• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Media Create Sales: Week 45, 2014 (Nov 03 - Nov 09)

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
So, yeah, what I can get from this nice debate is that SQEX is still willing to put out middle-sized project. Those are converging towards the mobile market, of course.

Well I mean they just said that a few days ago. I think our disagreement is over what a middle-sized project is and, most importantly, what kinds of middle-sized projects they're willing to greenlight.

dFMMKZx.png

Overall, I don't think they're willing to fund things that, for example, are handheld titles they feel will sell 200-400K units worldwide.

Now, if the titles do only sell that much, I don't feel that invalidates that opinion unless they continue to actually make that series despite what it's selling.

Basically I see Square Enix as a company that's focused on high margins, and the vast majority of high margin titles fall into a few categories:

1.) MMOs with recurring subscriptions or notably successful f2p models.

2.) Relatively high earning mobile titles (they seem okay with supporting top 100 titles), which is part of why they abandon titles that fail after 6 months and focus on new ones with higher potential instead. They do release some ports of titles (and things like Hitman Go), but they have noted these are basically to onboard people onto the products that make a ton of money and they usually have very small teams (Hitman Go was made by 4-5 people, and the other games are often straight ports or really quickly done titles with sprite filters).

3.) Handheld games that are selling 1+ million units while not costing a fortune to make. It's plausible that Theatrhythm's costs are so low and DLC sales so good that it bucks this trend and is high margin despite this. This can also extend to Japanese market specific console titles that are made for a relatively low budget. Dragon Quest Heroes is going to be much closer to 1 billion yen than 10 billion yen, so it can sell in line with the handheld titles (or even adjust for price and sell less) and get the same margins.

4.) Major AAA blockbusters where the sales hopes are usually in the 4+ million unit range. These are your standard Final Fantasy mainline titles

5.) In the West, f2p PC games, which is their newest business line (Nosgoth, Triad Wars). They don't have big earners here obviously, but they hope to some day, and it's not hard to name off a bunch of major successes other companies have in this category.

To tie this all back to the original question, someone at Square Enix sat there and went "Having these people work on FFXIV makes more sense than Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 3 because the margins will be better versus their time, since they're senior staff and FFXIV is a big hit and FFTA3 isn't likely to make a ton of money to make switching them over worthwhile."

I think if we look at their decisions through this high-margin title lens (and often high sales goes hand in hand with that at retail), Square Enix's decisions become less confusing, even if their ability to execute is poor. Square Enix's tagline for Hitman Absolution was "The Original Assassin" and they set sales expectations at 4-5 million for the fiscal year, which is about half of what Assassin's Creed does in its first few months. They didn't hit that, but their statement there is pretty clear, and I don't think that changes the original intent of the strategy.
 

Mory Dunz

Member
But hardware sales for PS4 almost doubled, compared to last week.

Hm, starting to wonder about the PS4

Just like Vita, ps4 will explode any moment now.

I dunno, If CoD or WE is giving a bump, maybe actual big games will have a bigger impact than I initially thought.
Not saying it will be a success by any means, but that it might supass the Wii U more quickly than my initial prediction. That's...about it.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
Ever since the new demo Comgnet's preorders for PS Nova have gone up quite a bit daily. Maybe not a bomb!

Yeh, preorders are looking better more recently on comgnet for Nova, although it's releasing in 9 days.

Code:
[3DS] Youkai Watch 2 star performer - 1053pt
[3DS] Pokemon Alpha Sapphire - 750pt
[3DS] Pokemon omega Ruby - 665pt
[PS3] Tales of Zestiria - 127pt
[PSV] Phantasy Star Nova - 125pt
[WiiU] Super Smash Bros for WiiU - 101pt
[3DS] Pokemon Ruby Omega Alpha Sapphire Double Pack - 90pt
[3DS] Labyrinth 2 Fafnir Knight of New World Tree - 76pt
[PS3] Shining Resonance (Normal Edition) - 49pt
[PSV] The Irregular at Magic High School Out of Order (First Press Limited Edition) - 43pt
[PS3] Shining Resonance (Limited Edition) - 40pt
[3DS] Final Fantasy Explorer's - 39pt
[PS3] Shin Sangoku Musou 7 Empires (Normal Edition) - 37pt
[WiiU] Super Smash Bros for WiiU GameCube controller connected tap set - 32pt
[PS4] Assassin's Creed unity - 32pt
[PSV] Fate / hollow ataraxia (Limited Edition) - 30pt
[PSV] Gundam Breaker 2 - 25pt
[PS3] Gundam Breaker 2 - 25pt
[PSV] God following dimension Geimu Neptunia Re; Birth3 V CENTURY (Limited Edition) - 23pt
[PS3] Resident Evil HD Remaster - 23pt
 

L~A

Member
20mn until we get some interesting numbers. Curious to see what Media Create will do with the MK8 bundles.
 

L~A

Member
Media Create:

New3DS LL 38,457
Vita 19,301
PS4 15,537
Wii U 14,002
New3DS 13,373
3DS LL 9,172
PS3 4,711
3DS 4,199
Xbox One 2,245
Vita TV 675
Xbox 360 91
PSP 25

Toad at 28k.


SQyikyz.gif


Sort of, ha ha.

Edit: damn, didn't think I'd double-post. My bad.
 
Famitsu:

New 3DS - 39020
Vita - 18428
PS4 - 14173
3DS - 12370
Wii U - 12063
PS3 - 4254
Xbox One - 2469

COD managed to get XBO back into 4 digits I'm guessing.
 

L~A

Member
^

Arrrrgh.

***

Oh, just realised something...

13,544 for MK8.

Looks like MC does count the bundle this time around.
 

Impotaku

Member
about Youkai Watch 2.5 : is that really just an updated version ? As far as I understand it's tied to the movie which will be launched the week after, so I presume the story is different from YW2

People seem to think it's just the exact same game with a few extra youkai. The game was always meant to be 3 versions it's not just some suprise cashgrab update, i realised this when i discovered masknyan in the end sequence of ganso & honke he can't be obtained in either yet he was in the ending, along with the fact that the shadow masked kaima youkai appear in the encyclopedia but can't be made friends with.

The story in shinuchi does seem to revolve around the story of the film not sure if it replaces the main story quest of ganso & honke or if it's a bigger side quest. Even in ganso & honke had different main stories at one point in the game, there is now also a youkai train that takes you to a huge resort area with an amusement park and traditional onsen. Along with those, you can find new exclusive youkai to shinuchi and also unlock a lot of new youkai when you link your shinuchi version with ganso & honke. The houseki nyans were only available in the first game via really hard to get medals they are now available in shinuchi if you link it with your previous games it unlocks a dungeon you can find them in.

The official website lists all the extra stuff but i imagine there's a lot more hidden away as they are not going to list everything that's new.
 
Top Bottom