I don't want Platinum to fall for the "mass appeal" trap. We would not have gotten the gem that is Bayonetta if "mass appeal" was on the top of their minds.
I predict: The 720 won't even work with my cable company, much less any Canadian cable company. Not that it would bother me. I already have a cable box.
Potentially hilarious question/thought: Is the system going to ship with a remote? Or is that going to be a fun $40 surprise cost for people? A cable box isn't much good without a remote to change the dang channel.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
As of the end of 2012, Bayonetta was Platinum's best seller, moving over a million units. But Minami says that's not good enough. "Bayonetta didn't sell what we wanted it to sell," he says. "We were hoping it was going to do a little bit better than that, though you can't put it all on the game itself. I think there were a lot of issues with when it came out, the kind of marketing behind it."
If VGChartz is banned, I fully believe [Patcher] should be as well.
The big difference is that VGChartz makes up stuff about the past while Patcher makes predictions about the future. If VGChartz is wrong, it only affects people on forums. The companies know the real numbers. If Patcher makes a prediction, there are big companies taking his opinion into account, rightly or wrongly. The man does have an effect on the future of the industry regardless of your opinion of him.
I think that the internet has been for years on the path to creating what is essentially an electronic Necronomicon: A collection of blasphemous unrealities so perverse that to even glimpse at its contents, if but for a moment, is to irrevocably forfeit a portion of your sanity.
Xbox - PearlBlueS0ul, Steam
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
If VGChartz is banned, I fully believe [Patcher] should be as well.
The big difference is that VGChartz makes up stuff about the past while Patcher makes predictions about the future. If VGChartz is wrong, it only affects people on forums. The companies know the real numbers. If Patcher makes a prediction, there are big companies taking his opinion into account, rightly or wrongly. The man does have an effect on the future of the industry regardless of your opinion of him.
Whereas everyone in the biz learns to utterly ignore VGChartz after a week or two.
Big games anymore are done by big teams. And big teams take management, and "synergy" (as much as I hate that term). While an individual has a much easier time finding work if they have a published game under their belt, the fact that publishers destroys teams seems to make what you are describing really hard to do, Rainbow.
That being said, you are in the industry and I'm not, so I'm going to caveat all that by saying I may be very, very way off base.
What you're talking about are developers that are directly attached to a publisher. That's a very different situation where you're entirely at the whim of the publisher because publisher and developer are just different parts of the same company.
I was talking more about developers like Wayforward & Obsidian (to name a few better known examples) who do a lot of work for various publishers but aren't directly owned by any one publisher. For companies like that, they should be doing their upmost to make sure that each contract they take on can help them in the long run (if in no other way than that try to do a good job with each contract so that they can negotiate better terms with their next one).
Obsidian is usually the first example of a smaller dev that is chronically jerked around by publishers. See: SEGA sitting on a finished game for 6 months without letting anything being done with it. Or the whole 84-85 metacritic thing
But Obsidian has to share some of the blame for that. Like with Fallout:NV, they would have easily gotten that metacritic bonus if the game hadn't been a mess at launch. And as much as I like the game, if Obsidian didn't feel that they could make a non-buggy high quality Fallout game with the budget & time they were given, they should never have signed the contract.
And I agree - Patcher should be banned from this thread. He's even less reliable a source than VGChartz.
Pachter has been claiming that the next xbox will be a cable box for years now, it's not a new prediction from him. Once he gets an idea into his head, he doesn't like to let go of it and admit he could be wrong,because he can't ever admit to being wrong or his business would be ruined.
So he's going to keep on with predicting it until the may announcement. And then when the next xbox isn't also a cable box like he predicted his line will change to "Well if they had followed my predictions, they would be making more money" or some other sort of spin.
That bill certainly seems like its written to ban selling "violent" video games all together in brick and mortar.
Edit: imagine the supreme court going "while we cant ban 'violent games', we can stop them from being seen by minors. this will not prevent gamestop from having a curtain across half their store with '18+ only' sign on it." gamestop with a giant shady back room for 90% of its product would kill the store in a hurry, and make them pick up actual porno games since there all lumped into the same stigma.
We shall see, I really don't expect Lego City to be a big seller. Or Monster Hunter for that matter
Well they've sold better than somebody expected in Europe as both have had temporary shortages as shipments sell out. NoE had to issue an official apology.
Pachter's still around (and one of the biggest analysts) because his estimates on sales numbers and revenue/profit are closer than many other analysts in our particular niche. Shareholders like good estimates, so he gets get paid. And since shareholders like him, he also has the ability to talk to higher-ups at our biggest publishers.
That and he actually takes the time to talk to media and gamers in any capacity.
Rank Analyst Firm
1 Weller, Todd C. Stifel Nicolaus
2 Koenig, Steve Longbow Research
3 Pachter, Michael Wedbush Morgan Securities
He was also in the top 3 in 2008 and 2006 (2013 isn't out yet). Most of the rest in that category, like Todd Weller, cover a wide, wide range of software, mostly enterprise-level stuff.
So combination being right overall when earnings numbers come in and being accessible means Pachter is the analyst we all know.
That bill certainly seems like its written to ban selling "violent" video games all together in brick and mortar.
Edit: imagine the supreme court going "while we cant ban 'violent games', we can stop them from being seen by minors. this will not prevent gamestop from having a curtain across half their store with '18+ only' sign on it." gamestop with a giant shady back room for 90% of its product would kill the store in a hurry, and make them pick up actual porno games since there all lumped into the same stigma.
And both situations are bad for an industry that's seeing new layoffs and closures every day, having scores of product that's not clearly visible would be a sales nightmare.
As of the end of 2012, Bayonetta was Platinum's best seller, moving over a million units. But Minami says that's not good enough. "Bayonetta didn't sell what we wanted it to sell," he says. "We were hoping it was going to do a little bit better than that, though you can't put it all on the game itself.I think there were a lot of issues with when it came out, the kind of marketing behind it."
As of the end of 2012, Bayonetta was Platinum's best seller, moving over a million units. But Minami says that's not good enough. "Bayonetta didn't sell what we wanted it to sell," he says. "We were hoping it was going to do a little bit better than that, though you can't put it all on the game itself.I think there were a lot of issues with when it came out, the kind of marketing behind it."
W-What?
He said it right there, in the underlined part.
Yes I know, but I can't believe they'd put any of it on the game itself. It was a terrific game that raised the combat bar.
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
As of the end of 2012, Bayonetta was Platinum's best seller, moving over a million units. But Minami says that's not good enough. "Bayonetta didn't sell what we wanted it to sell," he says. "We were hoping it was going to do a little bit better than that, though you can't put it all on the game itself.I think there were a lot of issues with when it came out, the kind of marketing behind it."
W-What?
He said it right there, in the underlined part.
Yes I know, but I can't believe they'd put any of it on the game itself. It was a terrific game that raised the combat bar.
It is a very weird and quirky game in a market that abhors such things, and the PS3 version started out as a complete mess.
I don't seem to recall any marketing behind Bayonetta, let alone the wrong kind. I think the best thing they could do with Bayonetta 2 would be to release it after Smash Bros or Mario Kart and make sure she is an unlockable character with crazy moves in one of those two games. It would go a long way in getting the character some recognition with Nintendo fans.
Marketing an odd character like this is tricky, but certainly can be done.
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited April 2013
It didn't help that the Bayonetta demo was butts and showed absolutely none of what makes the game great. They could have probably switched the demo for the actual first level of the game (the tutorial-y level) and it would have been a million times better.
The EU Commission claims that there “is no obvious market failure” in the UK games industry. Black Rock, Sony Liverpool/Psygnosis, BigBig, Monumental, Bright Light, Bizarre, Codemasters Guilford, THQ Warrington, Realtime Worlds and more beg to differ. As perhaps do EA-owned social games makers Playfish, which this week also faces redundancies and potentially even closure as a raft of its admittedly hateful Facebook games, including The Sims Social, are suddenly closed. Whatever we might think of the games these places made and of whose masts they chose to tether themselves too, if only they could have had the chance to try something else rather than face the axe.
While recent numbers do have it that the UK games industry is growing, two factors arguably affecting that are the assistance promised by tax breaks and that so many new, small studios were started by staff made redundant by some of the firms mentioned above. One thing we’re most certainly not over here is out of the woods. The idea of Europe ordering that tax breaks, so beneficial to small studios struggling to establish themselves, is not a pleasant one.
“The market for developing video games is dynamic and commercially promising,” said Joaquin Almunia, EU Commission VP. “It is not clear whether the taxpayer should be subsidising this activity. Such subsidies could even distort competition.” By the latter, he means that UK could wind up with an unfair advantage over other nations, and I suspect that’s the crux of the matter in the eyes of countries which don’t grant games companies the 25% tax relief due to be offered here. And, the commission fears, it could spark a “subsidy race between member states” competing for investment from big games firms.
From a governmental point of view, this isn’t about the effects on indies one way or another – it’s because every nation wants an Activision or EA setting up camp in their back yard, and all the expenditure and recruitment that would entail. And, indeed, anything that might keep the capricious, callous whims of bottom line-obsessed megacorps at bay in the event a game isn’t the big earner they’d hoped.
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever really seen much marketing for Platinum games (barring Metal Gear Madeupword). They always seemed to get the short end of the stick from Sega. Which was a real shame... Bayonetta was great, and Vanquish revolutionized and greatly sped up shooters the same way Devil May Cry revolutionized and greatly sped up action games.
Switch: 3947-4890-9293
+1
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever really seen much marketing for Platinum games (barring Metal Gear Madeupword).
Rising is a real word.
0
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
revengeance is the best word
the best word
im attempting to work it into my lexicon.
i will make this word real
In terms of marketting it was also highly memorable given that it's guaranteed to be unusual since it is not, in fact, an actual word.* Which would have really helped the marketting side of things.
*for now
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Literal, actual comprehensive sales numbers and what not. http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures
Dustforce was an excellent indie balls-hard platformer that came out on Steam in January of 2012. Its developers have put up an article discussing its sales figures.
Dustforce is just over a year old now. How well has it fared in the past year, and what does that mean for Hitbox Team? In this article, we discuss in great detail the financial performance of Dustforce, in the context of our own goals for the game. Come and learn about some of the financial issues of a tiny development team, such as how we funded Dustforce, and how much it costs to make a game.
You should really go through the whole article, but here's some talking points:
As expected, the sales declined steadily after the launch. The first three days of sales accounted for half of our cumulative revenue for the first three months of sales. By the end of the second month, we were selling around 30-50 copies per day. Our running total by then was around $243k. Remember, this is just the revenue. After deducting withholding taxes, Valve's cut, returns and fees, we're left with around 63% of that, so that figure is closer to $153k. With that taken into account, Dustforce was profitable (in that it made over the $100k put into it) by January 25, or 9 days after its launch. If you take into account personal income taxes (between 28-36%), then we were personally profitable by around a month after launch.
The game stayed at this plateau until early May when it was part of a Midweek Madness sale on Steam and then saw another spike in mid September when it was part of the Humble Bundle. Unlike the Midweek Madness sale, the Humble Bundle gave them a long-term post-event bump in sales.
Finally,
The final figure for our income after exactly one year of sales is $489,404 USD (from a total of $668,490 in revenue). Of course, there are also costs to running the business: legal and accounting fees, software licenses, server costs, and some travelling expenses have added up over the past year to take a good $36k or so out of our total income. When you take that into account, along with personal income taxes, we are left with around $295k. In the end, this means that for every $10 copy of Dustforce sold, $4.41 of it ended up in our pockets. We then split this between the four of us.
Muddy Water on
+18
HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
That's the single most informative post we've had in here in years.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
That article definitely demonstrates the importance of the long-term determining success strength rather than this "week one success" kind of bullshit people expect.
Speaking of which, Microsoft seems to be having a lot more XBLA sales lately. I noticed they had a section devoted to showing which games/DLC were permanently price-dropped each month of the year.
I wonder if all Steam sales figures look like that. A nice, steady line until a sale of any kind and then it skyrockets.
Pretty much.
We put Precipice of Darkness 3 on sale this week. $0.99 (80% off). The sale wasn't a Valve-featured sale so we didn't get much publicity for it.
Revenue for the game was up 3000% over the previous day. That's revenue, not unit sales. Now just imagine how much it would have gone up if it had been mentioned in Steam's Weekly Sales post.
That article definitely demonstrates the importance of the long-term determining success strength rather than this "week one success" kind of bullshit people expect.
I'm not so sure about that; this is a game that clearly depended on advertising and word of mouth for sales, and even then 25% of it's first year revenue came in the first week.
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
That article definitely demonstrates the importance of the long-term determining success strength rather than this "week one success" kind of bullshit people expect.
I'm not so sure about that; this is a game that clearly depended on advertising and word of mouth for sales, and even then 25% of it's first year revenue came in the first week.
I'm not saying that the first week isn't important at all, but it is not the be-all end-all of success.
+3
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I count myself lucky when I sell my products in my day job if I can average a 60% gross margin across my client base, and our target for 2015 is to average a 15% return on sale.
Dhalphir on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
for me, it just confirms what we all already knew
Steam/Digital sales have GOT to be vastly eclipsing physical media sales by this point on PC games
Big games anymore are done by big teams. And big teams take management, and "synergy" (as much as I hate that term). While an individual has a much easier time finding work if they have a published game under their belt, the fact that publishers destroys teams seems to make what you are describing really hard to do, Rainbow.
That being said, you are in the industry and I'm not, so I'm going to caveat all that by saying I may be very, very way off base.
What you're talking about are developers that are directly attached to a publisher. That's a very different situation where you're entirely at the whim of the publisher because publisher and developer are just different parts of the same company.
I was talking more about developers like Wayforward & Obsidian (to name a few better known examples) who do a lot of work for various publishers but aren't directly owned by any one publisher. For companies like that, they should be doing their upmost to make sure that each contract they take on can help them in the long run (if in no other way than that try to do a good job with each contract so that they can negotiate better terms with their next one).
Obsidian is usually the first example of a smaller dev that is chronically jerked around by publishers. See: SEGA sitting on a finished game for 6 months without letting anything being done with it. Or the whole 84-85 metacritic thing
But Obsidian has to share some of the blame for that. Like with Fallout:NV, they would have easily gotten that metacritic bonus if the game hadn't been a mess at launch. And as much as I like the game, if Obsidian didn't feel that they could make a non-buggy high quality Fallout game with the budget & time they were given, they should never have signed the contract.
And I agree - Patcher should be banned from this thread. He's even less reliable a source than VGChartz.
I could be mistaken, but didn't Bethesda do the Q&A for Fallout: New Vegas? Not to mention set the time-table for release, and provided the really terrible engine to make the game with in the first place.
While they aren't official, Bioshock Infinite is on pace to out do its predecessor. Bioshock 2 did 753,400 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in a month. If those are week one sales, then it will hit a million by a month. It's a real shame that it will be considered a disappointment.
As an aside, I also noticed sales for Aliens vs. Predator 2010 were somewhere between 191k and 219k on just the 360. Compare that to the probably above 200k and far below 260k Aliens: Colonial Marines did on three platforms and Sega can't be happy with the way that turned out.
While they aren't official, Bioshock Infinite is on pace to out do its predecessor. Bioshock 2 did 753,400 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in a month. If those are week one sales, then it will hit a million by a month. It's a real shame that it will be considered a disappointment.
As an aside, I also noticed sales for Aliens vs. Predator 2010 were somewhere between 191k and 219k on just the 360. Compare that to the probably above 200k and far below 260k Aliens: Colonial Marines did on three platforms and Sega can't be happy with the way that turned out.
With the amount of money that 2k sunk into advertising(not quoting the 200mil figure here, just from market saturation I'm seeing here in NYC), 1 million will be a huge disappointment.
Posts
Potentially hilarious question/thought: Is the system going to ship with a remote? Or is that going to be a fun $40 surprise cost for people? A cable box isn't much good without a remote to change the dang channel.
W-What?
The big difference is that VGChartz makes up stuff about the past while Patcher makes predictions about the future. If VGChartz is wrong, it only affects people on forums. The companies know the real numbers. If Patcher makes a prediction, there are big companies taking his opinion into account, rightly or wrongly. The man does have an effect on the future of the industry regardless of your opinion of him.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
Whereas everyone in the biz learns to utterly ignore VGChartz after a week or two.
But Obsidian has to share some of the blame for that. Like with Fallout:NV, they would have easily gotten that metacritic bonus if the game hadn't been a mess at launch. And as much as I like the game, if Obsidian didn't feel that they could make a non-buggy high quality Fallout game with the budget & time they were given, they should never have signed the contract.
And I agree - Patcher should be banned from this thread. He's even less reliable a source than VGChartz.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
So he's going to keep on with predicting it until the may announcement. And then when the next xbox isn't also a cable box like he predicted his line will change to "Well if they had followed my predictions, they would be making more money" or some other sort of spin.
Edit: imagine the supreme court going "while we cant ban 'violent games', we can stop them from being seen by minors. this will not prevent gamestop from having a curtain across half their store with '18+ only' sign on it." gamestop with a giant shady back room for 90% of its product would kill the store in a hurry, and make them pick up actual porno games since there all lumped into the same stigma.
Well they've sold better than somebody expected in Europe as both have had temporary shortages as shipments sell out. NoE had to issue an official apology.
That and he actually takes the time to talk to media and gamers in any capacity.
http://excellence.thomsonreuters.com/award/starmine
He was also in the top 3 in 2008 and 2006 (2013 isn't out yet). Most of the rest in that category, like Todd Weller, cover a wide, wide range of software, mostly enterprise-level stuff.
So combination being right overall when earnings numbers come in and being accessible means Pachter is the analyst we all know.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
And both situations are bad for an industry that's seeing new layoffs and closures every day, having scores of product that's not clearly visible would be a sales nightmare.
He said it right there, in the underlined part.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Yes I know, but I can't believe they'd put any of it on the game itself. It was a terrific game that raised the combat bar.
It is a very weird and quirky game in a market that abhors such things, and the PS3 version started out as a complete mess.
Marketing an odd character like this is tricky, but certainly can be done.
Rising is a real word.
the best word
im attempting to work it into my lexicon.
i will make this word real
In terms of marketting it was also highly memorable given that it's guaranteed to be unusual since it is not, in fact, an actual word.* Which would have really helped the marketting side of things.
*for now
http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures
Dustforce was an excellent indie balls-hard platformer that came out on Steam in January of 2012. Its developers have put up an article discussing its sales figures.
You should really go through the whole article, but here's some talking points:
The game stayed at this plateau until early May when it was part of a Midweek Madness sale on Steam and then saw another spike in mid September when it was part of the Humble Bundle. Unlike the Midweek Madness sale, the Humble Bundle gave them a long-term post-event bump in sales.
Finally,
Speaking of which, Microsoft seems to be having a lot more XBLA sales lately. I noticed they had a section devoted to showing which games/DLC were permanently price-dropped each month of the year.
That's utterly absurd
Pretty much.
We put Precipice of Darkness 3 on sale this week. $0.99 (80% off). The sale wasn't a Valve-featured sale so we didn't get much publicity for it.
Revenue for the game was up 3000% over the previous day. That's revenue, not unit sales. Now just imagine how much it would have gone up if it had been mentioned in Steam's Weekly Sales post.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
The benefit of not having to deal with executive overhead.
I'm not so sure about that; this is a game that clearly depended on advertising and word of mouth for sales, and even then 25% of it's first year revenue came in the first week.
I'm not saying that the first week isn't important at all, but it is not the be-all end-all of success.
yeah seriously, 45% return on sales is insane.
I count myself lucky when I sell my products in my day job if I can average a 60% gross margin across my client base, and our target for 2015 is to average a 15% return on sale.
Steam/Digital sales have GOT to be vastly eclipsing physical media sales by this point on PC games
I could be mistaken, but didn't Bethesda do the Q&A for Fallout: New Vegas? Not to mention set the time-table for release, and provided the really terrible engine to make the game with in the first place.
As an aside, I also noticed sales for Aliens vs. Predator 2010 were somewhere between 191k and 219k on just the 360. Compare that to the probably above 200k and far below 260k Aliens: Colonial Marines did on three platforms and Sega can't be happy with the way that turned out.
With the amount of money that 2k sunk into advertising(not quoting the 200mil figure here, just from market saturation I'm seeing here in NYC), 1 million will be a huge disappointment.