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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - ZombiU Was "Not Even Close" to Profitable, No Plans for a Sequel

TRAVIS!!! on 08 July 2013
osed125 said:
TRAVIS!!! said:
strange, I thought I read somewhere that a zombi u 2 prototype was in developement?

I think that was a rumor, not an actual confirmation from Ubisoft. 


just found this but I don't know who that guy is

http://gotgame.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/14-05-2013-12-53-32.jpg



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digitalnasties on 08 July 2013

Let's not hide the fact that after playing that demo of ZombiU most people lost any interest in the game, i know i did, so i got AC3 instead, and the game was £55 and still is in HMV and online, funny how selling half a million on other consoles is perfectly fine.



 

outlawauron on 08 July 2013
Barozi said:
osed125 said:
BloodyRain said:
BasilZero said:

Of course it wasnt....the Wii-U sales were enough reason to doom this game lol.

Only saving grace I can see happening is now making the game multiplat but I dont even think they'll do that due to a partnership or deal with Nintendo (plus with the name lol - unless they call it Zombi like their other game).

I don't think there expectations with zombie U was all that high especially on a new console. It must have truly been a massive fail in terms of sales then lol.

You are giving to much faith in 3rd party publishers to actually think they didn't had high expectations.

OT: This is a problem with both Ubisoft and the Wii U sales. Giving that this is a new IP for a new console there was no way they thought this would have sold that well (especially giving the reviews). Heck even with the massive launch the Wii had, Red Steel has only managed to sold 650k units (according to VGC), so it's was huge mistake from Ubisoft to actually have faith in this game.

And the Wii U sales obviously didn't helped, although the launch of the system was good, and I think ZombiU was one of the highest selling games (just behind NSMBU and NintendoLand), in fact, iirc Ubisoft said they were happy with the sales, but I'm not sure. 

Edit: if this game seriously had big development cost (let's say $20 million), then there's something very very wrong with Ubisoft (and the video game industry for that matter).

VGC has still missing European sales for early 7th gen consoles.
Red Steel was over 1m (I think 1.1m or 1.2m) before ioi accidentally removed the European sales.

Profitability becomes skewed as most of those sales came from when the game was in the bargain bin. Publishers can make a lot off a $50-60 game. Not so much for the $5-15 clearance sale.



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anthony64641 on 08 July 2013

@Madword

No actually this game started off coming to the ps3 and xbox 360, back when it was about aliens




'Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll.'
-Shigeru Miyamoto

Barozi on 08 July 2013
Busted said:
Slimebeast said:

It's easy to say in hindsight that the game wouldn't become a success.

But at the time everybody thought it would sell fairly well. 1-1.5 million was probably a reasonable target lifetime (some copies at discount) and upside was +2 million.

Probably it cost $20 million. All AAA games cost at least $20 million. That requires 1 million copies at full price to break even.

Agree with you but ZombiU is an AAA game? right...

and i don't think $20m comes close, any AAA costs at least three times that

That's not true at all.

$60m would be in the top ten of most expensive games.

Uncharted 1 and 2 are $20m each
Gears of War was $10m, Gears of War 2 was $12m
Crysis was $22m

Most AAA games should be around $30m.
BUT if it's a multiplat release, then it should definitely cost more. *doesn't want to know Watch Dogs' budget*

ZombiU could very well be at $15m. Even serious Wii games (serious = non-shovelware) approach $10m, so $15-20m is definitely a reasonable estimation.



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outlawauron on 08 July 2013
Barozi said:
Busted said:
Slimebeast said:

It's easy to say in hindsight that the game wouldn't become a success.

But at the time everybody thought it would sell fairly well. 1-1.5 million was probably a reasonable target lifetime (some copies at discount) and upside was +2 million.

Probably it cost $20 million. All AAA games cost at least $20 million. That requires 1 million copies at full price to break even.

Agree with you but ZombiU is an AAA game? right...

and i don't think $20m comes close, any AAA costs at least three times that

That's not true at all.

$60m would be in the top ten of most expensive games.

Uncharted 1 and 2 are $20m each
Gears of War was $10m, Gears of War 2 was $12m
Crysis was $22m

Most AAA games should be around $30m.
BUT if it's a multiplat release, then it should definitely cost more. *doesn't want to know Watch Dogs' budget*

ZombiU could very well be at $15m. Even serious Wii games (serious = non-shovelware) approach $10m, so $15-20m is definitely a reasonable estimation.

Not to mention there are several PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasies that cost over 30-40 million to make.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

SubiyaCryolite on 08 July 2013

Shame about ZombiU, I expected it to at least break even."They're so small it's hardly worth running the servers" This is troubling, I hope games released on WiiU will still have a decent online community years if not months after release, I love how Bad Company 2 is still fairly active even after several years. I say this because I just ordered a WiiU (with ZombiU + Tekken Tag 2 :D) a few days ago.



I predict that the Wii U will sell a total of 18 million units in its lifetime. 

The NX will be a 900p machine

Barozi on 08 July 2013
outlawauron said:
Barozi said:

VGC has still missing European sales for early 7th gen consoles.
Red Steel was over 1m (I think 1.1m or 1.2m) before ioi accidentally removed the European sales.

Profitability becomes skewed as most of those sales came from when the game was in the bargain bin. Publishers can make a lot off a $50-60 game. Not so much for the $5-15 clearance sale.

Oh certainly, but Red Steel without Europe did about as well as ZombiU WW. So Red Steel was certainly selling faster and thus also more profitable.


http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/game_comparison.php?reg=Global&ending=Cumulative&game[]=Red+Steel+%28Wii%29+[1872]&game[]=ZombiU+%28WiiU%29+[70793]&game[]=&game[]=



pokoko on 08 July 2013
Slimebeast said:

Well it depends on how you define AAA of course.

Pesrsonally I agree that AAA should only be the real big games.

But I think it's assumed in the industry, at least at the beginning of current gen, that an AAA game is a typical high production game that takes a 100 member team 2 years to develop.And that means $20 million budget and up.

Nowaydays those $20 mill games are dime a dozen so perhaps we should call them just AA games, while the truly big guys are AAA (BF, Halo, COD, Grand Turismo, GTA, Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid etc).

No, AAA rank is just a projection of how well a game is expected to sell.  Things like production and marketing budget can certainly factor into the analysis but that certainly isn't the whole of it.  Retailers don't care how much a game cost to make, they care about what kind of profit it will generate.  It's a system designed to tell them what to invest in.  When I used to order for my store, looking for AAA beside the name of a game was a fantastic way to separate it from the clutter--and there was a LOT of clutter, especially for the Wii.

People put too much emphasis on AAA status.  It's basically just an educated guess about how well a title will perform.  A game can cost 5 million but they'll give it AAA rank if the experts believe it will make a lot of money for retailers.

It never was intended to be a way for fans to rank games.



osed125 on 08 July 2013
Barozi said:
Busted said:

Agree with you but ZombiU is an AAA game? right...

and i don't think $20m comes close, any AAA costs at least three times that

That's not true at all.

$60m would be in the top ten of most expensive games.

Uncharted 1 and 2 are $20m each
Gears of War was $10m, Gears of War 2 was $12m
Crysis was $22m

Most AAA games should be around $30m.
BUT if it's a multiplat release, then it should definitely cost more. *doesn't want to know Watch Dogs' budget*

ZombiU could very well be at $15m. Even serious Wii games (serious = non-shovelware) approach $10m, so $15-20m is definitely a reasonable estimation.

The top 10 is definitely higher. This image is old, there are definitely much more expensive games that are not there.

You have games that have costed more than $100 million to make (with the biggest exaggeration of all time which has been Star Wars the Old Republic, with $200 million total in budget). 



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