucking score scale work.

I have 2 runs on days gone and i consider that one a 7.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
6,5 is only trash for stupid people who don't know how the fucking score scale work.

I have 2 runs on days gone and i consider that one a 7.
So do i but critics clearly don’t use the full scale. 65 is considered trash for a reason.
 

anothertech

Member
You sound pathetic.

Play the games you enjoy. Why do you care so much what others play or what makes Sony/Microsoft money? Fanboy warrior.
Touch a nerve? lol well, someone sounds pathetic I suppose

I'm pretty indifferent. I just love Forespoken. All the hate it got next to the praise hifi was getting just made this funny and satisfying for me.

But cry more buddy. Forespoken shits on hifi rush

*Saltshakergif*
 

PeteBull

Member
Im waiting for official numbers that it at least sold 1m, from all the data it doesnt look like it, and for game with such long development time/big marketing budget, if it sells anything less than 5m initially, aka 70$ launch window purchase, u know it didnt make investments back.
Only good thing about the game was the actress, which obviously i was biased towards coz she has some polish roots (u can tell by her surname too :p )

On pc game runs terribly while looking well below avg and having extremly high requirements but fk it, if game was actually good/had good mechanics ppl would enjoy it, not the case tho.
Kinda shame, coz its one of the worst sony exclusives, the order 1886 had at least its graphics(and it still holds up even in 2023 as u can see in the vid, and it even holds stable 30 fps, altho black bars and as a consequence 1920x800 res made it all possible and it was short(maybe 6-7h) game with much shorter dev time/smaller budget, but look at metacritic reviews/user score https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/the-order-1886 and now look at forspoken's https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/forspoken

Game is huge bomba, as a playstation fan it breaks my heart coz in its place we could have gotten something good actually, akin high-fi rush =/
 

GymWolf

Member
Im waiting for official numbers that it at least sold 1m, from all the data it doesnt look like it, and for game with such long development time/big marketing budget, if it sells anything less than 5m initially, aka 70$ launch window purchase, u know it didnt make investments back.
Only good thing about the game was the actress, which obviously i was biased towards coz she has some polish roots (u can tell by her surname too :p )

On pc game runs terribly while looking well below avg and having extremly high requirements but fk it, if game was actually good/had good mechanics ppl would enjoy it, not the case tho.
Kinda shame, coz its one of the worst sony exclusives, the order 1886 had at least its graphics(and it still holds up even in 2023 as u can see in the vid, and it even holds stable 30 fps, altho black bars and as a consequence 1920x800 res made it all possible and it was short(maybe 6-7h) game with much shorter dev time/smaller budget, but look at metacritic reviews/user score https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/the-order-1886 and now look at forspoken's https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/forspoken

Game is huge bomba, as a playstation fan it breaks my heart coz in its place we could have gotten something good actually, akin high-fi rush =/

Forspoken absolutely crush the order in the gameplay department, people who actually played the full game here on gaf loved the combat and traversal, it's everything esle that is trash, exactly like the order is trash outside of graphic.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Sony probably paid a small fortune for this and FFXVI so it probs did well for them in the grand scheme. No idea though.
 
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envyzeal

Member
Edit: my phone went crazy and I missquoted someone. Anyway, still didn’t play and I hope it doesn’t take too long to get to a service so I can try it.
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
Im waiting for official numbers that it at least sold 1m, from all the data it doesnt look like it, and for game with such long development time/big marketing budget, if it sells anything less than 5m initially, aka 70$ launch window purchase, u know it didnt make investments back.
Only good thing about the game was the actress, which obviously i was biased towards coz she has some polish roots (u can tell by her surname too :p )

On pc game runs terribly while looking well below avg and having extremly high requirements but fk it, if game was actually good/had good mechanics ppl would enjoy it, not the case tho.
Kinda shame, coz its one of the worst sony exclusives, the order 1886 had at least its graphics(and it still holds up even in 2023 as u can see in the vid, and it even holds stable 30 fps, altho black bars and as a consequence 1920x800 res made it all possible and it was short(maybe 6-7h) game with much shorter dev time/smaller budget, but look at metacritic reviews/user score https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/the-order-1886 and now look at forspoken's https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/forspoken

Game is huge bomba, as a playstation fan it breaks my heart coz in its place we could have gotten something good actually, akin high-fi rush =/


Huge fan of Poland at the moment 😀
 

Spaceman292

Banned
This is not a 65. Just like how Days Gone wasnt a 70 and Gotham Knights wasnt a 66.

An underrated game that is decent and fun to play. There are far worse games out there that are rated much higher. For whatever reason, the reviewers give a pass to some 7.5 games rating them in the mid 8s and then jump on the hate bandwagon rating them 6.5 instead.

This is probably a good 7.5 game probably going up half a point if you liked 100%-ing it. 6.5 makes it sound like trash which it clearly isnt.
Whenever anyone defends Forspoken it all just sounds like damning with faint praise.

'It's not a 6.5, it's a 7.5!'
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Whenever anyone defends Forspoken it all just sounds like damning with faint praise.

'It's not a 6.5, it's a 7.5!'

Because it is. The fact is that its still rated too low imho. I beat Forspoken and it was above 6.5 for me. It was engaging enough to beat, and the lore, music, traversal and combat is there. They were on to something. I feel the same about Sonic Frontiers, that game has potential.

And this just means people who like it agree the game isn't 8+ material, because they also mention the obvious cons.

Remember when Zelda got 8.8? Fans went mental because it wasn't a 9.5. Thats probably faint praise as well.
 

GymWolf

Member
Whenever anyone defends Forspoken it all just sounds like damning with faint praise.

'It's not a 6.5, it's a 7.5!'
Maybe because we are realist people and not rabid fanboys?

The game is decent if you care about combat and traversal, not enough to go over a 6,5-7.

Halo infinite has great gameplay and i would not score that thing higher than a 7.
 
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Shifty1897

Member
I'm sure Square Enix is trying to find a way to spin this before they have to explain numbers to shareholders, but as others have said, even if the game sold 2 million copies, with the length of time in development for a AAA game, and the marketing budget behind it, that's a flop.
 

reksveks

Member
https://www.rpgsite.net/news/13882-...es-did-not-perform-as-well-as-we-had-expected

Reviews of “FORSPOKEN,” which we released on January 24, 2023, have been challenging. However, the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities, so it has yielded results that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future. That said, its sales have been lackluster, and while the performance of new titles with February and March release dates will be the ultimate determinant, we see considerable downside risk to our FY2023/3 earnings.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Sony probably paid a small fortune for this and FFXVI so it probs did well for them in the grand scheme. No idea though.
I would say yeah because it was a much hyped tech demo for the ps5. So just that alone made it worth while for Sony.
As a game it’s pretty trash though. 😄
 

Ozriel

M$FT
I would say yeah because it was a much hyped tech demo for the ps5. So just that alone made it worth while for Sony.
As a game it’s pretty trash though. 😄

Released day one on PC, so all they probably had to do was convinced Square it wouldn’t sell much on Xbox. They probably forked out less than you imagine for Forspoken exclusivity.

Final fantasy would have cost them much more
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Released day one on PC, so all they probably had to do was convinced Square it wouldn’t sell much on Xbox. They probably forked out less than you imagine for Forspoken exclusivity.

Final fantasy would have cost them much more

It was definitely a “showcase for ps5 reveal” decision . I doubt they even cared about the actual game sales.
 

Kvally

Banned
Maybe because we are realist people and not rabid fanboys?

The game is decent if you care about combat and traversal, not enough to go over a 6,5-7.

Halo infinite has great gameplay and i would not score that thing higher than a 7.
I would give the Halo Infinite campaign an 8.5. The MP portion at 5/10 at release.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
So it sold somewhat, but numbers don’t mean satisfaction and neither do they reflect remorse and disappointment.
 
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Well, it outsold Hi-Fi Rush because it wasn't launched in a subscription. So in order to play it you must buy it full price or wait for a sale. That's what makes new game launches so hard nowadays. What comparison can we even use for something launching into a subscription, just how many people are playing it? And then the logic is that new game launch is why the person remains subscribed, and doesn't cancel? I just don't understand how that business model works.

Having said all of that, I am a frequent Game Pass subscriber, probably 3-6 months out of the year, on average. Just depends what's launching. I like to check new stuff out, without needing to buy it, or be relegated to a limited demo. 🤷‍♂️
 
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