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Media Create Sales: Mar 22-28, 2010
- Thread starter Chris1964
- Start date
Honestly I don't expect anything to change, at least not substantially. While the Wii 2 may be expected to lead, I think third parties will expect that the people who buy their games will be the people buying the PlayStation 4.donny2112 said:
I mean, Microsoft spent the first few years of this generation fulfilling the needs of the JRPG audience while Sony sat there twiddling their thumbs, but the people who wanted JRPGs still went and bought the PS3 instead.
In a slightly different regional example, Sony has been pushing first/third person shooters very hard this entire generation, but the FPS/TPS audience on their console still pales in comparison to Microsofts. Once a company has a set audience that likes to buy it, it is very hard to get that audience away from the company. Almost all the major upsets in the industry come from people carving a new audience for themselves, not from successfully stealing someone else's audience.
Microsoft's success in the console arena came from bringing Western (and especially Western PC) games to consoles, while Sony's came from making games targeted at a somewhat older audience. Nintendo continues to have a nigh unassailable position in casual and family gaming because they have built such an impressive reputation in the field dating all the way back to the NES. While there have been large changes in which company is leading the market, a lot of it seems depends on which targeted market is actually bigger at the time.
I mean, if we look at the genres Sony actually grew their company on, we largely see console JRPGs, action platformers, fighting games, and racing games, almost all of which have seen quite a drop in popularity lately on a worldwide scale. However, Nintendo has really managed to grow the popularity of casual games on consoles, while Microsoft has really driven the migration of Western PC (especially FPS/TPS and WRPG) games to consoles, bringing along all the needed features such as high quality internet play as well as making several large titles in the category themselves. Despite Sony's huge focus on FPS/TPS games this generation, they have been totally unable to take Microsoft's audience from them, and I suspect that their efforts to take Nintendo's audience with the PlayStation Move will face a similar fate.
To really get third party success in Japan, Nintendo would either need to change the types of games third parties are making or somehow successfully steal Sony's market from them, both of which seem to be highly improbable tasks.
Jokeropia said:
I don't think you fully understand. Gundam Musou is a Bandai Namco initiative, developed by Omega Force. Yes, Omega Force is an internal developer within Koei, but the game itself is not a Koei initiative and so they would not be involved in making forecasts for sales or expectations. Different companies. Do you understand this?
It would be like claiming Tecmo makes stupid predictions if Nintendo says Metroid Other M will sell a million copies and it doesn't, simply because Team Ninja is developing the game.
The 1 million prediction was made by Bandai Namco alone, yes, but Koei still cared enough to publicly state what they wanted it to sell. What I'm saying is that it was a Musou game and it underperformed, and Namco's offical prediction is relevant for this.duckroll said:
I guess you could say I have two points, even though they're somewhat related:
1.) Koei wanted Gundam Musou to sell 2 million -> Koei have some crazy expectations/predictions.
2.) Gundam Musou sold much less than the official publisher expectation -> it underperfomed compared to expectations.
Not really, as Tecmo has nothing to do with Metroid. It's not Metroid: Ninja Gaiden or whatever.duckroll said:
I'd say Nintendo have been quite successful with these genres as well.Nirolak said:
I would argue that the types of platforming, fighting, and racing games Nintendo and Sony makes are fundamentally different though.Jokeropia said:
Mario and Mario Kart were quite successful games on the SNES and Sony wanted in on the platforming and racing genres. However, instead of assault these titles head on and face a high chance of defeat, Sony essentially decided to side step them by releasing games that were in the same category, but highly different in nature.
For example, Sony's major entry into the racing genre was a simulation racing game. While it is technically in the same genre as Mario Kart as a whole, and some people who play one are going to play the other as well, the audiences that play the games are going to be different as a whole, and the ones who play both will generally feel that the games are different enough that they are both worth buying.
Sony's attempts at platformers also took a decidedly more combat focused approach that Nintendo's platformers. While Spyro was one step along this path, it was especially apparent when Sony made platformers on the PS2 with games like Ratchet & Clank, which had very heavy focuses on combat.
Nintendo took a very similar approach when entering the fighting game genre. Instead of trying to make a game to take on Tekken, they instead focused on a fighting game just about anyone could play with Super Smash Brothers. Much like their racing game Mario Kart, this game also allowed people who were worse at the game to still have a fighting chance while playing, something that went against the very spirit of a game like Tekken and really most of the fighting game genre as a whole.
So while it is true that Nintendo has had success in these genres, their entries are not really comparable to the style of games that Sony and many third parties released in these genres. Those types of games are the subset of the genre that I am referring to when I talk about dropping popularity, and that is a market drop that Nintendo isn't effected by while Sony is effected deeply.
For genres where Nintendo has more traditional titles, like Star Fox in the flight action genre, Nintendo has also seen a drop off in sales to the point where they no longer make games in the genre.
So I would say as a whole that Nintendo and Sony never really directly competed in those genres, and that's why they were able to both have success there. What is largely being suggested in this thread though is really a direct competition. The suggestion being made isn't really that Nintendo should try and invent new types of JRPGs and Musou-like titles, but rather get existing JRPGs and Musou-like titles on their consoles, and this is what I feel isn't going to really work all that well.
Well, there is a potential problem here. While it might be quite easy to port from the Xbox 360 and PS3 to the Wii 2, we might very well end up with a situation where it is hard to port from the Xbox 720 and the PS4 to the system.donny2112 said:
It could actually potentially be even harder than porting from the Xbox 360/PS3 to the Wii is right now. You see, a lot of companies like Epic, Crytek, and id are all making engines based around mixing polygon raster and raycasting through voxels to create graphics, whereas right now everyone is just using polygon raster whether they are making games for the Wii or are making them for the 360/PS3. If the next generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony actually allow this to be done while the next Wii does not, the prospects of actually porting games between the two are extremely dire, especially with the kinds of sales Wii version of these games usually get. While I'm sure some games would still remain entirely polygon based, as we gott further and further into the generation more and more developers would start to pick this method up, meaning the Wii 2 would pretty much be screwed whether developers actually were interested in ports or not.
Of course, there is a fair chance that the next consoles won't be architectured to allow this feasibly, but even then, the same level of power difference as this generation might exist, which would still cause a fair level of porting difficulties to the point I imagine many of them would still not happen.
There is also the chance that the Wii 2 might be the same power level as the 720/PS4, but given the history of industry so far, I'm not sure how much that would even help them. I could easily be wrong on that last point however.
Nirolak said:
I don't know, I get your point, but I think you're overthinking things a bit. If the situations had been reversed from the start in terms of 3rd party support I think the audience would have moved to the Wii, just like a lot of that audience moved to the DS. I think Nintendo will have more sway over developers coming off the Wii than the GC, and like donny said I have to think at the very least they will get a lot more support if the specs are similar this time around- just like if the Wii would have been more powerful this gen Wii would have received virtually every high profile HD title.
While I definitely see your point, I feel there is one issue with this hypothetical in that if the Wii was more powerful this generation, it probably would also have cost quite a bit more, most likely causing it to sell quite a bit less. And if that was the case, the PS3's sales relative to the system might have looked much more favorable, which could cause a situation somewhat similar to the GameCube or N64 again.schuelma said:
I mean, this very concept seems to rely on Nintendo being able to create a console with very similar specs but a much lower cost, which would ultimately seem to imply a fairly significant loss leading situation. I somehow feel this is even more unlikely to happen than for 20 major third party Wii games to be announced in Famitsu next week.
Well, I definitely agree with you there, but let me try to illustrate my issue with the hypothetical in a different way.schuelma said:
In this same universe where Nintendo was able to log create a $250 console that's about the same power level of a PS3, it wouldn't be entirely unfeasible for Sony to have come out with a $300 console with a motion controller, approximately the power level of a PS3, and a game just like Wii Sports back in 2005, beating Nintendo to their own game. In this hypothetical universe, Nintendo might be reeling to the point where they were considering becoming a handheld company only.
I mean, while I'm sure we could have many really interesting conversations about this reality, it would just feel a bit silly to me, because it relies on something so different than what had actually happened.
Nirolak said:
You forgot one thing : Sony might be able to emulate / copy, but it will be difficult to innovate / create. I have a hard time believing that Sony might be able to release a clone of Wii Sports in 2005. Nintendo as a software publisher and developer is much more solid/innovative compared to Sony.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
schuelma said:
wii2:
and what rough beast, its hour come round at last / slouches towards gamecube to be born?
thestopsign
Member
Lets all just hope that the Wii was an NES, and that the Super Wii will be the SNES. The comparison isn't flawless, because the NES had considerable support beyond what the Wii has gotten, but there was a marked improvement from the NES to the SNES in terms of support. On the hardware side of things, I think Nintendo is going to have a very hard time reaching the heights of the Wii with its successor. I just can't see it having that same buzz that the Wii had/has unless it has something unpredictable and tantalizing like the Wii had with motion control.
I guess the question I would ask in that case is do we think a Wii 2 with the power level of an assumed high power PS4/Xbox 3 would sell nearly as well as the Wii? And also, would it be able to make anywhere near the type of profit margins* Nintendo is used to, especially if they are competing with hardware that has a notable leading loss?schuelma said:
*Note: The profit margins would include software since presumably licensing fee revenue would go up while hardware profit would go down, so I'm curious if people feel that this trade-off would be worth it.
Nirolak said:
As others have noted in other threads, Nintendo isn't averse to good graphics, it's averse to expensive graphics. Given that the bump from the PS3 to the PS4 (and likewise from the 360 to its successor) isn't very much, I think that Nintendo will be perfectly happy to compete graphically. The Wii (and, to a lesser extent, the DS) is the only console Nintendo's produced that is graphically underpowered compared to its competitors.
As long as Nintendo can keep costs down while producing a graphically competitive console, they will.
cw_sasuke said:
I would argue it's distinctly in Microsoft and Sony's interest to make their graphics expensive. Neither of them has a line-up strong enough to carry a console, so if they let Nintendo get the majority of third party sales, it will be a dire blow to both of them.gerg said:
I doubt either of them will pull a PS3 and have a $200+ leading loss, but I imagine they will want to keep a leading loss of at least $50-$100, if for no other reason than to price Nintendo out.
The only way I can see either of them not doing this is if they want to compete directly with Nintendo in the casual sector, which I can only see ending disastrously for whichever of them tries.
Parl said:
I agree that Microsoft or Sony (and especially Microsoft) may be more lenient to suffer an immediate loss in order to achiever long-term financial gain, but from the perspective of market share I struggle equally to believe that Microsoft or Sony are willing to lose a large percentage of the video game market to Nintendo. In that case, their next console needs to be relatively low cost, which means that an (abnormally) expensive, loss-leading console is somewhat out of the question.
As a multimedia company, it's greatly in their interest to get as many consoles into people's home as humanly possible, because they can then use it as a storefront for their own products directly in people's living room. One of the main reasons Microsoft entered the console business was to stop Sony from doing just that.gerg said:
With a lower leading loss and more standardized parts, getting the hardware profitable would actually be a fairly quick process, and with an extended generation, it wouldn't be nearly as hard to swallow, but it would still ultimately achieve their goal of keeping Nintendo back.
I'm almost entirely positive that Sony would far rather lose around $1 billion on their console launch than risk ending up with a GameCube in terms of sales. If losing money was their biggest concern, the PS3 would have never released at its manufacturing cost and they wouldn't have lowered the price this Fall to the point where they are still losing money in 2010.
Microsoft was even willing to have large leading losses two generations in a row. I don't see why people expect them to suddenly be highly adverse to the idea.
Nah, I just think Nintendo pretty much require good profititability from the video game market because that is essentially their only market, Sony and MS can strategically justify losses, but I don't think for much longer.gerg said:
PS3 has probably cost Sony $6b so far, or around that ball park, a feat which means they should have massive market share. By rights, Nintendo should be in distant last, but they somehow manage to sell at a profit and still out compete their competition massively, and that's still without the support of third parties.
They need to try to tame Nintendo's strength still by trying to not allow them the third parties, but making these massive losses to do it just can't go on much longer. I don't think there's going to be a Blu-Ray to justify it to Sony next time, and I'd guess MS would be the most willing to make a huge loss next-gen.
Selling these consoles do help Sony and MS, but the huge losses just don't seem justified, nor predicted by them.
Nirolak said:
I agree that Sony's recent actions have been motivated by marketshare.
But, as I've said, even if we consider the matter from the perspective of marketshare, there's still motivation not to release an expensive, high-end console from the supposed fact that Sony won't want to concede a significant portion of the market to Nintendo (or even Microsoft if they decide to follow Microsoft's lead).
The situation seems to be playing out somewhat like a Prisoner's Dilemma, where, if either Microsoft or Nintendo decide to opt for a low-end machine, Sony has everything to lose by releasing a high-end machine.
Bear in mind that I agree that Sony and Microsoft's relative strategies will be to lose some amount of money on their consoles until they can work their way to profitability, but that this won't take the form of a large graphical leap similar to that between this generation and last.
I agree that Microsoft is a bit of a rogue in this manner. On the one hand, it's strategy (inasmuch as it wanted to prevent Sony dominating the industry) has worked, and Microsoft has secured itself as a significant entity in the industry using its traditional skills. On the other hand, the Xbox 360 has been hopelessly outclassed by the Wii, and in that sense the concept of losing billions of dollars to become the dominant force in the living room hasn't played out.
Oh no, you misunderstand me here. I didn't mean expensive to consumers, I meant expensive for Sony. For example, let's say Nintendo takes their GameCube->Wii pricing trend of $50 more than the last machine and releases a system for $50. Assuming Nintendo decided to make no money on the launch of their console, Sony could release a console at $300 that they would need to charge $400 on to break even. Since price per power efficiency has greatly improved in both the realms of processors and video cards since 2005, chances are quite high that they could make something that would appear to be significantly more powerful than Nintendo's console without sinking them into ridiculous debts. This is what I am suggesting they will do, not that they will release another $600 console.gerg said:
While I agree with your statement here, you have to consider that we're dealing with the company that was willing to spend $44 billion buying the albatross that is Yahoo to try and fight Google in the search industry, a fight that is endlessly more helpless than fighting Nintendo in video games. While the merger didn't go through, they are still pouring ridiculous amounts of money into this goal. They were also willing to lose $50 a Zune trying to beat the iPod when they came ridiculously late to the party in mp3 players, and that is a device where it is significantly more difficult to make up the money you lose when you sell one. They are not exactly a sane and reasonable company when it comes to dealing with a market they really want to own.gerg said:
thestopsign said:
Did the SNES really have better support than the NES? I don't remember many big third party devs NOT being on board for the NES, and other than the games that Sega published themselves on the Sega Master System, I don't remember there being that many significant titles that skipped the NES. While the SNES also had awesome support, it lost market share, and had moderate to high levels of competition from Hudson and Sega in various territories. In the 16-bit generation, you can actually list AAA third party efforts that were not on the SNES.
the thoroughbred
Member
I don't know if the topic from the first 100 posts is still alive. But look at Zelda and Mario.
Twilight Princess did relatively poorly. Sunshine and Galaxy both didn't did sell what both brands should sell. They are Japanese, made in Japan, born in Japan. But that market just isn't as big. Retro for them needs to remain retro.
Twilight Princess did relatively poorly. Sunshine and Galaxy both didn't did sell what both brands should sell. They are Japanese, made in Japan, born in Japan. But that market just isn't as big. Retro for them needs to remain retro.
I don't really disagree with that, I'm just saying that Nintendo grew on these genres as well. (Even if it was done in a manner that Sony can't easily emulate.)Nirolak said:
Well, the last traditional console Star Fox was on the N64 and did fine, so I don't think they've really given it a fair chance lately.Nirolak said:
Nintendo owned the JRPG market with the SNES btw (and pretty much do it again with the DS), so it's not like it's unattainable for them.
the thoroughbred said:
The 2D Mario games sell a lot better than the 3D games like Galaxy, but worldwide, Galaxy still sold over 8M. That is more than anything has sold worldwide on the PS3, and more than all but a small handful of 360 titles (COD games and Halo 3?). Even in Japan, it's not like the game failed to sell.
About Zelda Wii:the thoroughbred said:
I think it has the standards to become a major hit for Wii this December (if they manage to bring it out this year).
There were hints at Wii Sports Resort about it and Nintendo will try to capture that market with the proper advertising.
Same goes for Metroid: Other M. Its sales won't sell the charts on fire but I expect it to outsell Metroid Primes by a good margin.
Galaxy 2 is a strange situation. (2d) Mario brand is powerful right now and NSMBW will help it but the best scenario I see for it is to match the sales of the first game, kinda like Spirit Tracks. Not that this bad, 1 million sales would be a great achievement.
Nintendo learned many things from Galaxy and NSMBW advertising and I'm almost sure a big part of the advertisign campaign for all these games will be based on nostalgy.
Nirolak said:
Firstly, I don't think that Nintendo will release a $300 console. I also think you're ignoring any potential pressure from developers to not increase graphical capability too much, lest development budgets increase too much once more. I'm also skeptical of how much the difference between the two hypothetical machines would be, but I'm not well versed in that knowledge. (The GameCube launched at $100 below the PS2, and yet those two were graphically similar. I know that the $100 gap now buys a lot more than it did in 2001, but if the Xbox 3 and the Wii 2 are technologically similar then Sony runs the risk of multi-platform games simply not utilising that extra technology.)
You've shown very well that Sony could theoretically do what you are suggesting. But you don't seem to have answered the fact that there appears to be no practical motivation to do so when from both financial- and marketshare-driven perspectives such a maneuver isn't particularly beneficial, as well as the fact that I imagine that most game developers would loathe a particularly large increase in development costs. Perhaps I hold Sony in higher respect, but I'd like to think that they'd take heed of all these factors and release a less powerful but more price-competitive console.
Edit: As I said, it all plays out like a complex version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. If Microsoft releases a souped-up 360, then Sony wins by outperforming it. But if both Microsoft and Nintendo release consoles that also target the expanded market, then Sony loses by releasing an expensive console.
I'd argue that Microsoft is in a different position in its fight against Nintendo than it is in either its fight against Google or its fight against Apple. Microsoft's strategy has always been to sink lots of money into a market until it has some level of dominance upon which it can turn a profit. Microsoft is finally turning a profit in the gaming industry, and has fewer of the pressures that directly or indirectly forced it to make a loss in previous years now acting on it. So why would it then go back to losing more and more money?
But of course, Microsoft will do what they feel is necessary, and I'm sure that they're more than capable of taking the losses that might be needed to achieve their goals.
the thoroughbred
Member
kswiston said:
I know it did well ww. But it didn't even hit 1 million in Japan. I know it still has good numbers. But not what a mainline Mario should sell. Those that relate to the nostalgic feeling of Mario,only relate to it in 2D. And Twilight Princess, something that should be considered a national treasure, a pinnacle of an entertainment (art to some) form that was created in Japan (well it definitely became popularised by them) didn't even reach 500k. Or something around there. I guess I am trying to say, they like what they like, no racial factors involved.
I'm talking about Japan but even worldwide isn't the best selling Prime at 1,5M? It's not impossible for Other M to outsell it. Unless you mean combined. Now that I think of it (Famitsu):apujanata said:
[GCN] Metroid Prime (Nintendo) - 39.829 / 78.384
[GCN] Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Nintendo) - 17.680 / 40.355
[WII] Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Nintendo) - 34.151 / 74.647
Total: 193.386
Other M can outsell them combined.
the thoroughbred said:
[NFC] The Legend of Zelda (Famicom Disc System) (Nintendo) - / 1.690.000
[NFC] Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (Famicom Disc System) (Nintendo) - / 1.610.000
[SFC] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Nintendo) - / 1.160.000
[N64] The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo) - 386.234 / 1.143.570
[NDS] The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo) - 288.282 / 902.386
[GCN] The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Nintendo) - 287.346 / 742.609
[NDS] The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (Nintendo) - 320.940 / 629.239
[N64] The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Nintendo) - 314.044 / 601.542
[WII] The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo) - 145.068 / 554.109
[NGB] The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Nintendo) - / 540.000
[NGB] The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (Nintendo) - 191.802 / 373.352
[NGB] The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (Nintendo) - 190.029 / 372.690
[NGB] The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (Nintendo) - 49.513 / 314.309
[GBA] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past + Four Swords (Nintendo) - 84.107 / 293.989
[GBA] The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap (Nintendo) - 92.882 / 235.400
[GBA] Famicom Mini: The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo) - 36.861 / 217.636
[GBA] Famicom Mini: Zelda II - The Adventure of Link (Nintendo) - 35.335 / 139.800
[GCN] The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (Nintendo) - 54.782 / 127.399
Zelda games never were huge sellers in Japan.
Hero of Legend
Member
I don't see the big list, just the few dozen on that page.
You can't see it because they haven't uploaded it yet. When they do you'll find it hereHero of Legend said:
http://geimin.net/
bttb said:
Hero of Legend
Member
Chris1964 said:
I thought bttb meant that by it'll obviously take a while to do all 1000, but I guess bttb meant BOTH.
