It's not unless Capcom wants to go out of business.
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that's not a linear relationship. Modern tools and engines make a difference. FFXV (at least the game we got, not the sunk cost of cancelled prototypes) cost less or at least comparable to FFVII.
I had forgot they withheld that. Still makes their SW target for this fiscal year all the more confusing though. Weren't they expecting a total of around 10mil?
Did they say that? First time I've heard this.
That's not how these things work really. 3DS MH4 actually used the same engine and tools PS4/XBO/PC MHW is, there's no magic efficiency button. The higher fidelity your target is the more detailed and complex the supporting art and assets need to be. And then add on the costs of developing across 3 platforms with 2 being console submission branches.
There's really no question World is going to cost more than 4 did. And 4 sold 8.2m total copies between it's 2 releases.
All I can find is that XV 'broke even' day one at 5m copies.
And your position mostly makes sense if the only appeal of playing on 3DS is because the software. Although there are indeed people who would follow MH (and other software) to the other systems, many people played MH because it was on the 3DS, because it was on a portable, they liked to setup local LAN sessions, it was their favorite systems or were huge Nintendo fans or other reasons.
The same engine, yes. The same tools, not really, because you no longer need to take into account the constraints of 3ds hardware.
To set an example, I doubt middlewares like Speedtree were used on 3ds, but they are common on current gen games.
World should be more expensive, but if 3ds MH were taking that much manpower, the difference is not going to be massive.
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FFXV being profitable on 5m copies means its budget cannot be far over ~150million (and most estimates wouldn't put it that high). FFVII had a 145M budget in 1997. Add inflation.
test_account
XP-39C²
The guy he replied to said that 1 million fanbase would be abandoned. Really doubt that every person who bought the game on 3DS would only be interested in playing it on the 3DS. There are some of those, indeed, but i doubt its the majority or anything close to that.
More constrained hardware doesn't usually raise costs. In fact the opposite tends to be true.
And given you seemingly weren't even aware of the actual 3DS MH staff counts in the first place, you should probably be quieter on this issue.
That FFVII budget includes marketing. We're talking production only, which was $45m for FFVII.
LordRaptor
Member
No, you are completely wrong.
Budgets more than double for games generation to generation, and massive use of things like outsourcing and procgen middleware doesn't reduce inter generational budgets, it tries to prevent it becoming orders of magnitude more expensive.
The FFXV breakpoint included marketing too. That is a standard practice.
The big different thing are all these announcements all came very early (at the very beginning I'd say even) of development in order to recruit new employees.
Said recruitments where in most cases also pretty blatant on what direction they want their projects to go (eg. my previous post), these are also not some job posts here and there, they're all about dozens if not an hundred new openings
Now why do you recruit in the first place
1) To expand your teams according to business prospects
2) To acquire fresh blood with new knowledges that your current employees may not have
3) To replace employees who left
Considering the context I'd say 3) is a very minor reason here, it's more about 1) (especially for Istolia, Atlus and Cygames) and 2) (especially for Monolith), but I'd even argue that 2) is also a very important part for Atlus as they've never tackled such thing before or at least not on this scale, and also for Istolia which is part of the biggest JRPG publisher so you might wonder why they didn't move staff to that new team instead.
It may be a shot in the dark on my end too, but as far as I know Japanese companies and employees don't have the same mentality than western ones about switching jobs. While working in the same company all your life is not as true as it was before the 90's bubble, it is still much more prevalent than it is in western countries, thus making these massive recruitments announcement imo more of a mid-longterm prospect than if it was from a western company.
For now it's clearly on a project basis, but there seems to be a will to shift towards a newer/fresher (whatever the hell that means) direction for their projects illustrated by most (if not all) by the use of new IP, it may also be a direct reaction to the supposed "stagnant" structure of JRPG for which they've been criticized about rather frequently for the past decade.
Persona also kinda showed, imo, what was the ceiling for a top rated JRPG, 2-2.5M sales worldwide, that's what you get when you reach the very best rating according to western states.
That's an appealing number for many publishers of course, but I think they're self conscious that it's not a score/quality (93) that can be reached by JRPG on a frequent basis, and if you're not called Final Fantasy the ceiling is more around 1M sales on western markets (Tales of Zestiria is around 800k I believe for example)
So what can you do instead to reach a broader audience? I think that's where the answer lies, search for a new approach which is what these recruitments are pointing towards too, how that new approach will be felt in the finished product is something that is left to be seen but that's the common will of multiple publisher at once that I see there.
I do agree than in term of overall themes not that much will change, but there's a difference between namedropping elements from western folklore (Fate IP comes to mind as the worst offender, even if it's not a JRPG it does show my point) and making at its core a game that is influenced by western fantasy both from a narrative point of view (which happened before) and from a game design point of view (which we didn't see much as of today)
For Atlus it's a pretty big shift in what they've ever done.
For Monolith it's written pretty much on the job recruitment page
For Square Enix they're basically trying to get new people because they apparently can't do with the thousands others they have currently and chose to have new people do that instead of moving older staff from their current projects.
Cygames are starting from scratch
Anyway it's just a feeling and I may have an hard time to get my point through, I hope I did mention enough arguments to make it a worthwile read at least.
Graphics Horse
Member
This is built from the rubble of another game which is not something that can happen too often, so I'm not sure how fair it is to compare, for example were giant CG cities built for Versus and then repurposed for ffxv?
No, the FFXV figure was 'break even' for production according to Tabata. So it cost more than 3x what VII did to make. FFX was actually cheaper ($33m) than VII and makes a better technology comparison with XV for looking at MH4 to World.
That can be applied to anything, really. Why bother with Rocker League on Switch at all if what Nirolak said is true? What about Undertale for PS4&Vita if the game could be played on any PC or Mac? One of the reasons why MH sold as well as it did in Nintendo system on the West, it was Nintendo support itself and being one of the few exclusive big third parties on the system. In other words, people wanted a big game for their 3DS, and MH was one of the best options for the system. At least that Why I got MHTri on the Wii after not getting the PSP/PS2 games.
test_account
XP-39C²
No one has said that every single person will buy it on a different platform though. The guy Nirolak first replied to implied that 1 million userbase would be abandoned, as in that MHW wouldnt see any sales (or hardly any sales) from that 1 million userbase. I doubt that is the case.
It can really go any way with core fanbases when you jump hardware providers. In the west Final Fantasy saw massive growth going from Nintendo to PlayStation, while Tales saw the opposite happen and Dragon Quest stayed consistent going the reverse way (PS to Nintendo). And even though DQVIII and DQIX sold roughly the same in the west you have to wonder how much of it was from the same buyers.
People are agreeing it's outrageously low, not that it won't hit it. We don't know if that's specifically Capcom's target yet though.
frankie_baby
Member
Monhun doesnt sell that great on "consoles"
There is no way it is. Maybe its their domestic estimate.
test_account
XP-39C²
Theres indeed different factors that play a role, but that the whole userbase, or close to it, refuse to play on another system, i doubt that will happen.
We do new hiring every spring, and there has always been an influx of new blood, however seniority plays a heavy role in determining your job. Unlike many western jobs, in Japan with really big companies you are often applying for the company more than the specific job, and will get shifted around based on how you perform, and where the company needs you. That means that the youngest of the employees have very little input and it takes years before their influence and names start appearing. However the seishain "real employee" jobs are changing, and becoming more scarce in favor of contracts.
I don't know about the west, but the RPG genre isn't really considered stagnant here, and has constant innovation. It however is transitioning more towards mobile and or appealing to the west.
The basis of the stories is a non-issue, everything is recycled, and so we get wonderful things like FF12 is A New Hope is Kakushi Toride no San Akunin. The stories always bounce around between sources and whatever is forgotten becomes new.
As towards style of gameplay, I guess the problem is either stick to the D&D template, and revel in the turn base, or try to give the player something to do. I believe the latter to be preferred by western players, and probably why games tend that way, however there are lots of gameplay mechanics used to do that same thing that are constantly being invented, especially in mobile games, which I don't believe gets much innovation in the west (I could be wrong, there aren't many western games here).
Minsc: I think people expected Capcom to have unrealistic expectations for the title, so such a low number is shocking. 1.5m is a strange number, it is too low to be a world number, but a tad to high to be Japan only.
Yeah that was my understanding as well. Numbers will be interesting- like you are saying, 20-25K would seem to be the most realistic number. If not less.
D.Lo
Member
If it's really their prediction, it's ridiculously insanely low.
Which makes no sense from Capcom, they probably expect RE:R to sell that on Switch to pass the test. Surely they'll tell investors they expect it to sell 7-10 million, justifying the higher budget etc.
It's more if that userbase is otherwise interested in buying that system for the game if you don't own it, if the consoles don't have too much market overlap. You might be a fan of a series enough to get it if you own the console, but is it worth buying a whole new console for? Especially if that machine is relatively expensive. See: Tomb Raider.
test_account
XP-39C²
Sure, if the ~1 million people only own a 3DS, but i dont think thats the case.
Gotdatmoney
Member
Even Tri surpassed 1.5m lifetime. That estimate for world is totally a low ball by any metric unless it's just looking at domestic sales. (Which it isn't given it is listed with MVC:I whichvis a simultaneous release).
It's either that or World launches on like March 20th so they expect the fiscal to be lower even if the total target is a ways higher.
What country are we talking about? There isn't a whole lot of overlap between 3DS owners and PS4 owners here.
D.Lo
Member
Let's say only 300k of the western MH 3DS buyers own a PS4/Bone. I think that's plausible? The other 700k are either Nintendo-only gamers (it was a game given a push by Nintendo themselves, so plays into that cohort) or handheld only gamers or kids or whatever. I can't see too many of a cohort like that getting a PS4 just for MH. It may push some over the edge who were interested already, but it's likely a lot will just abandon the series.
That said unless someone has exact market data on demographics of western 3DS MH buyers there is no way to know for sure. Maybe they are all hardcore gamers who have every platform so this is exactly what they have been dreaming of. I think that's unlikely given it's quite a quirky very Japanese series, but who knows.
I believe 2.5M without the PC, which is TBD.
SporeCrawler
Member
1,5 million seems really low if ww and utopian if japan
factor in the higher development cost and you have a classic capcom move.
(If the 1.5 million is true)
That's the only other reason I would think their forecast is so low that it would then have a bigger forecast for the next fiscal year.
But with regards to the current fiscal year, I doubt it because they would have to be releasing a lot of games to make up their 10.3 million sales target.
In the previous fiscal year they had three titles make up 80% of their sales forecast and all those games failed their forecasts, it was only from Resident Evil re-releases that they were even lucky to beat their total sales forecasts of new titles because they had lower expectations for those titles.
Right now, if you count MvCi and MHW which makes up 3.5 million sales if true. There's still another 6.8 million sales units from new titles to get. Even after adding the high end of their expectations for the Switch versions of MHXX, USF2 and RE:R, there's still about 5.3 million sales to go from new titles.
You've got Dragon's Dogma, the rumoured Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, Great Ace Attorney 2 which bombed, I don't know how the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 is doing, the rumoured Okami remaster, don't know what else I'm missing but the point is they'd need a lot of 500k or higher sellers to make up the difference.
When was the last time that Nintendo had a bundle of its home console with a third party game? MH3U? I remember a Tales of Symphonia bundle for GC that was also comprised of 20-25.000 units IIRC (that week GC beat PS2 too I think).
Man, I loved that colour (but not the tackled Lloyd in the middle)
When was the last time that Nintendo had a bundle of its home console with a third party game? MH3U? I remember a Tales of Symphonia bundle for GC that was also comprised of 20-25.000 units IIRC (that week GC beat PS2 too I think).
Man, I loved that colour (but not the tackled Lloyd in the middle)
Dragon Quest X, Wii U.
Gotdatmoney
Member
I agree with you. Though to take it a step further, even if World does 3m in the fiscal year that forecast is still insane with what they currently have announced. Also I dont understand the USF2 Seitch forecast. Are they expectimg it to sell another 300-500k for the rest of the year? Because lol.
Finally at home so I can try to summarize what I was trying to say.
A current gen game does not need ubisoft-like manpower to be made. You always argue about how Japan was slow in the HD transition, but that's precisely because japanese devs didn't get into the same spiral than western devs. The rare cases of that happening, see RE6, got them to re-evaluate and scale back to a more manageable project like RE7. But then, this is also taken as a mistake because reasons.
One day we read how MHW is not looking particulary impressive and should totally be on Switch without effort, and the next day is a huge production than won't ever break even because making a game with current tech is a crazy endeavour.
In these discussions we rarely read anyone mentioning the difference in margins a publisher get from a ~$40 3ds game to a ~$60ps4/pc game, the different digital adoption those platform have, specially in the west, the different viability of certain bussiness models that those platforms support (gaas, dlcs) or how using different tools makes the relation between visual fidelity and cost not that simple.
Only that the game looks better so it needs to sell an arbitrary amount of copies or they are being stupid. And that's the dept of the discussion we ever get.
Capcom is not posting losses, they took a very conservative strategy but they are not in inmediate danger. The fact that we all agree that Capcom is risk averse should be an indicator that MHW is probably not a crazy overbudgeted project and that they are not betting the company on the game.
A current gen game does not need ubisoft-like manpower to be made. You always argue about how Japan was slow in the HD transition, but that's precisely because japanese devs didn't get into the same spiral than western devs. The rare cases of that happening, see RE6, got them to re-evaluate and scale back to a more manageable project like RE7. But then, this is also taken as a mistake because reasons.
One day we read how MHW is not looking particulary impressive and should totally be on Switch without effort, and the next day is a huge production than won't ever break even because making a game with current tech is a crazy endeavour.
In these discussions we rarely read anyone mentioning the difference in margins a publisher get from a ~$40 3ds game to a ~$60ps4/pc game, the different digital adoption those platform have, specially in the west, the different viability of certain bussiness models that those platforms support (gaas, dlcs) or how using different tools makes the relation between visual fidelity and cost not that simple.
Only that the game looks better so it needs to sell an arbitrary amount of copies or they are being stupid. And that's the dept of the discussion we ever get.
Capcom is not posting losses, they took a very conservative strategy but they are not in inmediate danger. The fact that we all agree that Capcom is risk averse should be an indicator that MHW is probably not a crazy overbudgeted project and that they are not betting the company on the game.
Here's the reference: http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=246602956
Capcom initially expected 200,000 sales from USF2, so it's understandable it blew away their expectations so they think it will finish up at 500k.
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Miitomo tops 10 million downloads on Android!
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Miitomo tops 10 million downloads on Android!
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Gotdatmoney
Member
Ah okay gotcha. With price promotions and a whole fiscal period that should be doable.
They are gonna be disappointed by XX Switch Version though and probably RE:R 1&2.
You're talking about a company that dedicated more than 150 person to Dragon's dogma for over 4 years while taking a jab at Nintendo's handling of BOTW.
MHW has been in development for over 4 years now (since 2013) and won't release before 2018. That's close to a 5 years dev cycle which is significantly longer than any previous entry.
KratosEnergyDrink
Member
MHW has obviously a higher budget than any 3DS MH and will likely sell much less than any 3DS MH.
Capcom sales and profits are declining since years. For example in dec. 2016 they saw profits decline of 60% year on year. The only real money maker are their mobile games and merchandise/licensing. Console/Handheld games profits are declining fast, and thats probably because of their weird "strategy".
I highly doubt that 300 developers were working on the 3DS version of Monster Hunter all at the same time and for the entirety of 3 years. Furthermore, from my (very limited) understanding, the rise of the cost of development is moreso asset creation than game logic when it comes to HD development.
Eolz
Member
Lol.
That said, USF2 is already there and MH is doable.
Looking forward to the next tests. Okami (not HD) port for 800k?
/s in case it's not obvious
Maybe MHW will release on March, so 1.5m is just the target for first month or first week. I think it's a proper target.
And yes, MHW will cost much more than any 3DS mh, but it can be sold at 10000yen, just like DQXI. It isn't a big deal.
By the way, Capcom maybe the second biggest japanese third party right now. It will be fine.
And yes, MHW will cost much more than any 3DS mh, but it can be sold at 10000yen, just like DQXI. It isn't a big deal.
By the way, Capcom maybe the second biggest japanese third party right now. It will be fine.
Short documentary about MH4G. I don't know Japanese but allegedly according to this video, MH4G has a production team of 200 people and a production budget of several billions of yen. Can someone confirm/deny?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc0rdazCw24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc0rdazCw24
Eolz
Member
This.
But then again, there's no official expectations for the game yet, I doubt they'd want that low WW. Probably what they expect in JP though.
Gotdatmoney
Member
I don't see a huge reason to speculate MHW's budget besides being more than the 3DS entries.
These are all expensive games to produce either way. 3DS or otherwise. If the discussion is that the game's cost vs its sales potential is out of wack you would need to actually have a starting point for budget which none of us do.
This is personally why I look at units. But there is still lots of unknown factors like how the G rank expansion will be handled. Or the monetization model on the extra content (which knowing Capcom will be horse shit).
At this point in time all I think we can be sure of is if Capcom is only expecting 1.5m lifetime, they lost their damn minds
These are all expensive games to produce either way. 3DS or otherwise. If the discussion is that the game's cost vs its sales potential is out of wack you would need to actually have a starting point for budget which none of us do.
This is personally why I look at units. But there is still lots of unknown factors like how the G rank expansion will be handled. Or the monetization model on the extra content (which knowing Capcom will be horse shit).
At this point in time all I think we can be sure of is if Capcom is only expecting 1.5m lifetime, they lost their damn minds
LordRaptor
Member
If they're trying to compete with the big boys in the western AAA space, then yeah, actually they do need to be spending the AAA western big boy money on staffing, production and marketing budgets.
Yeah I did read about all of that but I'm not familiar enough to remember all at once as it's not exactly how it works where I came from
As for the seniority, these recruitment campains striked me as "we're lacking 90% of the manpower needed", there are also a lot of senior jobs listed, but there are only so many people with "10 years of experience, familiar with action rpg, worked on one or multiple UE4 AAA title, fluent in japanese and english, influenced by western trends" that are available in Japan and ready to start a new job.
If it's like western countries, many job profiles are basically searching for someone that doesn't exist, pretty often in my country we call that the "five legged sheep" because the job profile is more there as wishful thinking (and lazy recruiters that don't try to know if such a profile even exist in the first place) than a real description of what skills the candidate is supposed to have.
Hum getting sidetracked there.
Point is for Istolia, Cygames and even Studio Zero, the teams are starting from next to zero with new IP so even if seniority has its part it's clearly the kind of environment where you'd expect, as a junior, to have more involvment in the creative process than said in a team already established working on a existing IP (eg. Persona for example)
"Real employee" getting replaced by is basically a worldwide trend currently some countries resist more than others but this is what, as societies, we're going for currently.
That is the general perception yes, Japanese games and JRPG especially have lost relevance in the market and been considered more "stagnant" than their western counterparts, it's been the case since the start of the HD console era, I don't think we're discussing anything new there, same for the mobile (where a huge part of the audience just moved once and for all in Japan)
It's not particulary my opinion either (I'm used to it being very different from market expectations
), but sales are there to back the sentiment, the japanese dedicated videogame market is in decline, almost all historical JRPG IP are on a downward trend including Dragon Quest very recently despI'm sorry but you lost me there
Mobile market is smaller and very different, you don't see high profile releases such as Granblue, for RPG it's a non factor in term of marketshare even if it some titles begin to be localized.
Regarding innovation I do see these 4 new projects as being projects that we wouldn't have see a few years ago, mobile was indeed for a while the environment where game designers where more free to try a lot of things (as long as there's gacha that is
) from a game design point of view.Maybe now that the storm passed for major publishers and they're more confident we will see them being less risk averse about their output on dedicated game device as well, Istolia and Re Fantasy do strike me as that, Granblue is Cygames spending that shitton of money they've got everywhere they can and Monolith is just the next logical step after failing to take off two times (and probably soon three) with a similar formula.
And yes turn based has a bad rep in western markets for some reason, or rather it's part of many things that just make the audience think the game is "dated" and make you feel "less involved" or something (you even see people, for real, argue that turn based battle is something that existed because of the limit of hardware a few decades ago and shouldn't exist anymore considering what consoles/pc/mobiles are capable of now), it's part of what is limiting you audience if you're shooting for western release.
I forgot to mention it but Capcom trying (once again) to relaunch Dragon's Dogma is something on a similar vein (no pun intended with Code Vein there), I'm not quite sure why that title didn't work btw