| outlawauron said: Well, they can certainly go the cheap route like they did with Yakuza 2. Keep the cultural references in, and only traslate the text. (there was only English subs) And of course, little to no advertising. |
True on both fronts, but that's rather like being penny-wise and pound-foolish. As I told Max King, even factoring those costs in probably doesn't raise your costs too much, so your profit point probably isn't too much higher than it was before. (You are, however, risking the alienation of the mainstream, since I don't think most folks prefer subbing over dubbing, and few appreciate references that go over their heads. Mind you, with Yakuza it appears that the mainstream is uninterested anyways, so that's no loss here. End sidenote.)
And even without the advertising (again, dumb for most games, apparently not a biggie for Yakuza) you still have some marketing costs: arranging for retailers to stock the game alone is an uphill challenge, and it ain't free either.
| arsenal009 said: Well Yakuza 3 may have broke even but how much did they lose on Kenzan? They developed the Yakuza engine for that game & it only sold only 300K. I think if u add them up they end up making a loss. As for MadWorld, at 150K i'm sure it's at a loss right now as well. Let's see how good the legs are for these 2 games. PS: It's a good thing Mario is aiding with their finances by helping sell one of their games :D |
On its own, Kenzan was all-but-certain a loss, and likely a big one. But Yakuza 3 is certainly not going to be the last game that uses this engine. But that's no surprise: where in previous generations using middleware was a luxury, this generation it has, literally, become a requirement. I'm having trouble thinking of any big HD game engine that wasn't reused, although I'm sure there are a few. The savings of sharing an engine is no longer a bonus...
Oh, and Madworld? If it's broken even by now, I would be stunned. I also doubt it will have very good legs. I'm guessing No More Heroes-level sales, but that's purely an unsupported opinion.
