-
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.
NPD Sales Results for April 2010
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
I'm almost certain that at least the Wii version of Summer Olympics has cleared 5 million on it's own. Combined they were at 10 million almost two years ago.Stumpokapow said:
Brofist
Member
How should I know, I can tell you that's it's been a budget priced game in Japan since about the 2nd week. It has the benefit of the online community which means it isn't getting smashed by used sales, I'll give it that much in it's favor.Jokeropia said:
So basically a few months down the line from now MH3 will squeak by 1.5 million and may settle in a little above that. Yeah pretty much sounds like what I said in my earlier post.
Lagspike_exe
Member
Let's try to make a list of IPs that started this gen that broke 5m ww.
So, we have:
Nintendo: Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit. Nintendogs, NSMB (although you can argue that this is just old-school Mario), Brain Age.
Sony: None
Microsoft: Gears of War
PC: None
Multiplatform: Assassin's Creed, Force Unleashed, Mario&Sonic.
So, we have:
Nintendo: Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit. Nintendogs, NSMB (although you can argue that this is just old-school Mario), Brain Age.
Sony: None
Microsoft: Gears of War
PC: None
Multiplatform: Assassin's Creed, Force Unleashed, Mario&Sonic.
Eteric Rice
Member
kpop100 said:
I own VIII, X, and rented XII, so yeah.
It won't "squeak by" 1.5 million. :lol If it does only as well in the west as the last PSP game it will reach 1.65 million and right now it's tracking way better.kpop100 said:
Just like Quadrangulum said, the situation isn't at all the same as for FFXII. First shipment was not enough and it experienced growth compared to previous titles. One is also from a much bigger franchise that is in a declining state while the other is from a smaller franchise that is growing. They're completely dissimilar.
charlequin
Banned
KuwabaraTheMan said:
Lifetime? Including GH sales? Maybe. It'd have to add around 500k to its first-month total to do that. If it added almost 100k this month (not entirely unbelievable)... then... a GH/Platinum release later... well... maybe. :lol
Manmademan said:
In terms of "all games"? Yes. In terms of the franchise? Decline from XII, which was a decline from X, which was a decline from VIII. The absolute numbers are still high but the trend is downwards.
Darthdevidem01 said:
Yeah, but it was at 11 with somewhere around 300k sales (because it was December.)
That said, FFXIII is almost certainly still ahead of FFXII after two months of sales for each in the US, so while the decline talk is real and accurate, it's not exactly a huge failure either.
donny2112 said:
Well, I did this more as a way to insult the developers that don't attempt some sort of smart-growth strategy than as an actual suggestion that it was that obvious. :lol
Opiate said:
I don't think a DQ-esque approach specifically will work, but I think you underestimate how possible it is to cut these types of Gordian knots.
FF is a series that's innately tied to attractive presentation, and that can't be changed. However, right now it's caught up in a very specific type of high-quality presentation that's really expensive, and I don't think that is in any way unchangeable. I don't think the idea of an FF that plays faster, has more freedom, utilizes attractively stylized (rather than realistically-styled) graphics, cuts CGI almost entirely, and otherwise tunes the experience towards a more holistic blend of style and substance, with less filler and linearity, is at all inconceivable.
(I see Vinci was thinking along very similar lines.)
However, I don't think anything this will happen because Square-Enix is not managed for intelligent growth or wise management of their IP and manpower assets, and has not been at least since Sakaguchi left -- and also, potentially, because the gap between what Japanese audiences and Western audiences consider "cool" is too difficult to meaningfully bridge now.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
charlequin said:
Well, XII added over a million to its first month sales, so I don't see why 500,000 for XIII is unreasonable at all. XII sold maybe a bit over 300,000 in its second month (which was December), and then I don't believe it ever charted again, yet it still sold another 700,000 or so, despite being on an aging platform.
If XII could sell another 700,000 after its first holiday season on the PS2 (post PS3 and Wii launch), then I don't think its unreasonable for XIII to sell another 500,000 plus, especially on two platforms that are very much alive.
It doesn't even have to be doing close to 100,000 a month to pull that off. 50,000 a month on average for the rest of the year and then a spike for the holiday season would put it there.
charlequin
Banned
KuwabaraTheMan said:
Well, I really did mean "maybe." :lol FF games don't have legs in the US but the popular opinion does underestimate just how much they eventually sell at $20 -- both FFX and FFXII more than doubled their launch months eventually. So if XIII sold 75k this month, made it to 1.65m by the time it's done selling, and then saw Greatest Hits/Platinum re-releases... it's certainly not impossibly it could do 250k+ at that price and overcome XII. But it's definitely not an absolute the way it would've been if we'd seen a 200k month in April.
charlequin said:
Absolutely. For whatever reason, I've found myself thinking over how they might reinvent the Final Fantasy series - and yes, losing the current art style in favor of something that looks attractive yet scales well across future tech upgrades was pretty central to that. Given the immense amount of artistic talent S-E has under its wings, or at the very least could afford to hire, it seems doable.
One of the things I've seen recently that completely sold me on the idea were screenshots from the Dolphin thread of Wind Waker. No, I'm not suggesting Final Fantasy look like Wind Waker - but without anything beyond a resolution upgrade, Wind Waker's art style allowed the game to look completely current. brain_stew once said that art style doesn't trump tech - but it might enable S-E to apply tech without having to redesign the wheel every generation.
charlequin
Banned
Vinci said:
When Square decided to start developing on GBA back in 2003, I had what I thought was an extremely good idea for how they could start hedging against franchise decline with a new direction. They eventually did something pretty similar to my idea with FF Gaiden. Of course, my idea didn't involve being six years too late, not being advertised at all, or having gameplay that sucked. :lol
charlequin
Banned
Vinci said:
It's apparently not very good, mostly. :lol
To be more clear, I thought they should take the basic concept of an FF and some of its core conceits (strong visual iconography, catchy music, incredibly customizable characters) and launch a new "core" FF series like "Final Fantasy Advance" or something, putting a new, young(er), (relatively) less-well-known character designer, composer, and director on it, as a way of building some new gameplay ideas on a platform where "impressive presentation" was cheap, with the FF brand (which, in 2003, wasn't worth jack shit due to tons of garbage spinoffs quite yet) giving it an in with consumers.
FF Gaiden is pretty much exactly an FF game reimagined by a less well-known creative team, but it was also sent to die at retail and had gameplay flaws significant enough to really hurt its cachet even with people who did buy it, so...
There actually are quite a few more in these categories, but your overall point definitely stands.Stumpokapow said:
FIFA10 broke 10 million: http://news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/i...gId=1012492&newsId=20100511007277&newsLang=en
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 managed 5 million: http://news.ea.com/portal/site/ea/i...gId=1012492&newsId=20100511007277&newsLang=en
Need For Speed: Undercover broke 5 million, which was apparently down a lot from previous entries: http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=381903
Madden 09 also broke 5 million, which was also a down year: http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=381903
The "Diablo Series" has managed over 20 million, so they must be beating 5 million per entry: http://seekingalpha.com/article/136299-activision-blizzard-q1-2009-earnings-call-transcript?page=7
Warcraft 3 launch with 4.5 million shipped. Given that it's still selling today, I have to imagine it beat 5 million: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2874735.html
I feel I'm missing a few older titles and the previously mentioned AC titles, but yeah, it's not a huge amount of games.
Son of Godzilla
Banned
Final Fantasy is fine. Square took the right approach, they needed to establish that they were in control of the genre. They shamed every other JRPG out there with regards to expectations of next-gen RPGs, and now their future products will be able to sell without major competition.
It's problem is it blew the release date. Releasing outside of Fall works for some games. And doesn't for others.
It's problem is it blew the release date. Releasing outside of Fall works for some games. And doesn't for others.
Go MH3!
I thought for sure that the demo was going to kill any interest fence-sitters had in the game. Glad I was wrong. There's a lot of depth in the team mechanics that put it in a different league to most ARPGs in my opinion and it takes some patience to really understand all the game offers. Something most gamers lack imo. I ultimately sold my friends on it by telling them it was like Demon's Souls but more difficult with online co-op. Ha.
Really glad to see it do well out the gate and hope to see it do very well in the long run.
I thought for sure that the demo was going to kill any interest fence-sitters had in the game. Glad I was wrong. There's a lot of depth in the team mechanics that put it in a different league to most ARPGs in my opinion and it takes some patience to really understand all the game offers. Something most gamers lack imo. I ultimately sold my friends on it by telling them it was like Demon's Souls but more difficult with online co-op. Ha.
Really glad to see it do well out the gate and hope to see it do very well in the long run.
donny2112 said:
To further expand on it (now that I'm looking at more historical numbers), software $-wise, May has been less than April every year since at least 2005, and May is typically the lowest sales $-wise in the year. So, I guess expect more bad news yoy next month, then?
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Lagspike_exe said:
Didn't the Uncharted series breakout more than 6m worldwide? That is if you combine both games' sales.
Edit: Also if it's series based, you can include BioShock (multiplat) and Carnival Games (Wii).
neptunes said:
If I were Sony I'd figure "Why bother?". With Apple and Nintendo now about to start a war they should just focus on the home front. Apple is probably the only company that could really steal Nintendo's handheld thunder.
PSP has been done for a long time. Sony is always stubborn to drop formats. See Beta or Minidisc for example. Loved both but they were dead for years before Sony finally threw in the towel.
xs_mini_neo
Banned
Darthdevidem01 said:
1) lol @ people saying FF9 was a full return to the series roots. It was half. And that half was delicious. The other (FF7-esque) half was crap. Kuja and his bikini ruined everything it touched.
2) Oh, the damage has been done. You'll see the effects with the next main entry.
xs_mini_neo said:
1. What the hell does this even mean? One Kuja outside having Silver hair wasn't anything like either Sephiroth or Ultimecia. Plus his female-like body and thong is nothing compared to the fact that Cecil always looked like a female in Amuno's work. So it wasn't only with the DS or Dissidia.
2. Kuja is awesome, outside of Vivi he is the only good part of FF IX.
3. This is bullshit, people like to think that FF 1-VI are so damn great (well I agree with V) but they also ignore that those games sold like crap compared to VII and VIII so they wheren't exactly the biggest in the series so even if they went back and did what you are asking they would not be doing any better then what XIII is doing sale's wise.
4. 4 Warriors of Light is a throw back, probably even more so then IX and it fucking tanked in Japan on DS where DQ IX sold over 4 million units so just one more peice of proof that all the people whinning for a throw back are doing it simply because they want it and not because it would actually do any better then XII or XIII was able to.
DMeisterJ said:
Those were not the best examples but I see where they were going. MH3 despite being niche is still a Wii game and almost every Wii game has a tail
I do not see it myself given MH past performance but since the audience on the Wii in America tends to come out over the course or a year regardless of genre there is an argument to be made that the game does not drop off the face of the earth after 15 days
Segata Sanshiro
Member
Point #3: Yes, they sold significantly worse WW than VII and on did, probably because nobody had thrown a $100 million NA marketing campaign at the series prior to VII.TruePrime said:
Point #4: Spoken like someone who hasn't touched 4WoL in his life. Tell me which old school Final Fantasy had AI targeting for spells, limited inventory space in which even spells eat up inventory space, character design by Yoshida, music by Mizuta, a paperthin story that involved following each party member going their separate ways before finally bringing them together, and a job system which contains literally none of the classic jobs.
It certainly made an appeal to the old-school fan, and was certainly marketed to them, but it really didn't take long for the people yearning for an old-school FF to figure out it was almost entirely not what it claimed to be. 4wol sold relatively badly (comparing it to DQ9 is incredibly fucking disingenuous of you and I'm going to give you a little credit and say you certainly know why) for two principal reasons: the dilution of the FF brand and the fact that it's not a very good game at all.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
ULTROS! said:
Imagine that you've got Cecil, Edward, Rosa, and Kain in your party.
Now imagine that Cecil's at 1/4 HP and Edward is at 5 HP.
You cast Cure. Obviously the intended target is Cecil because he's at risk of dying. Sure, Edward has lower HP, but he's basically a useless meat shield.
Hahahahahaha NOPE! Since you don't get to target spells in 4WoL, Edward gets healed to full HP! Awesome!
SilverLunar
Member
...Stumpokapow said:
what
Darthdevidem01
Banned
xs_mini_neo said:
Oh please spare me this.
FF8 was the "worst FF eva" when it releases, FF9 & 10 did 5 Million +
FFX-2 was the "worst FF eva" FF12 did 5 Million +
FF12 was the "worst FF eva" FF13 will do 5 Million +
I see a patter there, hope all you want to, don't complain when FF15 breaks 5 Million pretty easily.
deepbrown said:
One of the most fanboyish posts ever? Trying to spin the PSP's horrible sales, which resemble the Gamecube's in its fourth year(meaning - abysmal) will get you nowhere. I'm sure a giant company such as Sony. who employs thousands of workers and is widespread worldwide are saying to themselves - "Yeah... Most individual people would kill to have those kinds of numbers!"... Really?
Oh, and those 66,000 are across 50 countries.
Segata Sanshiro
Member
Well, there's the targeting as Stump pointed out, but the real crippling blow is the limited inventory. Particularly for mages, whose spellbooks (one for each spell) take up precious inventory space. Just carrying your equipment and spells and maybe a potion or two, you'll be lucky if you have *any* room at all for the swag you find in the dungeons.ULTROS! said:
Captain Tuttle
Member
Naruto said:
NPD is US only.