DS Games Selling Badly: Or Why Install Base isn't the End All Be All

[jman8]

cleveland124 said:

jman8 said:

 My main idea, the point to take home, is that a big install base doesn't necessarily equal large sales. Then I went on and speculated that it might actually be better to release on a lesser selling system like the PSP, Wii, or PS3 (maybe even 360, but that install base may be too small). That second point is hard to prove b/c there's pretty much no way to truly test it out. But it sure does seem that devs are subscribing to the same line of thought that I'm presenting here when you consider that there are games being released for the PSP even though overall software sales are really bad.

This is definately true.  Nothing sales in a vaccuum.  There is no if I just support x system, and make lots of money.  There is competition, their are the effects of the economy, there is how well you market. 

Their are two schools of thought on the different systems.  You have competition and complementary games.  You could say an RPG could sell well on the DS because Square Enix has performed well on the DS and the DS is now the lead platform when you think of RPGs.  Or you could think that the DS is oversaturated with RPGs and people will just buy the Square Enix RPGs.  Then you might look to a console like the Wii which has a high userbase and yet nothing substantial in the RPG market.  Every game is different and its hard to know what exactly is going to sell.  If it wasn't we wouldn't have businesses go out of business. 

 

Agreed. It seems a bit like your second school of thought may be becoming the reality. I pointed out 2 RPGs from well known much loved developers and both seem to have done a pretty disappointing job selling software on a system that has a ton of RPGs.

@TWRoO: Yeah that's what I'm getting at. I'm not saying it's a guarantee the games would've sold better on another system, but I think there's a decent chance. Like Cleveland said, there's not many RPGs on the Wii. There's a good chance there's a lot of Wii owners starving for an RPG. Same goes for PSP or PS3. The game sites that cover those systems would probably also give more coverage (which equals PR) to those games had they been on another system b/c of the rarity of RPGs for those users.