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NPD March 2012 Sales Results [Up3: ME3 Total, Binary Domain]

C

CartridgeBlower

Member
outunderthestars said:
Why is everyone blames marketing when a game bombs?

I saw a good amount of coverage for the game. It just looked incredibly generic and flat out dumb. I imagine that has more to do with it not selling than the failure of the marketing dept.
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...isn't that marketing's fault?

Pretty sure you just proved my point. Thank you.
 
K

Kenshin001

Member
CartridgeBlower said:
Why? Just because it's not well-known? Nothing about it is a budget title. It's a great game. The problem wasn't the price or distribution, it was marketing, as is frequently the case with SEGA post-DC.
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Yes, because it's not a well known IP. Or a well known developer with a track record of AAA games. I'm sure it's a great game for a lot of people but that's irrelevant to the general game buying public. Even if those people were to go to the gaming sites they'd see average review scores. I've only played the demo but it seemed like a budget title to me and I have no intention of paying full price for it.
 
C

CartridgeBlower

Member
Kenshin001 said:
Yes, because it's not a well known IP. Or a well known developer with a track record of AAA games. I'm sure it's a great game for a lot of people but that's irrelevant to the general game buying public. Even if those people were to go to the gaming sites they'd see average review scores. I've only played the demo but it seemed like a budget title to me and I have no intention of paying full price for it.
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You played the demo and thought it felt like a budget title? Seriously?

I can understand it not being your cup of tea, but...yikes. The term "budget title" gets thrown around way too loosely.
 
Auto_aim1

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
I feel so bad for Sega. :( The game definitely doesn't deserve such low sales, but then again, plenty of people knew this would happen.
 
M

mujun

Member
Binary Domain is awesome. Lots of people mention marketing as a possible counter to terrible sales, also a lower price point. Maybe lesser known games from big companies could benefit from having demos from big-name upcoming games included. Like with Crackdown.
 
K

Kenshin001

Member
CartridgeBlower said:
You played the demo and thought it felt like a budget title? Seriously?

I can understand it not being your cup of tea, but...yikes. The term "budget title" gets thrown around way too loosely.
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It's my cup of tea, just not a $60 cup of tea. It's a, what, 6 hour TPS, hardly unique and there are lot better alternatives on the market. The shooting felt good, characters completely generic, graphics OK, VA terrible. It was fun but nothing that made me go wow, I must have this game.
 
S

Satchel

Banned
BD is a hard game to categorise.

If I was a one console owner, I could probably justify buying it. It was fun-ish.

As a multi console owner with a ridiculous, and growing backlog. It can't be justified. It didn't demand my attention enough.
 
S

specialguy

Banned
Satchel said:
BD is a hard game to categorise.

If I was a one console owner, I could probably justify buying it. It was fun-ish.

As a multi console owner with a ridiculous, and growing backlog. It can't be justified. It didn't demand my attention enough.
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It's one of those games I sorta, kinda kicked around buying, but never did. Like another recent example, Rage. Both didn't sell well, coincidence?

Then again I have little interest in some much bigger hits (though, that's often genre related), so obviously my tastes dont always match the market.

I might pick it up on sale, but I have a feeling I wont even do that.

I'm more a triple A guy. I'll spend 60 for a few triple A a year (EG, Halo 4 day one) and that's about it. I'd probably rather spend more time playing games I've already beat and know are loads of fun, like Crysis 2 and Gears 3.
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
The problem with Binary Domain is that, while it's high quality and slightly thematically different than its direct inspirations, it's still directly competing with those higher-level cinematic cover shooters (GeoW3, UC3) whose big third installments have just came out months earlier. Then, over the last three or more years, several other third parties have released extremely similar cinematic cover shooters that were cut from the same template established by Epic and Naughty Dog. All of them failed quite hard, too. The genre is simply highly competitive and the top two dogs representing it are also two of the highest budgeted series in video game production and marketing history. If you cannot keep up with the top guys in the room, you only have to look at the trail of coattails riders to see how poorly you may fare.
 
O

Owzers

Member
Binary Domain is an often drab cover shooter with ally a.i. that always seems to have no idea what it's supposed to be doing. When people say budget release, i think it's because parts of the game don't feel thought out very well.
 
T

The M.O.B

Member
specialguy said:
It's one of those games I sorta, kinda kicked around buying, but never did. Like another recent example, Rage. Both didn't sell well, coincidence?

Then again I have little interest in some much bigger hits (though, that's often genre related), so obviously my tastes dont always match the market.

I might pick it up on sale, but I have a feeling I wont even do that.

I'm more a triple A guy. I'll spend 60 for a few triple A a year (EG, Halo 4 day one) and that's about it. I'd probably rather spend more time playing games I've already beat and know are loads of fun, like Crysis 2 and Gears 3.
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The estimated data suggests that in week 1 RAGE sold just over 400K units on Xbox 360 and a further 240K units on PS3
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For it's ridiculous budget and 5 year dev, Rage sold bad but it definitely sold.
 
S

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
sillymonkey321 said:
Binary Domain is an often drab cover shooter with ally a.i. that always seems to have no idea what it's supposed to be doing. When people say budget release, i think it's because parts of the game don't feel thought out very well.
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It's not going to win any graphics awards either. Which is part of the reason why I think mid tier budget projects would still benefit from newer hardware. Everything is going to look better than current gen at launch, even if it's mostly improvements in IQ and framerates.
 
B

B.O.O.M

Member
Why are so many media outlets quoting RE R numbers from joystiq as fact and saying the game sold 120k+ in march alone? I already saw around 3-4 popular sites using the information.
 
R

Rad-

Member
Wait so BD is actually a decent game? From all the videos it looked so mediocre. That's why I never gave it a shot.
 
C

CadetMahoney

Member
goomba said:
So who is this "trusted source" regarding vita sales and why should we trust them ?
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creamsugar said:
Yep, maybe Sony hired some gatekeepers to post wrong numbers based on imagination, lol.
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make.believe™ lol

madmackem said:
are those figures usa or ww?, as i thought ps3 was outselling 360 ww.
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KageMaru said:
Not sure how this year has been going, but the 360 outsold the ps3 last year WW.
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Wonder if the gap is widening or not. Alot of ppl were mentioning worldwide sales in NPD threads, but since this there doesn't seem to be any interest in bringing it up anymore.

hmmm. . . *strokes beard.*
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
Decent is a positive form of middling quality while it's never positive to be mediocre as I've always viewed the term as meaning 'just below average'. That's a fairly important step from one side of average to the other, I think, especially when you view your gaming experiences based on entertainment value versus price and expectation. You know, like 'was it worth the money and time spent?' That sort of difference, being right on the line.
 
C

C4Lukins

Junior Member
madmackem said:
are those figures usa or ww?, as i thought ps3 was outselling 360 ww.
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NPD thread. The 360 is winning by a huge and increasing margin in the US. Worldwide I think the 360 is a few million ahead, but the PS3 is doing much better and probably will surpass it.
 
J

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Everyone in marketing knows this simple fact: marketing is what you do when your product is no good.

Now, there is a lot of leeway in what 'no good' could ultimately mean.
Some products simply sell themselves. They create their own audience.
Ultimately, if something is uniquely special, innovative, creative... it will find an audience regardless of marketing. If a product fails without marketing, and fails with it.... well, YOU may like it, but this is indicative of the fact that this product is not design to fit the taste of the current market at large. Which granted, is a very fluid thing, but.... some people just need to accept that hey, I love this... most people do not. It's as much inherent in the core content offer as it is in the individual brand managers whose job is to 'create a unified brand message and identity for consumers.' Yadda yadda. (some people have strange expectations/definitions for what marketing is).
 
C

C4Lukins

Junior Member
specialguy said:
That's reasonably doubtful at this point even WW.
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Either way I think it is a Gamecube/ XBOX comparison. It does not really matter who wins when it is so close.

The one thing you can take from it no matter who sells more units is that the 360 was a huge success, and the PS3 was not.

One lost a ton of money and an insane level of market share. The other had a shakey start, but stole a ton of mindshare and seems to have been quite profitable. One company grew and the other shrunk when it comes down to their gaming business.
 
C

CadetMahoney

Member
Talon- said:
4:1 split on ME3? That seems a bit extreme in this late stage, even if ME was 360/PC.
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Cheech said:
I don't see why. . . Also, as per usual, the PS3 version is gimped with regard to the multiplayer. Not that people are buying it specifically for that reason, but being cut out of the multi events has really ticked off the PS3 base for that game.
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Remember Batman Arkham Asylum had PS3 exclusive content and sold more, but when such content wasn't money-hatted in the sequel it sold more on 360. So none of this should be surprising tbh. It's only natural to expect games like Bioshock and ME sequels to sell considerably less on PS3.

MS has a running start advantage next gen with some of these franchises if they're launch titles. PS4 will have a much better chance of all new multiplats or exclusives/

aknbad30 said:
If I didn't know any better, I would think that a lot of people in this thread secretly get excited at the thought of Vita selling poorly.
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Some ppl can only get moist this way. I blame modern technology and sedentary lifestyles.
 
K

Koralsky

Member
Wazzim said:
20k is worse than niche PSP software sales lol. Poor SEGA.
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The funny thing is that Binary Domain, a western-based cover shooter, sell 100k in Japan after the first month and 20k in US.

I know it's Nagoshi's game and Japan loves the guy, but 20k in US, where there's a lot more consoles around and shooter fans of that type vs 100k in Japan is just... I don't know, paradoxical.

I remember when SEGA was expecting the game to sell between 1-1.5 million copies...

Also, other than Journey, BD is the best surprise of the year so far, so, I'm very, very sad for Team Yakuza :/
 
K

KillerMan91

Member
specialguy said:
That's reasonably doubtful at this point even WW.
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Considering that Sony will probably continue the same strategy as with PS2 and sell it for ages in developing countries I would say it is inevitable that PS3 surpasses X360. Of course it doesn't really matter anything for anyone so late in the gen.
 
S

specialguy

Banned
KillerMan91 said:
Considering that Sony will probably continue the same strategy as with PS2 and sell it for ages in developing countries I would say it is inevitable that PS3 surpasses X360. Of course it doesn't really matter anything for anyone so late in the gen.
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Whats to stop MS from doing the same with 360? They arguable even have an edge with a cheap no hard drive SKU...
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
KillerMan91 said:
Considering that Sony will probably continue the same strategy as with PS2 and sell it for ages in developing countries I would say it is inevitable that PS3 surpasses X360. Of course it doesn't really matter anything for anyone so late in the gen.
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However the fact it has to include a hard drive will always add a noticable chunk to productions costs meaning it has less chance of living on as a low cost console for developing countries
 
M

madmackem

Member
C4Lukins said:
Either way I think it is a Gamecube/ XBOX comparison. It does not really matter who wins when it is so close.

The one thing you can take from it no matter who sells more units is that the 360 was a huge success, and the PS3 was not.

One lost a ton of money and an insane level of market share. The other had a shakey start, but stole a ton of mindshare and seems to have been quite profitable. One company grew and the other shrunk when it comes down to their gaming business.
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Yep the one thing we can take from this gen where ever it ends is that 360 has taken a large chunk away from sony and has almost flipped the mind share in the usa and uk.
 
U

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
Koralsky said:
The funny thing is that Binary Domain, a western-based cover shooter, sell 100k in Japan after the first month and 20k in US.

I know it's Nagoshi's game and Japan loves the guy, but 20k in US, where there's a lot more consoles around and shooter fans of that type vs 100k in Japan is just... I don't know, paradoxical.

I remember when SEGA was expecting the game to sell between 1-1.5 million copies...

Also, other than Journey, BD is the best surprise of the year so far, so, I'm very, very sad for Team Yakuza :/
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It's a shame but it was inevitable.

1. New IP
2. Not really that good
3. Japanese game set in Tokyo
4. 500th cover shooter in the last year
5. Horrendous cover art + marketing failure

It was never going to sell, although 20k is shockingly bad.
 
C

Coxy

Member
I was expecting bomba for Binary Domain but 20k? holy fuckballs that's half what crazy niche RPGs sell. I guess it was the death note for Sega America, well it's a good game but they're better off not trying to appeal to america, hopefully they'll know their audience better next time
 
K

KillerMan91

Member
specialguy said:
Whats to stop MS from doing the same with 360? They arguable even have an edge with a cheap no hard drive SKU...
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They don't have same kind of distribution network as Sony because unlike Sony they are not hardware manufacturer outside of X360. Sony sells all kind of shit in these countries so it's easier and cheaper to distribute consoles compared to MS and Nintendo.
 
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